Agriculture Markets – Page 2

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

The mFarmer Initiative: USAID joins hands with others for Ag. Devt.

Photo Credit: USAID

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in collaboration with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and GSMA have launched a global initiative to facilitate the rapid scaling of the use of mobile phone networks to provide poor farmers with valued agricultural information.

The mFarmer Initiative aims at developing a global, shared database of digital agricultural information; a challenge fund to promote innovative partnerships between operators and public or private agriculture extension service providers; technical assistance; sharing of best practices; and impact evaluation.

At a recent webinar organized by USAID to introduce the mFarmer initiative, Judy Payne, the ICT Advisor for USAID’s EGAT and Africa Bureaus reiterated the interest of USAID in supporting agriculture in the developing nations through the Feed the Future (FTF) program. She explained that the selected countries for the mFarmer initiative in Africa are priority countries for the FTF program. According to Judy Payne, USAID is a partial funder together with BMGF. She strongly encouraged USAID missions and implementing partners working in Africa to take full advantage of the opportunity given the funding from the agency and the importance of the initiative to help increase productivity and income of smallholder farmers. She cited the involvement of one of USAID’s FTF implementing projects for Africa as a partner in submitting an application during the first round of the Challenge Fund.

The mFarmer initiative has an ambitious vision of success to help about 2.2 million poor farmers in developing countries increase their productivity and incomes by receiving actionable, high quality, relevant and timely information and advice through mobile phone service networks by 2015. These services are delivered via sustainable and scalable business models without on-going donor support and reflect significant private sector investment. They complement other delivery channels, reflect feedback from farmers, and are based on a growing body of shared digital agricultural content.

The introduction to the mFarmer initiative webinar, which was the first in series of webinars to focus on the initiative, was attended by over 40 participants across the globe. Other presenters at the session include Smith Fiona, mAgri Program Director, GSMA Development Fund, and Natalia Pshenichnaya, mAgri Business Development Manager, GSMA Development Fund. Access to the recorded presentation of this webinar could be found here.

Also, an upcoming online forum to initiate discussion around the types of partnerships that are conducive to creating sustainable and scalable mobile information and advisory services for farmers will be help between November 21st and December 1st at e-Agriculture website. Subject Matter Experts to help lead the discussion include:

Sharbendu Banerjee, Director of Business Development, CABI South Asia-India
Hillary Miller-Wise, Country Director, TechnoServe Tanzania
Collins Nweke, Project Manager, Tigo Tanzania
Judy Payne, ICT Advisor, USAID
Fiona Smith, Director, GSMA mAgri Program
S. Srinivasan, CEO, IKSL

GSMA, is an association of 800 mobile operators serving over 95 percent of the market in developing countries. It helps its members adopt new approaches to provide valued information and services to their customers. In 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) made a grant to GSMA to catalyze mobile operators’ investment in these innovative mobile services, evaluate their impact, and facilitate experimentation with sustainable and scalable delivery models.

November 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Information Revolution Changing the Face of African Ag.

Photo Credit: ECX

A 2-day conference on African Commodity Exchanges has ended in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa with the call for an Africa wide commodity exchange as well as more exchanges in African nations.

At the heart of this conference, even though not upfront, was the key role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing in transforming businesses within the agricultural sector in Africa. The success stories surrounding the operation of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) system attest to the fact that ICTs can be enabling factors in almost every sector once the necessary steps are taken to integrate these technologies into the sector.

“A sleepy eyed farmer miles away from the nearest road braves the morning chill to load his donkeys with his lentil harvest. On his way to market he checks his mobile to see if the network is reaching him – because receiving a text message now from the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) could save him hundreds of birr,” said the former World Bank economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin who is the CEO of the Ethiopia’s state-owned commodity exchange.

According to Dr. Gabre-Madhin, ECX is as much an ICT revolution as it is an economic transformation. The platform is a communications technology, from the real time price tickers found across the country to the Interactive Voice Recognition mobile telephony for rural farmers, that makes the exchange work. ICT applications currently being used to facilitate exchange of commodities and make information accessible to the users include over 100 price tickers, 20 trading centers, 50 warehouses, 2000 market information kiosks, and 50 data display boards.

Dr Gabre-Madhin stated that access to price information allows farmers to maximize profits and if farmers can get the same information about the national market trends that well-established and endowed exporters and processing firms have, that changes how the game is played. She concluded that with the ECX, the share of the final export price that now goes back to the farmer has gone up from something like 38% to close to 70%.

The conference which was co-organized by ECX and UNDP brought together participants from about 14 Africa countries including Ghana, Zambia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa with market regulators, policy makers, national and international banks, the US securities and exchanges commission, development institutions, investors, farmer organizations and technology companies.

But while the ECX is being held up as a model, many other African countries disagree with the concept of states controlling the market. But the Ethiopia’s top government economist Newal Gabre Ab insisted that every country is different when it comes to economic policy and in Ethiopia, where farmers are among the poorest in Africa, the success of the ECX is the result of careful state planning.

November 15, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Education, Extension Service, Food Security, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Reforming Ag. Extension, One ICT at a Time!

Photo Credit: M-Kilimo Project

Two recent case studies on some ICTs for agricultural development projects supported through the GSMA Development Fund – mAgri Program reveal an emerging trend within the broader Agricultural Extension Services (AES) and specifically in the developing nations, that worth commenting on. The revealing trend I’ve noticed, is that, either drastic policies and actions be taken to restructure the current educational systems of agricultural extension agents/officers or nations be prepared to seed-off their agricultural advisory services to the private sector (full privatization).

The projects are M-Kilimo in Kenya which has been developed as a result of cooperation between Rockefeller Foundation and KenCall the largest BPO Company in East Africa. The second project is IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL), which is also a tri-lateral venture between Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO), Airtel, and Star Global Resources Ltd.

The following two stories tell the kind of impact these two ICT4Ag projects are having on the lives of rural farmers in the respective countries.

Sanjay Mondal, a farmer from India had his cucumber farm infested with necrotic leaf lesions. After discussing his problem with IKSL staff remotely, the disease was diagnosed and a topical spray of Sectin fungicide in the ratio of 2mg per litre of water was prescribed. The total cost of the treatment was 500 Indian rupees. The yield increased by 50% as a result, and income also went up by 50% (India – IKSL).

Nahomi, a chicken farmer in Kenya had problem with thin weak egg shells that did not allow her to sell or store the eggs in that quality. She called M-Kilimo and the livestock expert on the other end of the line suggested that she gives the chicken a feed rich in calcium. By using a calcium rich poultry feed or adding fishmeal to the feeds will increase the calcium content of her feed, the expert explained. Now, Nahomi’s chickens are laying good quality eggs and she can sell more eggs as a result of the advice and availability of M-Kilimo experts (Kenya – M-Kilimo).

A closer look at the design and operational models of IKSL and M-Kilimo predicts the future demise of most National Agricultural Extension Services (NAES) if the necessary reforms of the current educational systems delay. I will attempt to explain my argument from two perspectives – the human resources level of extension staffs and the medium of delivery of the information to the end users (which is also a factor of ICT human resource development).

Human Resource – Agricultural Extension and Education

The traditional agricultural extension service as the main platform for delivery of new innovations, technologies and information to farmers, has its strength in the extension staffs. The extension agent/officer/worker is seen as a “Change Agent”. These officers are mostly public servants trained and equipped to be, most of the time, in direct contact with their clients, the farmers. Even though the service has been engulfed with a host of problems, its human interaction capability is still strong which helps not only to deliver new innovations but also train users how to use these technologies through field demonstrations. However, my personal experience tells me of the poor quality of extension staffs currently on the field in most developing countries due to a number of issues.

A recent study I conducted with over 30 agricultural extension officers from three agricultural districts in Ghana shows that only 39% did receive some form of undergraduate degree in agriculture. The remaining 61% is made up of either certificate in agriculture or diploma in agriculture obtained in the late 70s and early 80s.

The IKSL and M-Kilimo projects have tended to improve upon this traditional human resource development in extension. For example the IKSL project acknowledged that the quality of its experts is critical for their success since these experts decide the content of the messages that are being delivered to the users. As a result, they have a minimum qualification of first degree in agriculture for their first line of staffs that are in direct contact with the users; highly experienced academics and specialists in agriculture for second line experts; and the third line of 10 specialists who regularly convene to vet and validate contents being delivered to the users.

M-Kilimo also has similar model with emphasis on trustworthy and effective system to deliver appropriate information to the end user. The project also requires the experts to have a minimum of bachelor’s degree in agriculture and at least 2 years of relevant field experience. This first line of experts is supported by Subject Matter Experts (SME) to help provide quality assurance service for content and delivery. Also the contents are obtained from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, National Weather Station, and other Research Institutes within and outside the country.

Photo Credit: IKSL

Medium of Delivery – Timely and Remote Access to Information

Even though the traditional medium for agricultural extension has improved over the years including the mass communication technologies such as radios and televisions; and recently with mobile phones, the face-to-face interaction still dominates most NAES. Extension officers are expected to visit individual farmers’ field and other farmers groups to deliver new information. This continues in the wake of high extension officer-farmer ratios (1:3000 and over), one of the primary indicators used to measure the intensity of extension coverage in a country. Ironically, most of the public extension officers who have access to the new ICT facilities through public telecenters, and other community information centers are not well trained and equipped to use them to facilitate their work.

The result is the deplorable condition of information or knowledge gap as seen in the stories of the two farmers above prior to the intervention of M-Kilimo and IKSL in Kenya and India respectively. But how many rural farmers have access to M-Kilimo and IKSL and similar projects across the developing nations?

With the IKSL and M-Kilimo projects, a critical part as seen in the stories above is ‘remote delivery of information to users’ – either through their mobile phones or SMS messages. The use of these tools facilitates timely delivery of information to users. Apart from the information communication systems that are put in place, ICT human resources development of the helpline experts is important. These features of the emerging information communication systems are helping to ensure more accurate, appropriate, timely and remotely accessible information to end users such as rural farmers whose farming success are previously determined by extension agents/officers.

Implications for National Agricultural Extension Services (NAES)

ICTs are not here to replace the rich human interactions between rural agricultural farmers and extension agents. It should be recognized that the social capital created through face-to-face interactions during extension visits are irreplaceable. ICTs are “technologies” that can enable social behaviors. But without some drastic reforms of the existing extension system, especially the educational standard of the extension staffs, I see the gradual downfall of the public agricultural extension system in most developing countries. Could this be a journey towards a kind of partnership/collaboration in the future where research and development will remain in the public domain while extension and advisory services go to the private sector? With the general acceptance of “Agribusiness Models” across the world within smallholder agricultural production, I do expect to see changes within agricultural extension and advisory services in the next few years – I do expect to see more private sector involvement in extension delivery.

November 1, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Africa’s Agribusiness Dream: How can ICTs Help?

Photo Credit: Timbuktu Chronicles

Earlier this month, the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) held its 8^th Biennial US-Africa Business Summit in Washington DC. One of the key focus areas at the summit was the agribusiness sector in Africa with sessions and workshops covering topics such as “Winning for Farmer Entrepreneurs and Investors”; “Partnering to Build an Integrated Agribusiness Sector”; “Financing a Dynamic African Agribusiness Sector”; “Removing Barriers to Create Opportunities in Regional and Global Trade”; and “Leveraging Development Assistance to Support Private Enterprise”. Stories and experiences from a number of participants who are already in the market in certain parts of Africa clearly show the increasing interest in changing Africa’s agricultural sector from an “AID Recipient” to a “BUSINESS Partner”. This of course, calls for a number of changes including the perception of agriculture by the smallholder farmers that need to be undertaken in Africa’s bid to revamp its agricultural sector.

As an agricultural information specialist, I followed with keen interest the proceedings at the said US-Africa Business Summit with special concern for agricultural development in the continent. What I saw and heard at the summit during the discussions on issues such as farmer entrepreneurship, partnership, financing, removing barriers for regional trade, and leveraging development assistance within the agricultural sector, seemed to be missing a major component – information and communication technologies (ICTs). In fact, one would have expected most of these discussions to have some element of ICTs as enabler or catalyst for the entire agricultural value chain. Especially given the Information Economy Report 2011: ICTs as an Enabler for Private Sector Development (PSD), published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that pointed out clearly that the potential of leveraging ICTs to develop the private sector is far from fully exploited.

Access to information by smallholder farmers is key for producing high quality products to meet market specifications both locally and international. ICTs are key in gathering and delivering timely and accurate agricultural information for farmers to be able to do just that. Smallholder farmers are currently using ICTs in pre-production and production activities across the world that the business sector needs to exploit and leverage upon in Africa. This is being achieved through the reformed and modernized Agricultural Advisory Service (AAS), which connects local farmers to research, market, and policy. Popular applications that should interest companies and institutions interested in Africa’s agribusiness include Grameen AppLab Community Knowledge Workers; Farmer Voice Radio Project; M-Powering Farmers, and other radio services across the developing world.

Farmers also lack access to credit for their production and there are a host of financial services using the new ICTs to facilitate the flow of financial services to smallholder farmers in the developing world. Mobile payments, mobile money, or mobile banking applications are being used to make financial transactions more accessible, faster, and safer for rural farmers. These services also link farmers to financial services and make it easier for them to save money obtained from their farm activities for other social services. These are great opportunities for entrepreneurs and the business community interested in investing in Africa’s agribusiness to explore. Examples include the M-PESA currently operating in countries like Kenya and Tanzania; Mobile Money in Ghana, Uganda, Zambia and others.

Also worth exploring is ICTs for market. When one talks about business, the first thing that comes to mind is “market” and markets affect smallholder agriculture production from inputs supply such as seed, agrochemicals, farm machinery to the outputs or products delivery to the final consumer either in the local, regional or international market. Access to market information helps farmers find out about market prices, make decisions regarding when to harvest, how to negotiate with intermediaries, etc. ICTs models such as esoko in a number of Sub-Saharan Africa countries, e-Choupal and Reuters Market Light in India, Manobi in Senegal, Infotrade in Uganda, and Zambian National Farmers Union MIS are just the tip of the iceberg.

The traditional agricultural extension service, which has been a public platform over the decades, is undergoing a lot of reforms to create an enabling environment for the private sector to heavily invest in the ICTs sector. With the new models of agricultural extension reforms such as decentralization, privatization, commercialization, pluralism, and partnerships, there should not be any barrier for the private sector in using ICTs to enhance their agribusiness in Africa. American and European businessmen and companies interested in Africa’s agriculture should not make mistake by ignoring the importance of “information” in their business – ICTs can help when recognized and incorporated into the agribusiness plan!

October 31, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTworks Profile of Esoko: Bringing the Market to Africa’s Fingertips

It was a normal day by Accra standards. I walked out of the house ready to make my way to the center of town for an interview with a homegrown tech company; Esoko. I hailed a taxi and started haggling with the driver, once we had settled on a price, we were off on the traffic-ridden roads into central Accra. An average of 3-15 street vendors would emerge at the larger intersections and red traffic lights trying to sell us anything from fruits, jewelry, books, to shoes (don’t ask me how/who would try on shoes while driving!).

Thanks to our zealous vendors, the market played out right outside the taxi windows accompanied by the sounds coming from the taxi radio speakers: Ghanaian Hiplife music and commentary on everything and anything on life in Accra. In those moments, I was immersed in the familiarity and novelty of the experience, completely unaware how my perspective on the market, media and communications in Ghana was about to change in the next few hours.

Below I detail what I learned from Sarah Bartlett (Communications Director) and Andrea Biardi (Technical Manager) who graciously sat with me and described the ins and outs of Esoko (Electronic Market, Soko = Market in Swahili), it’s role in Information and Communication Technology for Development and why it could be changing markets in Africa in unprecedented ways.

How did Esoko begin?

A decade ago Mark Davies, a Welsh-South African, fresh from the dot com boom made plans to travel across West Africa on his motorcycle. During this trip he interacted with both rural and urban communities and he kept thinking how life would be different for the people he was meeting if they had basic technology and infrastructure like stable power, printing services and internet; basically, services that people in the west took for granted. What kind of opportunities and innovation would arise from that consistent access to technology? Thus BusyInternet was born; initially an Internet Café, Internet Service Provider and a business incubator run in partnership with the World Bank.

BusyInternet provides basic technology services to the public and has grown into a successful technology hub located in Accra amongst the hustle and bustle of the Kwame Nkrumah circle. As it grew into the largest technology center in West Africa, Mark immersed himself in a new challenge. With mobile phones spreading rapidly and with so much data that needed to be collected and shared, especially in rural areas dominated by agriculture, it seemed the missing link was a technical platform that could facilitate.

The idea of using mobile phones as that platform was obvious, as in Ghana the penetration rate for mobiles was upwards of 85% in city centers and averaging at 60% across the country. And it has continued to grow since: the International Telecommunication Union reported at the end of 2010 cellular penetration reached 75.4% across Ghana.

So in 2005, Mark and a few software developers started a new R&D company focused on local solutions to local problems using new technologies. Mobile phones played a key role. They created a plan to facilitate agricultural e-commerce under an endeavor they called ‘TradeNet’. Their first product became an application that enabled the dissemination and collection of price information for market commodities like grains and vegetables using simple SMS.

This information was accessible to anyone through the Internet but what made the tools from Esoko powerful and innovative was that you did not need a computer or the Internet to interact with the wealth of pricing information housed on the web server. With the simplest mobile phone, using basic SMS text you can access a world of pricing information. With the click of your mobile’s keypad or through auto-alerts customized for your needs the information would appear on your phone on a periodic feed. You therefore have access to the most up-to-date price information for the commodities of your choice be it coffee, cassava or wheat, at the tip of your fingers.

Mistowa and TradeNet: Before Esoko

In 2006 a partnership was formed between TradeNet and Mistowa, a regional program funded by USAID that aimed to remove trade obstacles in West African markets. Through this partnership, TradeNet emerged to provide an electronic agribusiness information exchange platform that enabled peer-to-peer trading. The initiative was able to offer access to real-time market information including commodity prices, offers to buy and sell between farmers, merchants and traders as well as business contacts on more than 300 products, from over 500 markets throughout West Africa.

TradeNet’s work with Mistowa brought to light the kinds of applications that would fulfill the needs of the agribusiness sector. And with 60% of Africans earn their living from working in agriculture, a sector so underserved in terms of technology solutions, it made sense for TradeNet to continue in that area. TradeNet started hiring more software developers, and the applications started getting more interesting.

By this time, there was a growing global trend in using mobiles/ICT to exchange information in a new way, shorten supply chains and get people better money for their crops. It had become resource-consuming to obtain information through the classical methods – collecting forms, using landlines, travelling to locations etc. Many projects and businesses were trying to create electronic systems to solve supply chain problems but were not technology experts or developers themselves.

Around this time, TradeNet re-branded itself as ‘Esoko’ or Electronic Markets (Soko is the Swahilli word for market) and became one of the pioneers in this growing field of African mobile innovation joining the likes of Ushahidi, Frontline SMS and SlimTrader, companies that are creating innovative mobile solutions specifically for the African customer. Esoko focuses on tools for market and agricultural information and is expanding its efforts into other realms whereas other companies in the sector focus on m-money, m-banking, crowd-sourcing disaster/phenomena data and so on. In a continent with such growing demand for mobile technology, it is exciting to see the variety and growing number of such technology companies creating solutions for the specific needs of the African customer.

Development Work, Local Interests and Sustainability

Several development projects have used the platform and Esoko hopes they will continue to do so in the future; it’s a perfect fit for projects that have a central mandate to integrate information and communication technologies into their projects. Esoko can serve as an ‘out of the box’ market information platform while providing training and support. This means that while Esoko is not part of the core structure that is built for any specific project, organizations can bring in Esoko as an outside expert for the tools they need rather than re-inventing the technology wheel each time.

Many donor-funded development projects have similar challenges surrounding sustainability. Typically, when a project closes down, Esoko looks for a new partner in a new location. In many cases, these new partners have a different value chain or mandate and may be working with different end-users e.g. traders versus farmers.

In other scenarios somebody has to take over and continue to provide the services the community has grown accustomed to instead of a complete dismantling and scrapping of many months and years of work. In a new model, the project starts with government or donor funding and then transitions into a business; a franchise that can grow into a sustainable company. The first franchise launched in Ghana in January, 2011, will be a good model to pilot this potential solution toward sustainability.

Local businesses in Ghana are now using Esoko; utilizing some of their apps and services the same way that larger projects do. This kind of local interest also gives credence to the franchise model as there is demand in local markets for the products. Esoko has set up a shortcode across all the mobile operator services in Ghana on the phone line ‘1900’.; shortcodes in other countries have also been set up. Franchises in Nigeria and Mozambique have secured funding and are well on their way to launching. The USAID funded Market Linkage Initiative in Malawi is also working to develop a franchise as a part of its efforts.

In other countries, government entities like the Ministry of Agriculture in North Sudan and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria have tried to integrate the Esoko platform into their own methods. This will undoubtedly contribute to a sustainable presence of these services as they continue to evolve and integrate into how communities do business.

Sustainability through Best Practices and Failure

Over time, Esoko’s driving principle has evolved into actively seeking feedback from users and stakeholders to drive improvements and new product development. This ‘innovation driven’ approach allows the company and its products to stay relevant as it continues to bring real value to its customers. This ultimately leads to better sustainability and profitability.

This approach introduces a different accountability schema than is common in the development sector because as a business, Esoko is accountable to its bottom line – profit. This is very different from being accountable to the interests and discretion of donors who regulate the access and flow of steady funds. For this reason, Esoko would want to tell its stories of failure along with success so it can understand its own pitfalls and evolve more rapidly to meet customer demand.

User feedback from one partner to better the platform for their specific needs oftentimes ends up benefiting multiple partners. This is true for some of Esoko’s main offerings (the stock tracking application was initially designed and created for Esoko’s Sudanese partners) as well as small enhancements to the platform, like adding tagging and comment boxes to the price upload page. These comment boxes ended up transforming the tool into a sophisticated aspect of the price information product; introducing comments about quantitative price data took the product from a simple system to access price data to something that was stand-out from anything that was available in the market and can inform the user about markets in a multi-dimensional way. The product was simple enough to use, but also very powerful for its ability to provide qualitative price data such as explanations about price hikes and other price-related occurrences. Enhancements like this are continuous and Esoko’s partners are the driving force behind them.

Presence across the Continent: Esoko in Africa

The network is available across Africa with public data being available to all users. When Esoko representatives are out in communities doing training and in meetings, most users express their excitement about the technology; their reactions show the technology to be something they have long been waiting for and that feedback only adds to the excitement in Esoko’s main office. Once the technology is deployed, Esoko works closely to help local partners customize to the specific needs and cultural idiosyncrasies of that community.

Monitoring and Evaluation for Mobile Tech in Development

In November 2010 a survey of 62 farmers in Northern Ghana who have been receiving price alerts for one year confirmed that they have benefited from the service, with an average improvement of 40% on reported deals and revenue. 68% said they would be willing to pay around $1.30 a month, with another 29% suggesting they would consider it, and only 3% saying they would not. The users of the products have been able to make more informed decisions about negotiating better prices, selling farther away, selling as a collective and sending products to Accra on a mass scale. These findings and others about mobile usage have been building momentum for mobile tech and its role in development helping Esoko realize the importance and power of M&E data in telling the story of mobile tech in Africa to the world.

To go beyond anecdotal reports, Esoko has invited researchers to design third party evaluations for these SMS tools. The surveys would obtain quantitative data for M&E that could be very useful in showing how the tools are changing people’s lives as well as the supply chain. CIRAD, a French organization, did 600 surveys; 300 people who have been using Esoko tools for two years and 300 that have not but live in a similar community and similar conditions. Those results will be out at the end of 2011. In July of 2011 NYU’s CTED in Abu Dhabi began a study to evaluate the effectiveness of SMS-based market, taking three years to evaluate the impact of using Esoko tools on farm-gate prices and livelihoods (household assets and children in school), farmer marketing behavior (search behavior, bargaining power and market contracts) as well as the trust of other market players, especially traders. They will also gather data to find out how information spillovers and technology adoption occur among rural farmers in Africa.

Mobile Tech is a field replete with opportunities for research. There are many questions that would help understand the technology landscape, its impact and inform approaches when designing new mobile technology interventions in African markets. What is the correlation between mobile technology and development? How does the introduction of mobile technology affect communities and market systems? These questions are of interest to the larger global community as well as to local communities. Two research evaluations already done in India and Niger show that the introduction of mobile technology (voice-only) increased revenues to actors along the supply chain. These findings are cited countless times and have driven innovation as well as policies. New research about data-focused technology can lead to findings and similar implications.

Made in Africa by Africans

Esoko’s employees are mainly Ghanaian and West African, with 3 African diaspora employees and 4 US/European expats. Visiting employees typically come for 6 months to bring in knowledge about the latest technology. Currently there is a group of 60 young professionals at Esoko by building and supporting the technology. The truly exciting thing about the work Esoko is doing is that it is coming from Africa, and that it is complex technology. Esoko today has a solid user interface, a strong API to communicate with all the different mobile providers to get data from the field processed and then sent out via SMS to end users, and a complete setup of staff and developers comparable to a tech company anywhere in the world.

Impact: Business for Profit & Social Value – Disrupting the Market

According to Esoko, it is a company for profit and for social good because the two come hand in hand. The company has the intention of enabling better transparency, heightening efficiency across value chains and spreading information as well as helping organizations, businesses and individuals get to their bottom lines faster.

As far as innovative technology, the products are designed not to totally reinvent the market, but to make markets more efficient through the presence of the right tools. These tools and solutions are enablers that let people access information more quickly, easily and cheaply by putting the power for decision back in the hands of the customer. This will likely affect the way people do things, however, it is difficult to say how exactly it will change the market.

For businesses, this means tools so they can do business better; source goods locally, tighten supply chains, and make real time decisions based on quickly sourced field information. For individual farmers who have begun using Esoko, the tools have started skewing the market in ways that are easy to recognize because there is a high level of isolation typically experienced by rural producers. If a farmer has pricing information for regions more than two markets away she might forgo selling her products through several middle-men traders that would buy from her and sell at a different market. With the information at hand she could make a cost-benefit analysis to decide if it is best for her to sell her commodities far away herself or to trade with the middle-men. This decision might eliminate her need to work with middle-men who could take her product and sell it for a larger margin of profit or exploit her for their benefit. Armed with the correct pricing information, she can also negotiate a better price with the middleman. This would likely disrupt the market in unprecedented ways because none of the tools are designed to manipulate the market in any specific way. The tools are simply enabling access to information that would put the power for decision back in the hands of the customer.

Cultural Considerations

Each country may have specific user interaction needs, which translate into Esoko helping both projects and businesses deploy properly in their markets. For example Ghana has market queens for each commodity where merchants work under the main queen. Enumerators, who collect price data from markets on a regular basis for the franchise, go into each large market and approach the queens. The queens then have to be ‘courted’ and shown how they can also benefit from allowing Esoko in the market; the goal being that the queen would give approval and Esoko can become operational in that market. The enumerators continue to visit the queen and the markets enabling Esoko to culturally integrate with the market.

In one instance that illuminates the cultural elements and the benefit of ‘design for the customer’ approach, Kumasi’s market queen was putting high taxes for importing onion from Burkina Faso leading to the creation of a renegade onion trade happening on the streets to forgo the market. While the queens have the power to slightly fix the price in Ghanaian markets, Esoko is able to use features like comments on pricing data to describe the dynamics that play into the fluctuation of prices. This qualitative data helps makes sense of the quantitative price data as well as the cultural and socio-economic context of events in the market.

Esoko is a new inventive breed of African technology company. As the demand for cellular technology continues to grow rapidly, the relevance and impact of mobile innovators will also grow for the African market. With a projection of 170% growth for mobile phone usage (85% growth in smart phone use and 150% in non-smart phones) across Africa in the coming 5 years, technology innovators have the opportunity to impact the market in unprecedented ways that increase transparency, simplify supply chains and maximize benefit to the users. It is becoming increasingly hard to imagine that this kind of technology would not have a significant impact on Africa’s development.

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Livestock, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICT4Ag ShareFair Next Week!

Credit: ShareFair

Agriculture professionals will converge at the Headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) next week in Rome for the 2nd Global Agricultural Knowledge Share Fair.

As I write this, it is days away from kick-off of the 4-day event in Rome from the 26-29 September. With all the excitements that ShareFair brings, participants will be expecting to discover and share new creative and innovative learning and sharing opportunities; and equipping themselves with tools to better influence future agricultural development activities. With the advent of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs), the approach to agricultural knowledge sharing has evolved enabling people of all background to participate and contribute. ShareFairs present unique opportunity for participants to share and discuss the ways in which they have applied new methods of communication and knowledge sharing to improve the effectiveness and impact of their work.

Being the fourth ShareFair and the second of its kind with global focus, participants are expected from all regions of the world with over 160 presenters. This includes farmers, students, academicians, researchers, practitioners, journalists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and policy makers. They will be sharing their knowledge on a variety of rural development and agriculture related topics such as food security, climate change and green innovations, gender, ICTs, mobile technology and social media, new technologies and innovative agricultural and farming practices, markets and private sector, water, livestock, young people, networks and communities of practice. These presentations will take forms such as TedTalks, market place, world café, chat shows, peer assist, fish bowls, and open space.

Knowledge fairs are face-to-face events in which participants set up displays to share their undertakings. Share fairs are interactive events that employ various knowledge sharing formats such as market stalls and booths, and workshops and presentations designed to encourage discussions. They are “free-flowing,” open, flexible, and non-hierarchical. The aims of knowledge share fairs are to provide opportunities for multiple parties to broadcast their achievements, exhibit their products, and market new programs to donors, policymakers, other institutes and potential partners; facilitate face-to-face networking and promote South-North exchange on common agendas; help people benefit from each other’s experiences; and stimulate interest in future collaboration and the development of new programs. ShareFairs can be internal to an organization or open to partners and the public.

Since 2009, the ICT-KM Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has helped organize three Share Fairs: ShareFair 09, Rome; ShareFair Cali, Colombia in May 2010; and AgKnowledge Africa Share Fair, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia October 2010. This fair is being jointly organized by Bioversity International, FAO, IFAD, WFP, CGIAR, and CTA.

To follow events:

Live webcast of the keynote addresses, plenary sessions and sessions to be held in the Italian Conference room and Oval room via: http://sharefair.ifad.org/

Other social media channels include:

Conference hashtag: #sfrome

Twitter: http://twitter.com/sharefairs, http://twitter.com/ifadnews, http://twitter.com/faonews

Blog: http://blog.sharefair.net/ and http://ifad-un.blogspot.com

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/sharefair

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/sharefair09/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KnowledgeShareFair

“Daily Corriere” – the Share Fair daily newspaper – will feature blogposts, tweets and stories from the event.

September 21, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Farmer to Farmer, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Joining ICT4D to learn about using technology for agricultural development

Judy Payne, Shaun Ferris, and Grahame Dixie at the ICT4D meetup. Photo credit: KDMD.

On August 22, the ICT for Development (ICT4D) Learning Network hosted an expert panel on how ICTs, or information and communication technologies, are enabling agriculture and improving livelihoods worldwide. The event, held at the USAID Public Information Library, was co-organized by Appropriate IT and the USAID-funded FACET Project, which is being implemented by FHI 360. FACET works to enhance agricultural value chains and facilitate trade in agricultural products across Sub-Saharan Africa by providing technical assistance on the use of ICT tools to improve competitiveness and productivity.

The first presenter on the panel was Grahame Dixie, the Agribusiness Unit Team Leader for the World Bank’s Agriculture and Rural Development department. Dixie’s presentation covered a lot of the new research by IFPRI and others about how farmers and people in agriculture value chains are using ICT and what the effects are. Focusing mainly on telephones (both public land lines and private cell phones), he explained that there is good evidence that phones are raising rural income (Peru), improving commercial farmer income (Philippines), and leading to changes in cropping mixes and marketing methods (Morocco). That said, according to Dixie, the most important function that phones seem to serve is to connect players in the value chain in a way that promotes trust between them, leading to sharing of critical market intelligence.

In Grahame Dixie’s experience, a critical area where technology can play a big role is logistics. To illustrate this point, he told this story about women backyard poultry producers in Bangladesh:

“[The women] found out that the prices that they received for their chickens was less than half that of the prices in the nearest major market. They decided to contact the visiting trader and demand an explanation for paying so badly. The trader explained that he had to cover all his costs of getting to and back from their village over the few chickens they could sell him, and he could not afford to pay them more. How many chickens would he need to buy to be able to pay sensible prices? Fifty, he replied. They found that he has a cell phone and now actively seek out sufficient chickens to sell from an extended group, and call him in when they have aggregated a sensible critical mass. The prices have increased–and this in turn has incentivized the production of more chickens.”

After talking with farmers, researchers have found that the most useful market intelligence appears to be the simplest—contact information, especially of buyers, input suppliers, and transporters. They also found that the crops for which ICT integration generates the most farmer benefits are high-value, semi-perishables. Another finding was that the person in the value chain who seems to benefit most is the trucker/trader with a cell phone. Dixie wondered if there may be a way to squeeze that additional profit now accruing to the trader to either end of the value chain to push more benefits to the farmers and/or end buyers.

As his presentation focused so heavily on cell phones and SMS technology, Dixie concluded with a brief look at costs. According to him, the prices of SMS messages in many countries are high and bordering on “iniquitous,” especially when compared to the cost of actually transmitting the message. The current cost/price structures, he said, might mean a role for regulators or possibly an open source software for broadcasting SMS.

September 13, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Forestry, Irrigation and Water, Livestock, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

South Sudan: In search of a food policy?

Credit: Farm Africa

After two decades of civil war and amid a tense truce, the world recently welcomed its newest nation, The Republic of South Sudan. But like many of its Sub-Saharan neighbors did 50 years ago, South Sudan joins the rank of nationhood with a raft of intractable developmental challenges– and the high expectations of 8 million people adds importance to each.

While the slate of challenges at hand are all important for sustained socio-economic development, achieving national food security will be key to the success of the nation. It is a vital part of national security and nationhood. But achieving self-sufficiency in food production and food security will require full transformation of the embryonic nation’s agricultural sector.

Although the sector accounts for the majority of economic activity—33% of the rural population lives on agriculture, whereas 45 % and 12 % are agro-pastoralists and fishermen respectively—the industry is stuck in a pre-industrial form. This is particularly bothersome as new nations must effectively manage their citizens’ expectations–for basic services, jobs and food–to thrive.

However, the country has been unable to provide enough food for the people of South Sudan since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. More than a fifth of the population depends on food aid, and the majority of the country’s food is imported from neighbouring countries, many of which are unstable. This doesn’t bode well for the country, and begs the question: where is the national food policy that would foster sustained food production and security? What should a national food policy for South Sudan entail?

A map showing the 10 states of South Sudan in various colours

Credit: South Sudan Forum For Public Policy

As I noted earlier, at the heart of any food policy must be the repositioning of the agricultural sector. South Sudan’s agriculture is characterized by subsistence farmers and disproportionate involvement in agriculture and forestry, compared to livestock and fisheries. There ought to be a concerted campaign to educate farmers about the importance of diversifying their crops and exploring opportunities in the livestock and fisheries sector.

This will require the bridging of the information divide. In other words, South Sudanese farmers ought to have improved access to better extension services and information that will sensitize and inform them about markets. ICTs will be useful tools for enabling this and should therefore form a central part of the overall food security strategy for South Sudan. However, the full incorporation of ICTs will depend on improvements in connectivity and access– mobile subscription, broadband access and total internet users are all less than the average for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Nonetheless, traditional ICTs such as radio, which is relatively ubiquitous in South Sudan, may be used as a key first step to offer extension services that tackle issues, including irrigation cycles, pest control, access to seeds, fertilizer, transportation and prices. These services may be provided via a series of regularly aired radio programs and features that capture the voices and interests of the farmers. The use of traditional ICTs and other less advanced but newer technologies are likely to be more contextually relevant and appropriate, compared to high end ICTs. The latest technology is not always suitable. In the long-term, many opportunities to use the latest ICTs will mature. That is to say, they exist now, but the infrastructure in not in place to facilitate their effective implementation for the benefit of the majority.

Here are a few of the ICT opportunities:

The provision of access to financial services via mobile money
Improve irrigation and water management services using remote sensing technologies and GIS
Establishment of legible rural and agricultural markets through market information systems
Reduction of waste through proper storage and transportation facilities enabled by logistics technology
Text and other mobile-based extension services to create access to better agriculture and livestock inputs

Despite the immense scope for growth in South Sudan’s agriculture sector, much depends on the development of indigenous agricultural and livestock research, animal health services, infrastructure (including roads and bridges), and the stability of the regulatory and political environment.

July 8, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Extension Service, Food Security, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

SMS Productivo: Paraguayan farmers Join the Mobile Frenzy (Video)

Paraguayan farmers, like their counterparts across the developing world, are joining the legion of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid who now have access to mobiles—individually or through social networks.

They are also reaping the benefits of burgeoning agricultural markets, training opportunities and best practices that mobile-based systems help to inform them about and connect them to. The most recent, SMS Productivo, is premised on an SMS platformed, which was introduced by USAID’s Paraguay Productivo, under the management of CARANA Corporation.

This system has also automated data collection and enable agricultural planning to be more up-to-date and efficient, as farmers may now submit observations via text messages.

La Norteña, a cooperative, worked with PyP last fall to introduce SMS Productivo to their members. There are now five participating cooperatives and another 20 are ebbing to join.

Learn more about SMS Productivo and the stories of those using the technology.

June 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Agriculture Markets, Environment, Extension Service, Farmer to Farmer, Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Sustainable Agriculture

Tackling Poor Access to Farm Extension Services with ICTs

Poor access to farm extension services is still a major impediment to agricultural productivity and the improvement of rural livelihoods. But, increasingly, ICTs are playing a central role in enabling and facilitating the provision of demand-driven extension services. This marks a shift from highly inefficient public sector extension delivery models, under which farmers and rural communities had little/no opportunity to articulate their own needs.

Despite the ICT-enabled shift towards more democratic/pluralistic, demand driven and efficient extension services in some places, there is still a far way to go before game changing impacts are made.

A silver laptop with a blank screen and black buttons on bright green grass

CTA/ARDYIS Facebook Photo

Although the use of conventional technologies such as radio and television, and even new ICTs, is commendable, many “model projects” reach too few people and are unsustainable.

But the emergence of multiple players in the evolving extension services landscape—NGOs/CBOs, private sector actors, and farmers as extension service users and sharpers, among others—presents broad opportunities. The main opportunity I foresee is that of a firmer platform for articulating the need for better telecommunications policies, which will benefit extension services and the broader range of development objectives that hinge on access to ICTs.

Consequently, agricultural planners and policy-makers ought not to be particularly concerned with specifically enabling the integration of ICTs into pro-poor extension service delivery. While that is a desirable objective, it ignores the broader picture—poverty reduction.

Strategic agricultural planning recognize that ICT-based solutions for agricultural problems are not all sector specific. In much the same way that the major agricultural challenges operate on a macro-level, by cutting-across sectors, the solutions must stem from holistic observations and responses.

Indeed, any ICT intervention that improves the livelihoods of the rural poor is likely to have positive (direct and indirect) impacts on agricultural value chain management—planning, productivity, and marketing. This is true to the extent that rural economies are largely agrarian. So, any challenge to improving the general livelihood of the rural poor will adversely affect agricultural productivity— be that challenge inadequate health services, poor resource management, natural disasters, anthropogenic shocks, minimal access to education, financial services and poor infrastructure, etc.

So, strengthening extension services will require tackling more systemic problems… seeing the forest and not just the trees.

June 13, 2011/by actualize