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Who wins: Rural Agriculture or Mobile Sector?

mAgri Panel @ GSMA Mobile World Congress

Is rural agriculture a big business opportunity for the mobile industry or the mobile industry is a big business opportunity for rural agriculture?

This is the question that I continue to grapple with as I browse through presentations at the mAgri event during the just ended GSMA Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, and also analyze the “charge” by the Chairman of Microsoft at the IFAD Governing Council Meeting in Rome, earlier this year. Below is the recap of the presentations at the event that seem to highlight the importance of these services to the rural smallholder farmer followed by the perspective from Bill Gates.

GSMA Mobile World Congress

Introducing the mAgri event at the Congress, the Managing Director of GSMA Development Fund, Chris Locke reiterated the importance of mobile technologies in improving food security by reaching rural farming communities that are otherwise, not served by the traditional agricultural extension services. He stated that with the continuous support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID, the goal is to expand the mAgri program to six more countries. “What we are really looking for is a delta in a data – a delta that shows that there is a significant mobile penetration among the audience we are trying to reach but the lack of access to existing services that are trying to give them valuable information to help improve economically and socially, said Locke.”

Subrahmanyam Srinivasan, the CEO of IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd (IKSL) then shared their experience in India through push and pull model of information delivery to their clients. Through an enviable partnership between IFFCO, Bharti Airtel, and Star Global Associate, m-powering utilizes mobile technology to provide agricultural information to over 3million revenue earning farmers in India and another 1million listening farmers.

The Global Product Leader of Nokia Life Tools (NLT), Bhanu Potta also emphasized the importance that Nokia place on educating rural farmers about production of new crop and animal varieties. According to him, these farmers are now switching from the traditional food crops to commercial and cash crop commodities and therefore need actionable, timely, locally relevant information in their local languages, and from trusted sources. The Nokia Life Tools provide farmers with market price information, weather updates, and news and tips on crops within their geographic location. A new feature that was released during the congress will enable interactions among the users and with experts through voice. NLT currently serves over 50million users in the area of health, education, agriculture etc. in India, China, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Mark Davies, CEO of Esoko then explained how access to agricultural information through mobile phone has improved revenue generation of smallholder farmers in Ghana. According to him, through the mobile services of esoko, farmers are able to better negotiate price with traders, avoid traders and go directly to the regional markets, delay selling their products until they can obtain the best price, and socially help address trust issues in marriages when women return from the market with their sales. With the challenge of scaling their services, esoko now serves between 10-20 thousand farmers in Ghana and also franchising their tools to other countries to deliver their own contents.

Finally, Marc Ricau, Vice-President Country and Partnerships of Orange AMEA outlined how the company is shifting focus from urban customers to rural customers in 25 countries (18 in Africa), since about 60-70% of the population in these countries live in rural areas and are farmers. According to him, they are developing and expanding network coverage in these countries and partnering with content developers to serve these rural farmers with mobile services and solutions for their agricultural needs. “Mobile services can bring development in these areas by increasing productivity of the farmers, said Ricau.”

IFAD Governing Council Meeting

Bill Gates at IFAD GC Meeting

From a different perspective, the Microsoft chairman recently charged three UN Organizations – the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to do better to serve farmers. “Right now, a digital revolution is changing the way farming is done, but poor small farmers aren’t benefiting from it” said Bill Gates. The billionaire philanthropist also criticized countries, food agencies, and donors that aren’t working together in a focused and coordinated way to provide the help small farmers need, when they need it.

So my question remains as to whether the digital revolution is an opportunity for the mobile industry or an opportunity for the smallholder farmer? In other words, who is benefiting from the this huge opportunity – the smallholder farmer or the mobile industry? Is the smallholder farmer really benefiting from all these interesting stories by IKSL, NLT, esoko, Orange and hundreds of ICT and mobile solutions being designed for agriculture? If yes, how and if no, why?

March 21, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Esoko: Partnership with MNOs for Ag. Mobile Service is a Challenge!

Photo Credit: Esoko

A Partner Director at Esoko, Laura Drewett says one of the challenges being faced by Esoko as a technology company in developing and deploying mobile services to rural communities, is partnering with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Drewett was speaking at the January 06 2012 GBI TechTalk this time co-hosted by the USAID’s Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) project.

She argued that negotiations with MNOs for partnership to provide services to rural communities could take years. Laura who manages Esoko’s international operations, partner deployments, and franchises mentioned other challenges as low literacy among users, and Ghana’s “theory-based” educational system which calls for further investment in training local developers from the country’s higher education institutions.

Background of Esoko

Giving the background to the company, the partner director stated that Esoko started out as Tradenet with merely 2 staff members in a tiny room by collecting price information on mobiles and disseminating but currently occupies 4 levels in one of the expensive buildings in Accra with over 65 software developers who are mostly Ghanaian. The company is now in 16 countries (will be 20 this year), deployed under a franchise arrangement in all but Ghana.

Photo Credit: Esoko

Why Esoko?

Laura says farmers lack prices, traders need transport and new contacts, projects and governments need a better way to reach out to people, businesses lack real-time updates on their stock and the value of their harvests. Esoko is a communication platform using web and SMS that helps link all of these actors and allows them to exchange information affordably and quickly. Esoko provides a range of applications that both push updates out to the field, and, more importantly, pull data in from the field. Being better informed helps everyone along the value chain and can play a vital role to improve how markets operate. The market information system by Esoko is country driven.

Services

As a mobile service managed through the web with no required special hardware or software for the client, Esoko provides SMS messaging, SMS price alerts, SMS bids and offers, SMS polls, SME websites, Maps, Upload via SMS/web and inventory reporting. The company offers training supports for the use of technologies, and business model and franchising.

Esoko has a subscription model covering four key target groups. Bronze subscription for individual farmers, researchers and traders; silver for small businesses and exporters; gold for farmer groups, medium size businesses and small NGOs; and platinum for large businesses, NGO, governments, etc. and provides business strategy and financial models that will help you design your business and reach profitability.

These subscriptions are mostly paid for by the partners on behalf of their users (farmers) even though some individual farmers and traders are also paying for the services.

Does it Work?

Photo Credit: Esoko

Sharing some of the success stories of the users of the platform, Drewett stated that even though they don’t have “statistical” evidence based results the impact of their service on farmers, studies carried by the company and another independent study show that farmers are benefiting from the use of the service. One social impact of the service reported by a farmer in Ghana is that as a result of the Esoko service, there is peace in their marriage. This is because the husband is able to monitor the price at the market and estimate the revenue of their produce even before the wife goes to the market.

Questions and concerns from the participants included the extension of their MIS service to provision of production information for farmers; the extent to which such detailed information can be transmitted through text; issues of privacy of data for farmers; the company’s view on the role of commodity exchange platforms such Ethiopian Commodity Exchange for MIS, among others.

The next GBI TECHTalk will be Jan 25 at noon, and will focus on working with MNOs. Visit GBITechTalks.eventbrite.com to find out more and register!

January 12, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Business Enabling Environment, Economic Growth & Trade, Enterprise Development, MicroEnterprise Development, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Can Mobiles Increase Farmers’ Profits? Evidence from Malawi

USAID’s Mission in Malawi has evidence that mobile phones can and do have an impact on local farmers’ profits, according to Vince Langdon-Morris, an agricultural specialist with the Agency. Langdon-Morris explained that USAID Malawi’s is helping small-medium agricultural enterprises monitor and sell their products using an innovative mobile phone platform, similar to Esoko from Ghana.

In very simple terms, the commodity chain of agricultural production in Malawi is being modified in the following way by this project:

Farmers harvest grains and communicate with buyers via phone.
Small-medium business owners purchase farmers’ grains and monitor their product inventory and sales at their aggregation centers by phone.
The owners sell the grains in bulk to larger agri-businesses, checking market prices on their phones to ensure a quality sales price.

The phone helps the farmer to know where he should sell his grains at the best price and when the owner is willing to buy. The phone helps the small-medium enterprise owner because he can monitor the collections at the 20-30 aggregation centers that he usually operates, allowing him to sell in bulk at the right times and limiting his travel costs, among other benefits.

Mobile phones are tools to promote economic growth and other forms of development. Certainly, mobile phones are not the cure to all problems, but they can facilitate programs that do directly reduce poverty, such as this agricultural project by USAID Malawi. Other missions would do well to mimic their efforts and incorporate technology into their current projects in order to enhance effectiveness.

Given the success of M-PESA and other revolutionary applications like MXit and Ushahidi, mobiles4development (hastag #m4d on twitter) is gaining political clout within many development spheres, seemingly replacing microfinance as the solution to end poverty. Champions of m4d do not fail to mention World Bank studies that describe the connections between mobile phone usage and economic growth, improved healthcare, better agriculture, etc.

Unfortunately, such claims are overstated, as mobile phones cannot solve poverty. They can, however, be tools for improving development projects, as seen in Malawi. The test for USAID missions, then, will be to utilize mobiles phones as tools for development projects, but maintain a critical eye about their effectiveness.

June 29, 2011/by actualize

Tag Archive for: Esoko

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