Partnership for African Agricultural Market Information Systems

19 - 22 April 2010. FARA/Accra. ESOKO organised its second PARTNER CONFERENCE. The group of some 20 participants represented national and local MIS models, public sector and private sector models, country-wide, regional wide and value-chain focused models. 

New Partners described their projects briefly and shared short- and long-term objectives. Partners who were present during the last conference (Accra 9 - 13 March 2009) briefly discuss their projects with emphasis on achievements & challenges after the 2009 session. Each project told at what point they were in their rollout plans with details about proven solutions.The Esoko Ghana Presentation, during the second day, focused on how to make market information system (MIS) into a profitable business or sell ESOKO subscriptions to cover the cost of your MIS operations. 

The ESOKO Ghana team presented several facets of the business, including the enumeration, business development. client support and marketing. The participants discussed the revenue potential and how the franchise or MIS project can drive revenues to keep the MIS successful and growing. 

There was one session with a lively and interactive presentation of stories from Esoko users in the field. 

Two farmers (You Tube video interview forthcoming) from the SEND Foundation presented their experiences with Esoko from Northern Ghana, including project costs; Esoko set up and usage; training of users and challenges around illiteracy, and network sustainability. 

They explained how were able to increase revenues up to 40%, create more efficient use of market channels and improve adoption rates of new technologies in a rural environment.

Related blog posts: 

• 30/03/2010  
  Workshop on Agricultural Market Information
• 12/03/2009 
  Launch of new mobile phone market information system ...
• 27/07/2009 
  why m&e is crucial for mobile phone use in agriculture
• 12/03/2009 
  Monitoring the use of mobile phone for market prizes in Ghana
• 11/03/2009 
  How market information systems help privatise the Agri input ...
• 09/03/2009 
  MARKET INFORMATION SYSTEMS workshop at FARA

The marketing of agricultural products through ICT

23, 24, 25 November 2009. Ouagadougou. The forum ‘The marketing of agricultural products through ICT’ aimed to increase the impact of the lessons learned and build the national network for ICT and development in Burkina Faso. The event was organised by Burkina NTIC, in particular its ICT cluster Agriculture.The typical method of collecting market price information in Burkina Faso.

The organisers collected best practice examples of marketing agricultural products through ICT, to understand where the opportunities are and to draw lessons for the future. Best practices will be gathered from Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries.

Hereunder is a training videos by TV Koodo, introducing the agricultural market information systems launched by Burkina NTIC and IICD.

TV Koodo chooses puppet tv presenters as carriers of the instructional message. This choice demonstrates the significance of efforts to make e-/m- learning technologies more accessible and more responsive to the needs and educational backgrounds of African users. The coupling of learning technologies with ICT services geared towards enabling market transactions, could hold the key to the adoption, the popularity and the value derived from market services.

Related FARA blog post:
23 Oct 2009 Announcement: Marketing of agricultural products through ICT
MMD4D Mobile Market Design for Development

Using the mobile to create social groups around a value chain

Click to Play

16th of July 2009. Interview with Mark Davies, Esoko and Founder of Busyinternet, Accra, Ghana after the panel Discussion on: Public private partnership in m-agriculture at the end of the second day of the IAALD Africa Chapter Conference.

Mark explains how social groups can be created around a value chain or a specific commodity - similar as social groups on Facebook.

He recognizes that this has yet not be tried out but he expects this will be the future as long a this can be done in a very cheap way. This can initially been driven by companies like Unilever of Nestle because they have their networks and need to be able to communicate more quickly and more effectively with the small distributers. This is presently very expensive. Using the mobile for data exchange is an obvious solution.

"The value change we think of is probably more around successful commercial businesses to start with"

Monitoring the use of mobile phone for market prizes in Ghana

 

Mohammed Mounouni of SAND/Ghana reflects on the cost of monitoring and evaluation to measure the impact of the use of mobile phone for market information. He hopes new developments in the Esoko platform will make farmer's feedback easier and suggests they should not pay credit time when they do so. But field visits to the farmers remain essential to see their use of market information.

He also answers the question if there is a lot of competition in Ghana among MIS systems and if there are complains on the bulk messages from the mobile phone providers.

May 2009 launch of new mobile phone market information system creates high expectation

A preview of the new Esoko platform was presented at the Esoko Partners Workshop on 12/03/09

Interview with software developer DAVID MCCANN of BUSYLAB - GHANA about the new Esoko platform. The platform includes an SMS gateway with a centralised computing power in combination with an extendable mobile application.

 

He explains (a) why mobile phone is so important for agriculture in Africa, (b) what this new platform is about, how the application can be adapted to needs: agricultural surveys, wheater applications, market information etc. (c) how complicate the software is behind it (d) and how farmers can use it.

A reaction from one of the participants. Interview with Deroua Ali Cherif of Technoserve Mozambique at the Esoko Partners Workshop of 9 - 13/04 about the new Esoko platform for Market Information Prizes collection and dissemination using mobile phone.

Deroua expresses his amazement on what this new platform can bring to rural communities and why it is also interesting to make business: "Africa is still largely under estimated as consumer"

How market information systems help privatise the Agri input sector in Nigeria

Interview with Emmanuel Ozoemena of IFDC Nigeria during the Esoko partners workshop organised at the FARA secretariat in Accra 9 - 13 March 2009.

The government of Nigeria has embarked on a programme of privatisation of the Agri inputs. Emmanuel explains how 1400 agro-dealers are targetted by the IFDC supported project: the Nigerian Agro dealer support project. Exchange of information through the mobile phone market information system plays a vital role in the exchange of information on the prize of agri inputs.

Reference: New Project Aims to Bring Quality Seeds to Nigerian Farmers 09/10/08

MARKET INFORMATION SYSTEMS workshop at FARA

TradeNet/Esoko is holding this week with support of FARA/NSF2 at the FARA Secretariat a partner conference from March 9 – 13. The purpose of the conference is to explore solutions to partners’ challenges with deployment of MARKET INFORMATION SYSTEMS, and conduct an in depth analysis of best practices.

Related FARA blog post: Announcement: Partner conference on Market information

Related: special bulletin of CTA: ICT Update – (February 2009 issue) on MARKET INFORMATION SYSTEMS http://ictupdate.cta.int/

Participants:
Elamien Hassan Elamien Mohamed, FAO, Sudan
Mohamed Saad Ali Bayoumi, FAO, Sudan

Miranda Pabby, Esoko, Ghana

Andrea Biardi, Busylab, Ghana
William Agyemang, Esoko, Networks Ghana
Andrew Kpeleku, Esoko, Ghana
Philip Asihene, Esoko, Ghana

Sefa-Bonsu Attakora, Esoko, Ghana
Yacouba Ballo, AMASSA, Mali
Ibrahim Ouettara, APROSSA, Burkina Faso
Diomande Daouda, ANOPACI, Cote D'Ivoire

Olivier Kabre, ATP, Ghana

Deroua Ali Cherif, Technoserve, Mozambique
Patrice Annequin, IFDC, Ghana

Mohammed Moumouni, SEND, Ghana
John Ross, Mercy Corps, Afghanistan

Rija Ravelomanana, Chemonics, Madagascar
Jim Forster, Network the World, USA

Sarah Bartlett, Esoko, Ghana

Laura Drewett, Esoko, Ghana

Brian Herbert, Busylab

Mark Davies, Esoko, Ghana

Announcement: Partner conference on Market information systems

9 till 13 th of March 2009. FARA Accra Ghana.

Timely and accurate market information distributed systematically along agricultural supply chains is desperately lacking in many developing countries. It serves as the foundation for understanding market horizons, better decision-making, more secure transactions and better market linkages; all of these factors have been shown to increase market engagement and revenues for vulnerable low-income farmers.

Despite widespread acknowledgement that these information flows are essential to assist small producers, few approaches have been sustainable and effective. Market information systems have been difficult to maintain and develop, expensive to deploy in the field, rarely accurate, and often not targeted or accessible to the intended customer. Mobile networks have been leveraged for publishing, but rarely for low cost data sourcing or profiling. And no one has designed a revenue model that ensures widespread deployment.

To that end, TradeNet/Esoko will hold with support of FARA a partner conference in Accra, Ghana from March 9 – 13 (the last two days of the conference will be reserved for optional training workshops). The purpose of the conference will be to foster dialog and learning between partners, explore solutions to partners’ challenges with deployment, and conduct an in depth analysis of best practices. The conference will enable participants to share their experiences, ideas, issues, skills, models, etc. and gain a better sense of how to implement TradeNet/Esoko’s MIS successfully in their countries.

Background:

• This activity is a follow-up to FARA's Inventory on Innovative Farmer Advisory Services.
• Through deployment in numerous countries, Tradenet/Esoko recognizes that success constitutes 5% technology and 95% training and execution. They are particularly interested in building capacity and partnerships on projects and developing an established set of best practices that can be disseminated among numerous participating countries. Currently, Esoko software is being deployed in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo.

Global Developments Commons boosts regional agricultural trade in West Africa

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USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore presents in this video 3 initiatives from the Global Development Commons program. This program wants to connect the full spectrum of development practioners: from farmers to traders through information and infrastructure and as such help optimize regional agricultural trade. The first one is about mapping agricultural surplus areas, the second is about the dissemination of New Rice for Africa (NERICA) and the third example Tradenet's market information prices system.

Baba Dioum of the Conference of West and Central Africa Ministers of Agriculture comments how the projects of the Global Development Commons contribute to Pillar 2 of CAADP. The objectives of Pillar 2 are to:

• Accelerate growth in the agricultural sector by raising the capacities of private entrepreneurs (including commercial and small-holder farmers) to meet the increasingly complex quality and logistic requirements of markets, focusing on selected agricultural commodities that offer the potential to raise rural (on- and off-farm) incomes.
• Create the required regulatory and policy framework that would facilitate the emergence of regional economic spaces that would spur the expansion of regional trade and cross-country investments.

Dr. Monty Jones of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa explains how rice import was dramatically reduced by those countries who produce NERICA.

Mark Davies of Tradenet/Esoko explains how mobile phone is THE rural computing system which not only allows to communicate market information prices but also to share information on health, credit and government communications.

The power of digital story telling

The act of telling a story is a deceptively simple and familiar process, a way to evoke powerful emotions and insights. By contrast, working with stories in organisational settings – to aid reflection, build communities, transfer practical learning or capitalize experiences – is more complicated.

A Guide STORY GUIDE Building Bridges Using Narrative Techniques was designed by the Thematic Service Knowledge and Research of the Swiss Development Co-operation (SDC) to be both thought provoking and of some practical use to SDC and its collaborators and partners. The materials contained in the guide should help develop competence and confidence as tellers or facilitators of telling and may also support the development of more complex methodologies and programmes involving knowledge sharing, change and communication. In it you will find:

• Tips, templates and tools to help you find,
  share and capitalize experience.
• Reflections on the practical and the emotional
  aspects of story telling.
• Consideration of the challenges and risks in
  institutionalising these approaches.
• Illustrations from SDC’s experience so far of
  putting stories to work.

Story Guide: Building bridges using narrative techniques

Download (PDF, 827 KB) : [de] [en] [fr] [es]

A workshop in Kampala 14/01-17/01/2008 organised by Bellanet Africa under its Harambee program gave the opportunity to the participants to be trained in digital story telling during a 1 day training (!) using Movie maker. Hereunder one of the movies produced by Reseau Sida Afrique on the use of mobile telephone. The story is in French but undertitled in English.

Related:

Insights into Participatory Video: A handbook for the field
Indigenous knowledge and local initiatives are usually documented and disseminated by outsiders, who make their own interpretations in the process. Participatory Video (PV) provides an opportunity for rural people to document their own knowledge and experiences and to express their wants and hopes from their own perspectives.
www.insightshare.org

FADECO Community Radio

Joseph Sekiku heads the Family Alliance for Development and Co-operation (FADECO), a nonprofit organization in Tanzania that shows farmers how to raise their standard of living through environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. His intense appetite for communications has had astonishing results. He has created a mini information empire founded on the principle that knowledge is power. Joseph’s latest enterprise, FADECO FM, is Karagwe’s first radio station. Joseph estimates that the information he generates reaches nearly one-quarter of the district’s 450,000 residents.

Joseph Sekiku in his studio holding

a part of his FADECO radio.

At breakfast time farmers can tune into Kilimo Chetu (Our Agriculture) to listen to answers to their agricultural problems. Midmorning there is Habari za Masoko (Market News) to find out the prices their crops are currently fetching on the market. Tanzania does not publish commodity prices so Joseph downloads the information from the Kampala Agricultural Commodity Exchange. And there is no problem in converting to Tanzanian shillings; he gets
the daily exchange rate off the internet too.

Dar es Salaam is a 1500-kilometre trip over bad roads so Joseph encourages farmers to market their produce across the border in Uganda. He fi nds outlets by surfi ng the web. His latest pet project is the promotion of soya beans. Programmes explain how to farm and process soya and detail its wide range of uses. He envisages soya as a profi table export crop. China, he says, is ready to buy 600 tonnes and upwards. He has already located a willing buyer there from a
Chinese website. FADECO FM would not have been possible without RAIN’s intervention.

Reference
Taking stock of RAIN: 2003–2007, p.9-13: RAIN - Regional Agricultural Information Network
FADECO Community Radio FRC 100.8 FM now on air
Related
Brochure for Postgraduate Programme in Agricultural Information and Communication Management(AICM)

Infos sur les prix agricoles par SMS

Daniel Annerose et Emile Sène décrivent un système d’information sur les marchés agricoles « Xam Marsé » et expliquent comment un simple téléphone portable a changé la vie d’un agriculteur sénégalais.

« Xam Marsé », ou « Connaître et maîtriser le marché », est le nom wolof du système d’information sur les marchés agricoles développé et géré depuis 2001 par Manobi, en collaboration avec la société Sonatel. Grâce à Xam Marsé, les agriculteurs, les commerçants, les hôteliers ou les ménagères peuvent recevoir sur leur téléphone portable par messages SMS ou sur Internet, des informations en temps réel sur les prix et les niveaux de disponibilité des fruits, des légumes, des viandes et des volailles, sur les marchés du Sénégal.

En savoir plus...

Building an economic market in Ethiopia: Eleni Gabre-Madhin on TED.com

Economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin outlines her ambitious vision to found the first commodities market in Ethiopia. Her plan would create wealth, minimize risk for farmers and turn the world's largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket. "There is no place in the world and no time in history that small farmers have had to bear the burden of risk that African farmers bear today," she says. "But I'm not here to lament or wring my hands. I'm here to tell you that change is in the air." (Recorded June 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania. Duration: 20:46.)