“Meeting the Challenges of Value Chain Development: A Learning Event,” was the subject for discussion at the just ended 2-day conference organized by USAID at the Night Conference Center, Newseum, Washington DC. The learning event was hosted by the USAID Microenterprise Development office with funding from the Accelerated Microenterprise Advancement Project (AMAP), implemented by ACDI/VOCA…
Category: Agriculture
Mobile Agriculture to feature at the Mobile World Congress 2012
A panel on “Mobile Agriculture: The Market Opportunity” will be one of the highlights at the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2012 scheduled for Barcelona, Spain at the end of this month. This intensive panel session will cover issues on the immediate opportunities for the mobile industry to launch commercially driven services for farmers, and the…
Sustainability Lessons from HSS: Implications for FS & ICTs Projects
“I suspect that the world you’re dealing with is even more complex than the world we’re dealing with in health…health is dealt with by doctors, a very simple minded people, but your field is probably more complex.” Those are the words of Eric Sarriot, Technical Director, CEDARS at ICF International. Eric was speaking on the topic…
The Myth of E-Voucher Schemes for Enhanced Fertilizer Use
The future use of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as e-vouchers in delivering subsidized fertilizer (or other inputs) to farmers in the current information age is blurred due to the very high cost involved in setting up such systems and the anticipated power/energy problems. This was one of the revelations made by experts…
The World Bank Launches e-Sourcebook on Ag.
The official launch of the World Bank’s e-Sourcebook, “ICT in Agriculture: Connecting Smallholders to Knowledge, Networks and Institutions” took place at the premises of the Bank on Wednesday January 18 2012, with a number of activities. Among these activities was a panel discussion on the key modules in the book moderated by Mark E. Cackler,…
Esoko: Partnership with MNOs for Ag. Mobile Service is a Challenge!
(Originally Posted on GBI Portal by Benjamin K Addom) 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…
Fasal: A Free SMS Service to Boost Farmers’ Income
Over 500 000 rural farmers in India can now access free daily market information and weather services on their cell phones with the help of Intuit Fasal platform, an SMS based mobile service. Fasal begun as an experiment after it was recognized that rural farmers in Karnataka, India lack price information in relevant multiple markets; have…
Reflections on mAg. Services: Mistakes and Pitfalls of MNOs/NGOs
NB: This is my personal analysis of contributions to question six from the forum. This post is the final in series of six, analyzing each of the six forum questions that were discussed. Question 6: What are some of the common mistakes or pitfalls mobile operators or NGOs run into when developing these services? Below…
Reflections on mAg. Services: Content Sourcing, Quality Assurance & Dissemination
NB: This is my personal analysis of contributions to question five from the forum. This post is the fifth in series of six, analyzing each of the six forum questions that were discussed. With my interest in this area, I began the discussion with a post which pointed out the need to source content from…
Reflections on mAg. Services: Financial Sustainability
NB: This is my personal analysis of contributions to question four from the forum. This post is the fourth in series of six, analyzing each of the six forum questions that were discussed. The fourth question for the forum was about financial sustainability. With a thorough discussion on partnership models in question 1, the focus…
Digitalisation and Smallholder Agriculture 