ACCRA – Thousands of small farmers in Africa will be able to negotiate better prices for their crops thanks to real-time market data sent to their mobile phones, the Ghanaian company behind the scheme said.
The mobile phone application, which sends farmers market data via SMS messages, can be used to monitor prices, crop demand, weather and the location of seeds and fertilizers, software company Esoko said.
The International Finance Corporation and Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) have invested US$2,5 million in the company, which they think will help revolutionise the terms of trade for small-scale agriculture on the continent.
‘Over two-thirds of Africans are engaged in small-holder agriculture so the potential social impact upside is enormous,’ Benjamin Matranga of the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) said by telephone from Nairobi.
Farmers send an SMS message with a specific commodity code and receive a list of wholesale and retail prices at markets across the country. Such systems have been used in East African countries such as Kenya but are less prevalent in West Africa.
The platform is interactive so farmers can also publish information, helping companies or governments conduct surveys of rural populations who were hitherto hard to reach. In northern Ghana, where the system is being piloted, farmers use the data to compare prices around the country and map price changes over time.
‘The farmers seem to be getting between 20-40 per cent revenue improvements,’ Esoko founder Mark Davies told Reuters.
The service, which costs US$1 per month, has allowed some farmers to even double their profits by avoiding traders and sending their produce directly to cities like Kumasi or the capital Accra, he said. – Nampa-Reuters
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