- mAgri
The potential of mobile phones in transforming agriculture for smallholder farmers: Results from the Agri-Fin Mobile product development and baseline surveys
The following is a guest post by Richard Nyamanhindi, the Agri-Fin Mobile Program Coordinator at Mercy Corps. In late 2012, Mercy Corps’ Agri-Fin Mobile Program commissioned consultants to carry out baseline surveys in order to analyse the potential of ...
- mAgri
On Board – the Mobile Agriculture Train
I am Michael Nkonu and I’ve just joined GSMA in December 2012 as the Agriculture Programme Specialist for the mAgri Programme. I will be supporting agricultural content development for the mFarmer Initiative projects implemented across several countries. It ...
- mAgri
Lessons from our first usability test of an mFarmer service in Tanzania
In December last year, members of the GSMA mAgri team joined Tigo Tanzania to conduct the first round of usability testing of the newly-developed mFarmer service- Tigo Kilimo. We travelled to the Morogoro region in Mvomero district which is located about 340Km...
- mAgri
Nokia Life Webinar: What does it take to roll out a mobile agriculture information service across 4 countries?
Nokia Life is one of the only mobile information services to reach significant scale across 4 countries and 2 continents. By the end of Dec 2012 over 90 million people had experienced and benefited from Nokia Life services designed specifically for emerging ma...
- mAgri
Mobile and agriculture in 2012
It’s been an exciting and busy year for the GSMA mAgri team. As 2012 comes to an end, I’d like to reflect on the progress being made to harness the growth of mobile technology to support farmers across the world. We wish you all a prosperous, happy an...
- mAgri
The role of financial services within mobile agriculture: who is going to meet smallholders’ demand for finance?
Let aside for a moment the opportunity for the mobile operators and service providers within Agri VAS, we need to be frank about the limitations of information services. Will a mobile information service alone ever create impact noticeable at the level of inte...
- mAgri
A success story from Ethiopia: mobile phones bring live market information to 60,000 farmers a day
For a country with 80 million people, 85% of whom are employed in agriculture, Ethiopia is ahead of the game when it comes to making market information instantly available to the country’s smallholder farmers. The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), set up in...
- mAgri
Highlights from the mAgri Webinar on Mobile Market Information Systems
Last month, the mAgri team collaborated with USAID and FHI 360 to produce a webinar on Mobile Market Information Systems. The PDF slides and video recording of the webinar are available here. The following are a few highlights from our panel of experts ...
- mAgri
Keeping users at the heart of the design for mobile Value Added Services
This is the first post in a multi-part series on user testing for mobile Value Added Services. When I first heard about designing mobile Value Added Services (VAS) through user testing, I was not very convinced that we were headed in the right direction. Ho...
- mAgri
Mobile Agriculture site launched on Mobile and Development Intelligence Portal
We’re delighted to announce that mAgri metrics, products and services are now live on the Mobile and Development Intelligence (MDI) portal. Mobile and Development Intelligence (MDI) is a fantastic open access portal which offers data and analysis that sta...
- mAgri
Recognising Rural Women: guidelines on using mobile to improve women farmers’ access to information
On the International Day of Rural Women we are pleased to share a focus note on Designing & Marketing Mobile Information & Advisory Services for Women Smallholders. Under the mFarmer Initiative, one of our key areas is working with mobile service pr...
- mAgri
WeFarm: Using Mobile to Crowdsource Farmers’ Knowledge Across Continents
The post is written by Kenny Ewan, the Programme Manager at Cafédirect Producers' Foundation. WeFarm is a worldwide peer-to-peer knowledge sharing network from the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation (CPF). It has been designed by and for smallholder...
- mAgri
Tigo and TechnoServe pilot Tigo Kilimo service, first lessons learned
As Tigo Tanzania and TechnoServe are getting ready to launch their full Tigo Kilimo service in Tanzania, the first lessons from the pilot project have been learned. Piloting of the service took place in the Morogoro region of Tanzania with more than 150 farmer...
- mAgri
Providing weather forecasts to smallholder farmers by mobile phone: how do we tackle the accuracy issue?
Our recent mFarmer projects have reconfirmed the finding that weather forecasts are in high demand from smallholder farmers. However, this type of information is also one of the most challenging to provide. The accuracy of weather forecasts is an area of si...
- mAgri
SokoShambani: A Market-Driven Approach to Developing Agri VAS
At a recent mobile agriculture networking event in Nairobi, I met Stephen Kimiri of SokoShambani (Swahili for Farmer’s Market), a mobile service supporting small-scale potato farmers in Kenya with market prices and buyer/seller matchmaking. What I found mo...
- mAgri
GSMA mAgri publishes new infographic: Agricultural productivity gap & the opportunity for mobile
Over the past month we’ve been gathering data to create this infographic that we hope, conveys why we’re so excited about mobile agriculture, or mAgriculture. More specifically, we want to tell the story about the opportunity for mobile phones to bridge th...
- mAgri
Meet the newest member of the mAgri Programme
Hi everyone, I’m Ashraf, the newest team member in the GSMA mAgri programme. I joined the GSMA very recently as a Technical Programme Consultant for the mFarmer initiative from Bangladesh, and I’ll be providing feasibility assessments and technical consu...
- mAgri
Mobile services to increase the outreach of conservation agriculture practices in Mexico: MasAgro Movil project by CIMMYT
“What would you do if your house was ruthlessly destroyed every 6 months? I bet you would leave the place and search for a better place to reside. Same logic guides worms, which are essential for the quality of the soil,” Bram Govaerts explains, as he digs...
- mAgri
Video interview with IKSL: How to provide the right information at the right time for Agri VAS
Last month, my colleague Amol Jadhav and I visited the IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) State operations team in Karnataka, India. I’ve worked with the IKSL project for a number of years and I’m always inspired to see the hard work of the IKSL agricultur...
- mAgri
A call towards a “Better Life”: Marketing Agri Value Added Services to Rural Communities in India
On a recent trip to India, our Programme Director Fiona Smith and I had the opportunity to visit a few Agri Value Added Services (VAS) field deployments. One visit that stood out was to the Shekhpura Village in Rajasthan (Northern India) to see Handygo’s...
- mAgri
How (not why) to design and market mobile information and advisory services for women smallholder farmers
There is no question around why it’s important to reach women farmers with agricultural services, as the facts are often quoted: Half of all farmers in the developing world are women and in some countries such as Rwanda, women account for as much as 70% ...
- mAgri
Leveraging Information and Communication Technology for the Base of the Pyramid: Innovative business models in agriculture services
The following is a guest blog by Lucie Klarsfeld from Hystra. In 2011, Hystra, a consulting firm specializing in hybrid (social and business) strategies, and its non-profit partner Ashoka, reviewed more than 280 initiatives globally that used Information an...
- mAgri
Innovations in Agriculture at the 2012 G8 Summit: Showcasing the mFarmer Initiative
I was delighted to present the mFarmer Initiative at the Chicago Council on Affair’s Third Annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security on the eve of the 2012 G8 Summit. President Obama, G8 and African leaders, business and agriculture experts me...
- mAgri
The Market Opportunity for Mobile Agriculture: Highlights from Mobile World Congress 2012
This post originally appeared on the Business Fights Poverty Blog. Mobile Agriculture was on the agenda for the first time at Mobile World Congress 2012, the world’s largest event for the mobile industry where over 67,000 visitors attended from 205 countr...
- mAgri
Bridging the gender gap in agriculture: Can Agricultural VAS address the issue?
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published its annual report on The State of Food and Agriculture in 2011, with a focus on Closing the Gender Gap for Development. It analyses the important role women farmers play in poverty r...
- mAgri
The Agri VAS Business Case: Who Will Pay?
One of the trickiest elements we see with building a new business, particularly socially focused businesses, is structuring a financially sustainable and profitable business model. Developing an Agri VAS (Agricultural Value Added Service) is no different. ...
- mAgri
The mFarmer Initiative- supporting the launch of mobile information services for farmers
The mFarmer initiative was launched in June 2011 in recognition of the huge potential for the mobile and agriculture industry to work together to provide in demand and valued services for smallholder farmers through the mobile channel. One of the core probl...
- mAgri
The GSMA mAgri Programme- who we are and what we’ll be blogging about
Welcome to the brand new mAgri Programme blog. We’ll be using this space to share our insights and our questions about the use of mobile phones in agriculture. It’s a relatively new area but an exciting one as rural communities typically involved in agricu...
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