Innovative ICT use in Agriculture – Examples in Ghana

Eddie Addo-DankwaGhana

Presentation Outline

• Introduction• The Transition• ICT in Agriculture initiatives

– The mFarms platform– eSoko– e-Extention platform

• Future prospects of mobile innovations in Ghana’s Agriculture

Ghana’s ICT Landscape

Introduction

• Ghana’s ICT4AG strategy developed in 2005 after the development of the National ICT4AD Policy

• The strategy focused on Modernization of Agriculture and the Development of an Agro-Business Industry using ICTs as an enabler to;– Promote the deployment– Develop GIS applications– Establish agriculture information systems

Ghana’s Mobile Broadband Ratings

The Transition

• Ghana is ranked first in mobile broadband penetration in Africa (ITU, The State of Broadband 2013 report) with an estimated mobile penetration of about 112% (ITWebAfrica).

• Young developers in the country are taking advantage of this and are developing various mobile applications for the agricultural sector.

• The last few years has seen a lot of innovative ICT initiatives in agricultural development in Ghana.

• Most of these have been initiated by Development Programmes and donor-supported programmes.

Mobile phone farming - eSoko

ICT in Agriculture Initiatives

• Provides agricultural market information through simple sms via mobile phone to farmers and farmer groups.– Market prices, weather, farming methods, etc.

• The MOAP experiment and results– Actors receive information regularly on their mobile phones– They are able to make informed decisions on when to

harvest and which markets to send their products– They are able to negotiate for better prices– They recorded increase in incomes over the period

• Abdul Rahman Takoro left his rice farm to go into repairing bicycles. He is back to farming earning some good money after getting eSoko information

The mFarms Platform

ICT in Agriculture Initiatives

• The difficulty in getting accurate and up-to-date information on agro-inputs on a regular basis

• The mFarms platform - a suite of mobile applications to effectively deliver market information services

– Stakeholder communication– eMonitoring

• Agricultural interventions using mobile phones provide a viable option for bringing the various actors in the various value chains together, with a high potential to succeed.

e-Extension Platform

ICT in Agriculture Initiatives

• An ICT-based information storage and retrieval system designed for both smart phones and computers.

• A Central Knowledge Repository that provides a single point of entry to disparate sources of knowledge.

• Communication with Agricultural Extension Agents – bulk sms system

• Online forum• Video and audio on demand• Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

What should we expect?

Future Prospects

• Explosion of agricultural mobile applications• More people/organisations to get on board this revolution• Integrations of systems• Lowing of transaction / production costs• Increased productivity

Thank you for your attention