Introducing mobile phones to a farming project in Ghana

The Eastern Corridor Agro-Market Information Centre (ECAMIC) project already uses a broad range of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to promote market access and equity for farming communities in the Eastern Corridor of the Northern Region of Ghana. The project utilises both ‘high-end’ and ‘low-end’ ICT resources: from Internet, websites and mobile phones to community notice boards (chalkboards) and public-address systems. Consequently, the project reaches a number of rural communities through a deployment method that itself resolves to use appropriate technologies. In other words: a technology that can work with the needs and capabilities of its target users.

Farming families are organised into cooperatives and provided with agricultural market information that allows them to work in a more predictable market environment. The ultimate goal of the project is to improve the lives of the farmers by helping them to increase their income.  

Introducing mobile phones

The introduction of mobile phones into the project is a relatively recent development. It addresses the major challenges of how and when information is transmitted. Farmers who sign up for the tradenet (www.tradenet.biz) service - an internet and mobile-based system - are able to make offers and receive the latest market prices ‘on demand’, as well as other market-related information. 

The benefits so far

The combination of mobile phones with the other ICT tools has given farm-families a certain level of control of the decision-making process, particularly regarding the sale of their produce. Farmers are now able to demonstrate their knowledge and awareness of current market trends to traders at the major market centres, and this is proving to be an invaluable asset in the bargaining process. The people in the community – even the ones not directly targeted by the project – have all come to acknowledge the positive difference that having speedy access to reliable market price information is making to their lives.

Challenges ahead

Although this is all moving in the right direction, there are still a number of challenges we still have to overcome before we can realise the full potential of this project. One of those challenges involves setting up an organisational body or group that can act as a source of market information and make it available to the farmers. Tradenet is currently in this position but, as an institution, it needs to be sustained through payments from stakeholders, which include farmers’ groups across West Africa.

Mobile telephony: ‘hope’ or ‘hype’?

Shafiu Shaibu of the Ghanaian Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa (SEND Foundation) – the organisation behind the IICD-supported ECAMIC project - attended the Fill-the-Gap 5 Conference in Amsterdam this January to hear about the innovative ways in which mobile telephony is being used in developing countries all over the world, with a view to carry this message back to farmers in the Eastern Corridor.

Commenting on the trip, he said: “The Fill-the-Gap 5 conference, in my opinion, was a great success and it lived up to my positive expectations.” Read more about Shafiu’s opinion on “Mobile telephony: hope or hype?”.

Read more about the ECAMIC project.