IICD supported project: Market Information Service Facility and Training

Countries: Ghana [GH]
Sectors: livelihoods

Summary

Through its market information service facility and training activities, Market Access Promotion Network (Mapronet) supports its affiliated small and medium sized cooperatives. The network will develop a web-based market information system that provides regular overviews of relevant market information needed by producer groups, buyers, traders and other relevant stakeholders to support their sustainable livelihoods. During the pilot phase, this system will be implemented with three organisations: two facilitating network members of Mapronet: Altranet (Volta region) and Trade Aid Integrated (Tamale) together with the Mapronet headquater in Tamale.

Update

Updated: 2008-01-18

In 2008, Mapronet will be focusing on:

• Increasing capacity building of producer & marketing organisations by developing ten modules of business development skills
• Starting an e-bulletin to share knowledge
• Collecting & providing information on relevant market prices to share with members

Introduction

Small scale farmers in Western Africa are confronted with unequal development opportunities especially in remote rural areas, low literacy rates and mass poverty. After the Rround table workshop on Agriculture in 2003, key stakeholders in this sector slected four areas were seen as a top priority for ICT development to change this situation: enhancing producer organisations, access to market information, improve the quality of production and access to finance. Mapronet was established in 2001 to enhance market opportunities for network members by facilitating access to more effective information and communication strategies.

Objectives

• Improved physical access to information through:
  • Strengthened Mapronet Business Information Centre for information collection, storage and dissemination from both the foreign and local markets;
  • Strengthened two facilitating focal organisations to provide improved information services to producer organisations;
  • Provided general information services to selected facilitating organisations and producer groups (via newsletters, website and e-mail);
  • Collected and stored ad-hoc and specific information from selected facilitating organizations; and,
  • Provided timely and updated information to a cross section of stakeholders including facilitating organisations, buyers/traders, national and local and producer organisations that showcase and promote available products.
• Capacity building of participating organisations and users in ICT skills.

Results

Mapronet is working towards:

• Establishing a basic Business Information Centre at Mapronet HQ and the two focal point organisations with Vsat connectivity.
• Basic design of website (partly accomplished); and,
• ICT capacity building staff and head quarters and focal point organisations (partly left already).

Lessons learned

Some key lessons learned are:

• Loss of institutional memory as a result of high staff turnover. New staff should be recruited to replace those who have left. Staff should also be motivated to keep interest in working for the organisation;

• Poor financial commitment from other project partners had impact on the planned activities and delayed the realisation of objectives;
• Dependency on a third party donor for over 50% of project budget, which created the failure of the first phase after the donor did not deliver; and,
• Effective coordination. The project had three operational points, the Headquarters and two focal points. This makes coordination, reporting and planning more complex. More attention should have been given in setting up the coordination.

Budget

First contract € 50,000 + € 38,447 second contract = € 88,447 total.

Project Owner :

Market Access Promotion Network (Mapronet) Ghana.

Project Contact : IICD