The agricultural population makes up the majority of the global workforce. In sub-Saharan Africa 8 out 10 people work in agriculture.
The mFarmer Initiative was launched in 2011 in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. It exists to support mobile service providers, in partnership with public and private sector agriculture organisations, to utilise the mobile channel to extend the reach and improve the quality of information and advisory services for smallholder farmers in emerging markets.
We facilitate the creation of scalable, replicable and commercially sustainable agricultural information services. The aim of these services is to bridge the information gap and improve poor farming households’ resilience and decision-making as a result of better access to relevant agricultural information.
Insights
MARKETING ASSESSMENT & USER NEEDS
Who is the Agri VAS customer and what are their information needs?
SERVICE DESIGN
What are the components of an Agri VAS model?
A PARTNERSHIP WITH:
MARKETING
How to reach the Agri VAS customer and drive adoption?
COMMERCIAL MODEL AND BUSINESS CASE
The Agri VAS business case- who pays?
mFARMER FUND
The Fund is available over a period of two years (2011- 2013) and is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID.
The components of the mFarmer Fund include:
Allocation for disbursements to selected applicants of between $100,000 and $400,000.
Provision of bespoke, digital agriculture content via an online database.
Technical Assistance to support the development of applications and the implementation of mFarmer services.
Sharing of best practices and learnings.
Qualitative and quantitative impact evaluation of mFarmer services.
Please note that as of 18 February 2012 we are no longer accepting applications to the mFarmer Fund and no further concept notes will be considered. Please sign up to the mAgri newsletter so that we can keep you updated with developments and upcoming knowledge sharing events. For any queries, please contact us as mFarmer@gsm.org.
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