Remember those days when you were in school and your teacher announced an upcoming field trip? And how the excitement of spending an entire week out with your classmates would make you countdown the days to that date? Well, this is pretty much how I feel whenever mAgri gears up to one of its Working Groups.

Covering New Ground at the Grantee Workshop
The 4th bi-annual mAgri Grantee Workshop took place on October 5th and 6th in Stellenbosch, Western Cape Town reuniting our mAgri Challenge Fund grantee operators and programme partners. There was much to look forward to since our last reunion, as three more of our grantees (Grameenphone Bangladesh, Dialog Sri Lanka and Airtel Malawi) have launched their mAgri services joining Vodafone Ghana in achieving this milestone. Though critical part of their journey, launches are not to be confused with the end goal of these projects as we continue to work with them over the next year to iterate and improve these services offering. On the workshop agenda, plenty of time was dedicated to updates in order to understand the successes and potential roadblocks our grantees have experienced at this stage. Rory Fenton from Firetail and Tegan from our team followed up with a stimulating business intelligence session which focused on processes for understanding and acting on project data. This led in to an insightful ‘content iteration and feedback’ session by our lead global content partner, CABI – fitting as the need to integrate refined local and relevant agricultural content has been a common ‘to-do’ in our grantees’ work plans. A GSMA led session on ‘functional technical requirements and reporting’ also sought to encourage grantees to share their current reporting flow on the technology side to ensure that research insights are incorporated into product design.

Vodafone Ghana presenting on their product iteration process

While day one seemed like a full workshop on its own, day two brought a lot of new exciting subjects to the table. Lilian Tse from frog led a session on ‘agent training and distribution’ supported by the expertise of GSMA’s Lara Gilman presenting her recent insights around rural agent networks. We finished off the workshop with a ‘product evolution track’ which sought to make grantees think beyond the problems they’re currently facing and identify opportunities to future proof their services in the long term. The group was divided between Agri Mobile Financial Services and Rich Media – while the former looked at the expansion of mobile money services in Agri VAS, the latter focused on the rationale in evolving the services from 2G to 3G. Attending subject matter experts included Virtual City, Vodafone Turkey, Vodafone Group and Haller App, who shared their best practices in their respective domains.

From Waterfall to Agile Approach: How User-Centric Design Will Keep MNOs Innovating
With the workshop meeting adjourned, the team and the group made their way to another event in Cape Town: Mobile 360 Africa hosted annually by the GSMA. The mAgri session, titled ‘Unlocking the Rural Market with User Centric Product Design’, packed out one of the seminar rooms with over 70 attendees. It marked the launch of the first Design Toolkit for Mobile Agricultural Services – a guide to develop and scale mobile agriculture products using a user-centred design approach. This big piece of work resulted from a close collaboration between mAgri team and frog. The first panel which focused on ‘Understanding Rural Customers through Human Centric Design’ brought together Lilian Tse from frog and Fasahat Feroze from Telenor Pakistan who advocated that user centred design can keep MNOs relevant in face of OTTs. The second panel discussion tackled another important step: ‘Partnering for Scale: Spotlight on Agriculture Mobile Financial Services’. It featured a great line up of speakers: Laura Crow from Vodafone Group, Francis Matseketsa from Airtel Malawi and Max Mattern from CGAP. While no recipe exists for scaling up mAgri services, one can stand by Laura Crow’s statement that urged MNO’s to defy current outsourcing trends and invest time and human capital to accompany and understand the steps involved in product development cycle of mAgri services (or any really) from beginning to end.

Lilian Tse from frog presenting at the Mobile 360 Africa

Download the presentations:
Telenor Pakistan: Fasahat Feroze
Airtel Malawi: Francis Matseketsa
Frog: Lilian Tse
CGAP: Max Mattern
Vodafone Group: Laura Crow

A Few Key Takeaways
Now going back to the analogy of the school field trip, what were a few of the learning points I could gather from this eventful week?

• Managing the content side is a common challenge area for all grantees. Content validation often requires government level approval which takes time hence the importance of establishing a process to manage it. On the content delivery side, ensuring the users are receiving relevant content (e.g tips on crops they are interested in/cultivating, weather forecast relating to their area) is key as this will impact farmers’ decision to use the service (more important, use it repeatedly). This is where profiling users helps MNOs understand who the customers are and where they are so customized content can be sent accordingly.
• In regards to agent networks, though the quality of their training is critical, customer loyalty and trust play a hugely important role in creating successful rural agents – they know most, if not all, their customers before starting their distribution activities.
• By 2020, 59% of potential agri VAS users will access rich media across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia but common challenges that still need to be considered (and addressed) are literacy rates, 3G/4G coverage in remote areas, smartphone penetration rates and striking mutually beneficial partnerships with local media content providers
• Though off on a business trip, it’s always a good idea to pack-up a pair of runners with you – you never know when you might find yourself in the middle of a farm or hiking up a mountain at sunrise.

Continuing to see our grantees motivated and engaged in developing and launching their mAgri services is what keep us going. We thank UK’s Department for International Development for their support as we work towards impacting the lives of 2 million agricultural workers through the use of mobile technology.