Designing a user-centric Agri VAS that responds to customer needs and is easy to use and navigate, involves choosing an appropriate mix of channels and formats. This mix would vary across countries, depending on cultural and socio-economic characteristics, the technological capacity of the users’ mobile phones, as well as the users’ tech-savviness.
Creation of agricultural content starts with understanding the farmer’s information needs and this requires strong partnerships with a range of content providers. Content needs are dynamic and changing along the agricultural cycle as well as during the course of a user’s relationship with the service.
This section aims to map out the challenges and best practices in designing a usable and scalable Agri VAS and provides a set of resources and examples for developing high quality agricultural content.
1. Service Design and Content for Agri VAS
- mAgri
mAgri Case Study: Nokia Life Agriculture Service
By the end of February 2013 over 95 million people had experienced Nokia Life services. Launched in India in 2009, Nokia Life scaled to Indonesia in late 2009, China in May 2010, Nigeria in June 2011 and at the time of publishing (March 2013), the service was also available in Kenya. This case study explores the success factors of the Nokia Life service and spotlights the agricultural service, with a particular focus on the content development process. Nokia Life Agriculture services provide ...
- mAgri
mAgri Webinar: Mobile market information systems for farmers: requirements for success
These are the slides that accompany the mAgri Webinar on “Mobile market information systems for farmers: requirements for success” that took place on 9th October 2012. Download here... - mAgri
Agricultural Value Added Services (Agri VAS): Market Assessment & User Needs
At the design stage of any new product or service, it is critical to understand the user’s needs and to identify the unique demographics that exist within the target market. This is especially crucial for Agri VAS as base of pyramid users tend not to be surveyed extensively. Download here... - mAgri
Agricultural Value Added Services (Agri VAS): Service Design
Irrespective of the nature of the target market, a successful Agri VAS design will always endeavour to provide information that is timely, actionable and relevant. Download here... - mAgri
mAgri Programme Case Study - IKSL, India
IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) is a tri-lateral joint venture between the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO), the largest farmers’ cooperative in India and airtel, the largest mobile network operator, along with Star Global Resources Limited, rural telephony experts who acquired 25% shares. IKSL provides voice-based agricultural information to empower rural farmers and reinforce the cooperative through the mobile network. After a successful pilot, the service launched in 200... - mAgri
mAgri Programme Case Study - M-Kilimo
In 2009 the GSMA Mobile for Development set up a farmer helpline, M-Kilimo, in Kenya with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. M-Kilimo (‘M-Agriculture’ in Swahili) is a farmer helpline where farmers can call agricultural experts to deal with their queries. The aim of the project was to test and prove the viability of agricultural value added services (Agri VAS). KenCall, the largest business process outsourcing (BPO) company in East Africa with significant experience of providing inform...
2. Related blog posts
- mAgri
Highlights from the mAgri Webinar on Mobile Market Information Systems
Last month, the mAgri team collaborated with USAID and FHI 360 to produce a webinar on Mobile Market Information Systems. The PDF slides and video recording of the webinar are available here. The following are a few highlights from our panel of experts ... - mAgri
Keeping users at the heart of the design for mobile Value Added Services
This is the first post in a multi-part series on user testing for mobile Value Added Services. When I first heard about designing mobile Value Added Services (VAS) through user testing, I was not very convinced that we were headed in the right direction. Ho... - mAgri
Providing weather forecasts to smallholder farmers by mobile phone: how do we tackle the accuracy issue?
Our recent mFarmer projects have reconfirmed the finding that weather forecasts are in high demand from smallholder farmers. However, this type of information is also one of the most challenging to provide. The accuracy of weather forecasts is an area of si...
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