Mobile for Development Blog

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Smallholder loans pilot in Papua New Guinea: what did farmers have to say about the service and has it enhanced their access to finance?

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The GSMA AgriTech programme, in partnership with a consortium of local partners, supported the launch of a loan service – Rural loan – for vanilla farmers in Papua New Guinea (PNG) with the support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). ...

Announcing the GSMA AgriTech Accelerator cohort members

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The world’s 500 million smallholder farmers, responsible for nearly 70% of the world’s food production, are grappling with the escalating impact of climate change and extreme weather events. These events pose a significant threat to their livelihoods, as they often do ...

Promoting inclusive digital agriculture: AgriTech’s new self-assessment tools 

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Agriculture is the backbone of most developing economies and a major source of food, income and employment. However, farmers in low and middle-income countries still face significant challenges that limit their agricultural productivity and earning potential. Common ...

The GSMA AgriTech Accelerator: Supporting the growth and scale of digital agriculture services

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Overview The GSMA AgriTech Accelerator (‘the Accelerator’), launched on 1 December, 2022, aims to support and fast-track the growth of innovative, revenue-generating digital agriculture solutions that align with the shared vision to improve smallholder farmers’: ...

Jazz Pakistan: Leveraging partnerships to improve farmer livelihoods, financial inclusion, and climate resilience in Pakistan

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This is the tenth in a series of blogs introducing the grantees and key partners supported by the GSMA Innovation Fund for the Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains. The blog covers the objectives and ongoing priorities of Jazz Pakistan and its consortium partners in ...

Gender disaggregated data in digitisation of the agricultural last mile

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Women make up 43% of the total agricultural labour force globally according to the Food and Agriculture Organization but their participation in agricultural value chains remains largely undocumented. Female farmers are more likely to participate informally in the ...

Trends in digital agriculture advisory as the pandemic wanes

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Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital agriculture solutions have allowed smallholder farmers to continue receiving agriculture and health advisory, identify new markets for their crops, source inputs for their farms and access much-needed financing. In our 2021 ...

Cooperative union turns digital to ease milk procurement in Tanzania

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In Tanzania’s Tanga region, not far from the country’s business capital Dar es Salaam, Tanga Dairies Cooperative Union (TDCU) is a major buyer of milk from dairy farmers. With an extensive membership of over 6,500 mainly smallholder farmers, TCDU and dairy farmers face a ...

Digitising Rwanda’s Tea Value Chain: What are the opportunities?

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This is the ninth blog in a series of blogs introducing the grantees and key partners supported by the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains. Agriculture contributes 33 per cent to Rwanda’s national GDP and 72 per cent of the working population ...

How crowding-in can drive greater impact in the digitisation of agricultural value chains

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In parallel to delivering the FCDO funded GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains (IF), the AgriTech programme has been supporting the “crowding-in” of other stakeholders in the agritech ecosystem who we were unable to directly support through ...

Field Focus Week ‘22: Mitigating barriers to scaling key Agriculture digitisation use-cases

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The focus of this blog is to provide an overview of the discussions from the latest Field Focus Week (FFW) event. The blog summarises key bottlenecks faced by the AgriTech grantees in their attempt to sustainably scale key digitisation use-cases and poses questions whose ...

Adapting monitoring and evaluation tools to design impactful digital services

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This is the eighth blog in a series introducing the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains, including its grantees, supporting partners and processes. Putting farmers at the centre of digitising the agricultural last mile The GSMA Innovation Fund ...

Mobile for Development at COP26

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In the beginning of November this year, the world leaders came together for COP26 in Glasgow to accelerate climate action across the globe. Mobile and digital services form an important part of the solution. In this blog, we highlight how GSMA Mobile for Development ...

The value of meeting virtually

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Our seventh blog in the series on The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains explores how we have shifted our annual learning and knowledge sharing event for grantees from face to face to online, in response to the continued global travel ...

Empowering smallholder farmers in Nigeria: An introduction to AgroMall

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This is the sixth blog in a series introducing the grantees and key partners supporting The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains. Nigerian agritech company AgroMall is one of seven grantees under The GSMA Innovation Fund ...

COP26 highlights the need to transform smallholder agriculture: Can digital solutions be an enabler?

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Two years since COP25, during which the impacts of climate change have become ever more evident, the focus now shifts to Glasgow for COP26 and what many are seeing as the last chance to take meaningful action. Smallholder agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to ...

Thinking Outside the Box: Vodacom Tanzania Agri Digitisation Journey

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This is the fifth blog in a series of blogs introducing the grantees and key partners supported by the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains. In 2020, Vodacom Tanzania was awarded a grant under the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of ...

Pay-As-You-Go smart assets increase farmers’ climate resilience

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Innovation SunCulture Pay-As-You-Go solar irrigation systems Partners SunCulture, Energy Access Ventures, Microsoft, REEEP, MIT, PG Impact, GSMA, EDF, Shell Foundation, SNV, USAID, EEP Africa, Mercy Corps, DPI, Acumen Capital Partners, Self Help Africa Smallholder farmers ...

Closing the weather data gap in LMICs using mobile networks

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Innovation Rainfall observation using Commercial Microwave Links (CMLs) Partners GSMA, Dialog Axiata Sri Lanka, MTN Nigeria, Digicel Papua New Guinea, Wageningen University & Research, Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI), TU Delft, Hyds, FCDO, DFAT Reliable ...

Unlocking agri DFS: new business models addressing the financing gap

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Globally, nearly 500 million households depend on smallholder farming for their livelihoods. However, farmers are often financially excluded with limited access to financial products. Recognising this gap, the GSMA undertook research to investigate the rise of digital ...