Food for thought and high yielding ideas at mAgri’s first Asian Working Group meet

The latest mAgri Working Group Meeting saw a room filled with many excited mobile agriculture practitioners ready to hear more on how to create successful mAgri services. The Working Group Meeting, held in conjunction with the GSMA Mobile for Development’s ‘Increasing Inclusion and Impact’ event brought in more than 40 mobile agricultural practitioners from around the world.

Local Content Plenary Session
Local Content Plenary Session

More than ever before, we saw mobile agriculture featuring in discussions within the larger M4D Impact event, titled ‘Increasing Inclusion and Impact’. In particular, mobile agriculture held a strong presence in a plenary session on ‘The Importance of Local Content in Mobile Social Innovation Services’. Representatives on the panel from BBC Media Action, Miaki Group, Smart Communications and Ufone PTML provided insights into some of the challenges they had faced when creating and delivering trusted content.

Setting the scene for the mAgri sessions, our Acting Head, Natalia provided a compelling presentation on the mobile agriculture market opportunity, placing agriculture at the heart of the problem and the solution for economic and social development. It provided a thought-provoking explanation as to why we should all be investing in agriculture!

Breaking the ice with a humorous introduction, Amol, mAgri’s Senior Manager provided a step-by-step guide on what it takes to scale a successful mAgri Service. From a mobile operator perspective, Stephanie Bunmi Ayeh, Innovation Manager at Vodafone Ghana provided fascinating insights on the role mobile agriculture has in a mobile operator’s rural strategy. Benjamin Makai, Innovation Product Manager from Safaricom, Kenya and Charitha Ratwatte, Sustainability Group Manager from Dialog, Sri Lanka engaged in a dynamic group discussion on how mobile operators approached service development.

Interest was sparked on the second day with Tegan, mAgri’s analyst, providing insight into the challenges in user adoption of mobile agriculture services. Utilising qualitative and quantitative analysis from mAgri’s mFarmer projects, Tegan illustrated the common pain points these services faced in reaching smallholder farmers. For example, on-the-ground marketing seems like the best way to educate a low-literacy, cost-conscious audience – but this approach is only cost effective when agents are well trained and incentivised for the job.

We also heard from BBC Media Janala and our newest mAgri Challenge Fund Partner, frog. Discussing their research and design methodologies, they provided insights into the value user-centric design plays for developing a successful service. BBC Media Janala provided first-hand experience in designing services for mobile development services in Bangladesh. Their detailed presentation dwelled on the importance of research and user testing, providing examples on how BBC Media approach service design.

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Excerpt BBC Media Janala Presentation by Sanjib Saha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sanjib from BBC Janala provided positive feedback on the event:

“I felt happy to be able to present BBC Janala case in mAgri working group. The participants seemed very interested and the Q&A session was full of quality questions. I have enjoyed Frog’s presentation too and felt interested in their research techniques. I believe it was a good mutual learning platform.” Sanjib Saha, BBC Media Janala

For the first mAgri Asian Working Group Meeting it was fantastic to see an engaged audience that was keen to ask questions and share their learnings with others. It was also great to see everyone meeting new faces at the dedicated networking events! Many thanks to our speakers; without their willingness to share their experiences in mobile agriculture services we could not have created such a successful event.

Were you there? We’d love to hear your feedback on this event and suggestion for future ones. Don’t forget to register for our next mAgri Working Group Meeting at The Vineyard Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa on Tuesday 4th November. To register, please email [email protected].

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