A snapshot of Esoko in 2012

Sara Maunda made $130 instead of $27 after receiving and using Esoko price alerts

The past year was an exciting one for Esoko and full of activities. We want to remind ourselves of some of the key happenings of the year.

Product - New Features and Improvements

The past year saw us introducing the concept of accounts (Billing) and redesigning of MOBI, our Java based mobile application. There were loads of enhancements on mobile alerts, price upload and others, all in the 1.0.25 release.

Our 1.0.26 release was perhaps the most significant. We unveiled a brand new website with more information, we introduced the live feed feature called Buzz, and enabled users to access Esoko servers via data connection - MOBI (GPRS version). SMS Push templates, data sharing, permissions and dashboard widgets were also introduced.

Our 'Usability Release', Esoko 1.5, then followed with a focus on enhancing existing features such as price search, choosers and networks. We also added the ability to configure additional price types including off-lorry and farm gate prices, and released our profiling application on android. You can read the details of our product on our product blog.

Events - Partner Conference, mAGRIC Showcase

In April 2012, we hosted the 4th Annual Partner Conference that brought together our international partners to share ideas and learn from each other in person. The three-day conference saw participants discussing emerging themes in MIS and agriculture such as contract farming, food security and mobile agriculture. A product and tech showcase, followed by strategy discussions on the best ways to deploy Esoko in different environments were also held. Read more.

The first ever Mobile for Agricultural Development workshop (mAGRIC Showcase 2012) was also organised and hosted by Esoko. The workshop brought together NGOs, key practitioners, researchers, development partners, mobile operators, software developers, agribusinesses and government to explore how mobile phones may play a vital role in developing agriculture. There were product showcases form CocoaLink, SMSGH, Grameen Foundation, GIZ, IFDC and Esoko. Read more.

Success stories

More lives were touched as we continued our quest to improve how agricultural markets work for people.

In Malawi, Sara used to accept whatever price a local trader offered her. This time, she had an SMS telling her that less than 40 miles away in Lilongwe, the price for groundnuts which she was selling, was about .75 cents – more than 4 times the price a vendor was offering. She travelled to Lilongwe and sold 150 kg earning about $130 dollars after costs – if she had sold to the vendor she would have made $27 dollars. “I would have sold to him if it weren't for the fact that I knew what the price was in Lilongwe through the messages I got from Esoko.”

In Uganda, Paul’s birds had cut their egg production from 69% to 40%. He received a message from Novus Neno Uganda and followed the nutritional advice. The results were amazing. “My birds can now afford to pay for their feeds and also pay something for my household.”

In Malawi, Land O’Lakes International Development designed 10-minute radio sessions on dairy production and marketing to improve waning milk yields, and used Esoko to set-up and deploy a series of SMS messages that informed isolated farmers of the program’s start times and reminded them of what was discussed. Through this, Land O’Lakes linked over 900 farmer-members to valuable farming and business information which they previously struggled to obtain.

And in Ghana, Mad. Grace used to buy 200 bags of maize each for GH₵70 in the Kwame Danso market (Brong Ahafo). It cost her GH₵7 to transport each bag to Kumasi (Ashanti). Through the ADVANCE project, she got an SMS from Esoko telling her that a bag of maize cost GH₵65 in the Ejura (Ashanti) market and after enquiries she realised that transporting each bag from Ejura to Kumasi would cost her GH₵5. Armed with this new information, Grace switched markets and now saves GH₵1400 on each round of trading activity.

So there goes 2012. We believe 2013 will be more exciting and we look forward to working with you all to achieve greater impacts. 

Rounding up 2012 - CEOs Message

It’s been a year of solid progress for Esoko on many fronts, with new product releases and enhancements throughout the year, new country partners joining, and some significant deployments in the field. 

We are continually growing and learning, but never has it been more exciting than it is now to be working in mobile and agriculture. Food security is at the top of the global agenda and all eyes are on Africa to improve yields. Development partners and businesses are all genuinely committed to understanding how technology can transform agricultural value chains. Even mobile operators are beginning to get serious about value added services to rural communities. And there’s enough learning and maturity that we’re moving out of R&D stages and into real deployments. 

We’re excited about our partners, about our product and about the market we’re trying to serve. 2013 promises to be even more exciting and we look forward to working with all of you for the sustained impacts and transformations we all so strongly believe in. See you there.

Mark Davies, CEO

Supporting our clients: Elva Sodji tells how

Esoko’s services have been deployed and are currently being used in 11 African countries through resellers and partner organisations. But how does the company ensure the effective running of its services to meet their partners’ needs? Ms. Elva Sodji, a French and English speaking Business Advisor at the Esoko office in Ghana and she shared her experience with us. She is part of the team that supports Esoko's francophone partners.

About her role as Business Advisor at Esoko
So where do I start from?...Well my job basically is about supporting our partners, and that means ensuring that the day-to-day activities of the platform are running smoothly, following up on our partners’ problems, getting them fixed, managing their accounts, offering training  developing documents they need and keeping them updated. Yep, that’s pretty much it.

Her typical day at work
Well there are a 1000 and one little things to do, you know. My day is typically mixed with a lot of activities. It revolves around developing support documents, having a meeting with partner to check on progress and workaround a challenge, or doing some configurations for them. As we are also constantly improving our platform to serve our partners’ needs, I also test the system and provide feedback to the technical team.

How she sits in Accra and assists partners many miles away. Her motivation
That’s a tough one…em, let me start by saying that I strongly believe in our product and what it’s doing for farmers. I may not be on the field but I believe whatever we are doing here is positively impacting people. Our clients tell of the success stories of how their agricultural businesses are being transformed for the better and how farmers they deal with are also benefiting from the service. We also hear of such stories when we go out for training. I admit it's not the same feeling when you are on the field with farmers or our clients and you see or hear the impact directly. However, I get particular excited whenever I help a partner go around some challenge in using our service. But come to think of it, I am motivated mostly by the impact we are having on farmers. These farmers are giving so much to society by providing food, and it’s only fair that I also do my best to assist them (through our clients) in my own small from behind my desk.

Expectations for the future - for the company and its partnersYou know, I believe we are rapidly expanding and our clients’ needs are also growing. Sometimes the hours in a day doesn't seem to be enough to support our partners, but I guess it’s about setting out work plans with clients, defining processes clearly and setting the right expectations. Every company finds gratification from satisfying the needs of its clients and I am sure through or robust process of product innovation, we will continue to meet our partners’ needs, exceed their expectations and most importantly transform agriculture.

Finding farmers for an intervention program

Most intervention programs for smallholder farmers only come to the limelight when there is a publication about the project. No one really knows how the farmers were selected and how they were identified in the first place. But as every farmer intervention program probably knows, a lot of planning, research and field visits go into selecting farmers for any program. This leaves us with some questions - Are farmers easily accessible? How do you select farmers for a rural intervention project? How do you determine the location of the program? Is this a difficult task? Francis Danso, our Agricultural Content Editor, recently went on one of such trips and describes his experience. 

In the development industry knowing your target before intervening in their situation is very critical. It helps you to assess their present conditions as against their conditions at the end of your interventions.  This will help in the measurement of the impact of the interventions in the lives of your target group. Most often than not, the process of making contacts with your target group -  “scouting” - is very difficult, frustrating and at times dangerous. This is so because you are venturing into areas and terrains you know close-to-nothing about. You do not even find the location of some of these communities on the map. All you know sometimes are the names of the districts in which they are. Whether the place is accessible by road, river or rail, you do not know.

In our case we had to find some farmers in the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana, in five districts (Tain, Kintampo North and South, Pru and Sene) for a project that the International Food Policy & Research Institute (IFPRI) had contracted us to do. I had planned my journey well and made some contacts in the various districts through other projects and friends I knew. On the day we set out early from Accra for the Pru district. I must confess that it was the first time I was travelling on that road and surprisingly the road network was very good. 

Francis (left) and colleague scouting for farmers

We started real work the next day and had a different experience. The road leading to the community was terrible and very far from the district capital. They had no electricity but were using mobile phones. One could only wonder how they charged the phones when the batteries ran out. The situation was no different for the other districts.

We had some challenges scouting for farmers. The time between the initial baseline study and the time we went scouting had taken too long (over 6 months). Almost all the people that we spoke to had forgotten about the project and the issues the baseline study addressed. Some people did not cooperate with us initially. There were some farmers who wouldn't even identify themselves when their names were mentioned; they couldn't trust us. There is the need for projects that span for years to have a plan of keeping farmers posted during times of inactivity.

For a rural intervention program involving ICTs or mobile phones it is also important to consider the conditions within environment in which people who will be affected live. It might be useful to have a location where the farmers have at least a basic level of knowledge in phone usage. Otherwise, a lot of time and resources will have to be spent training these farmers, sometimes repeatedly, on simple tasks such as how to open a phone's message inbox. This problem is compounded if other amenities such as electricity is not available in the immediate treatment community. If these farmers do not have a readily available means of recharging their phones, or the mobile network coverage is bad, the effectiveness of the project would be in danger.

As we came to the end of our scouting one key question kept popping up in our minds - in the midst of these challenges, how do you ensure project sustainability after initial funding? The challenges and the sustainability dilemma are make or break factors that every project should thoroughly think through and address.