A Kenyan award winning mobile subscription service will showcase and share lessons at the WTO Public Forum, Geneva on 29^th September 2016. The session which is scheduled to start at 0900 and end at 1030, Room & Session N⁰ : WS53 Room S1 will be hosted by TMA’s Sr. Director of Business competitiveness, Lisa Karanja and iShamba founder David Campbell.
iShamba, a product developed and implemented by MEDIAE company in Kenya is a phone based farmers club that provides agricultural information on weather, market price and farm inputs. TradeMark Africa through its Challenge Fund TRAC funded the development of the platform through a matching grant of US$ 347,060. During implementation between 2014 and 2015, iShamba initially targeted 20000 subscribed farmers, but has 350,000 subscribers today, with its users already reporting encouraging results in terms of increased yields.
Leveraging the rapid expansion of mobile phones in Kenya to over 80% of the population iShamba, which translated from Swahili means iFarm, shares important updates on farming inputs, best practice, weather and prices to the subscribed farmers, as well as answering specific questions from callers on a range of issues. Agronomy experts respond to farmer questions further ensuring disbursement of only quality information and advice to subscribers. The digital platform manages agricultural information and disseminates it through an SMS distribution and call centre facility without the need for a Mobile Network Operator. Since its inception, the iShamba SMS service has recorded some exciting results; with impact research showing increased yields for potato farmers in of up to 50%. Every month, the farmer is able to receive market prices for crops closes to their markets and a weekly weather forecast including rainfall expectation in the area. A farmer is also able to get agronomy tip text messages aligned to the season in their region, enabling them to know exactly when to expect harvest and which pests and disease to look out for.
iShamba complements East Africa’s popular farm make-over TV and Radio show, Shamba Shape Up. Together the information services reach over 6 million farmers weekly.  According to David Campbell, the brains behind both concepts, delivering important information through a mixed media approach overcomes major challenges in information access. He said, “We must get inclusive, focusing on reaching out to all and interact with far more people (especially young and women farmers ). The only way forward for this is through using and linking media – radio, TV , mobile services, social media, video on demand, call centres, and the internet.”
iShamba has won two awards at the Mobile Innovation Awards. They are Effective Integration of Mobile in an Omni Channel Strategy & Regional Award (Africa).
Participants at the WTO Public Forum are welcome to this session.
 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.