Presentation by Edward Addo-Dankwa, National Value Chain Development Officer, Ministry of Food and Agriculture Session: Institutional Experiences on 7 Nov 2013 ICT4Ag, Kigali, Rwanda

1. Innovative ICT use in Agriculture –
Examples in Ghana
Eddie Addo-Dankwa
Ghana

2. Presentation Outline
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Introduction
The Transition
ICT in Agriculture initiatives
– The mFarms platform
– eSoko
– e-Extention platform
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Future prospects of mobile innovations in Ghana’s
Agriculture

3. Introduction
Ghana’s ICT Landscape
• Ghana’s ICT4AG strategy developed in 2005 after the
development of the National ICT4AD Policy
• The strategy focused on Modernization of
Agriculture and the Development of an AgroBusiness Industry using ICTs as an enabler to;
– Promote the deployment
– Develop GIS applications
– Establish agriculture information systems

4. The Transition
Ghana’s Mobile Broadband Ratings
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Ghana is ranked first in mobile broadband penetration in
Africa (ITU, The State of Broadband 2013 report) with an
estimated mobile penetration of about 112% (ITWebAfrica).
Young developers in the country are taking advantage of
this and are developing various mobile applications for the
agricultural sector.
The last few years has seen a lot of innovative ICT
initiatives in agricultural development in Ghana.
Most of these have been initiated by Development
Programmes and donor-supported programmes.

5. ICT in Agriculture Initiatives
Mobile phone farming - eSoko
• Provides agricultural market information through simple
sms via mobile phone to farmers and farmer groups.
– Market prices, weather, farming methods, etc.
• The MOAP experiment and results
– Actors receive information regularly on their mobile phones
– They are able to make informed decisions on when to
harvest and which markets to send their products
– They are able to negotiate for better prices
– They recorded increase in incomes over the period
• Abdul Rahman Takoro left his rice farm to go into
repairing bicycles. He is back to farming earning some
good money after getting eSoko information

6. ICT in Agriculture Initiatives
The mFarms Platform
• The difficulty in getting accurate and up-to-date
information on agro-inputs on a regular basis
• The mFarms platform - a suite of mobile
applications to effectively deliver market information
services
– Stakeholder communication
– eMonitoring
• Agricultural interventions using mobile phones
provide a viable option for bringing the various
actors in the various value chains together, with
a high potential to succeed.

7. ICT in Agriculture Initiatives
e-Extension Platform
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An ICT-based information storage and retrieval system
designed for both smart phones and computers.
A Central Knowledge Repository that provides a single
point of entry to disparate sources of knowledge.
Communication with Agricultural Extension Agents – bulk
sms system
Online forum
Video and audio on demand
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

8. Future Prospects
What should we expect?
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Explosion of agricultural mobile applications
More people/organisations to get on board this revolution
Integrations of systems
Lowing of transaction / production costs
Increased productivity

9. Thank you for your attention