Grantee Profile
Kenya Farmers’ Helpline
A Kenyan farmer getting the advice she needs—the instant she needs it—on her mobile phone.
Today, in Kenya, a group of farmers, are picking up their mobile phones for instant help. These farmers are dialing into a call center where agricultural experts respond immediately (in Swahili, English and other relevant local languages) to questions ranging from climate and weather information, to advice on land preparation, pest management, harvesting and marketing of produce, as well as the location of agro-dealers and sources of capital.
The answers are helping subsistence farmers raising such things as maize, cereal, livestock and poultry make more informed decisions to wring the greatest productivity—and profit—from their farms.
A grant to GSMA Foundation, in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is designing and implementing the mobile phone voice-based farmer helpline to provide demand-driven weather and agricultural information to Kenyan small-holder farmers.
Kenya has experienced a significant growth in mobile phone technology in the last decade; from 0.2 million mobile phone subscribers in 2008 to 17.4 million in 2010. Increased competition has made mobile communication affordable for most small-holder farmers.
This unique and innovative service was launched in October 2009 to provide agricultural information, advice, and support over the phone to small holder farmers. Providing high quality and reliable information to farmers in real time enables them to make more informed decisions throughout the land preparation, planting, pest management, harvesting, post-harvest, and marketing of agriculture produce.
Rockefeller Foundation President, Judith Rodin, hears from farmers phoning in to the Kenya Farmers' Helpline call center.
The pilot project is complete, and over 25,000 farmers have used the service for a total of 30,000 requests. Operations and IT systems were set-up and developed to enable a high-quality service, comprehensive analytics, and data tracking. A majority of questions relate to crops, pests, and diseases.
The helpline has been re-branded as M-Kilimo: "Kilimo" is the Kiswahili word for farming.
The lessons learned from this pilot are being scaled up in a Gates-Funded project spearheaded by GSMA Foundation. This initiative-the mAgri program will work with mobile network operators and partners to support the launch and improvement of quality Farmer Helplines that will serve over 2 Million smallholder farmers. Target geographies include India and 12 sub-Saharan African countries (Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, Burkino Faso, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia).
Watch how the Foundation is strengthening agricultural security and climate change resilience in Africa.
