For Farmers

Information is power in any business, and farmers are no different. Smallholder farmers can sign up to Esoko to receive a package of weekly advisory services. This typically consists of current market prices, matching bids and offers, weather forecasts, and news and tips. In some countries, advisories may be sent by Voice SMS messages, and a live call centre of agricultural experts can be available to complement data alerts with voice support. Not only can farmers negotiate better prices, choose different markets, or time sales better, but they may also participate in outgrower schemes through Esoko profiling and reputational history. Our goal is simply to put more money into the hands of smallholder farmers, and try to address the information asymmetry that exists where farmers are frequently disadvantaged price-takers, often selling at a loss. After receiving better information, income improvements for farmers are estimated to be between 10-30%. Sometimes individual sales to new markets can increase by 100%.  Esoko is not trying to remove the important role that traders must continue to play, but believes a more transparent system will reduce the overall time to market of goods, improve margins for all, and create an ecosystem of facilitation and brokering.  

For Business

Businesses everywhere need to manage information. They need to source market information from their suppliers and agents, and they need to inform customers and consumers about new products, best practices and commercial opportunities. Currently businesses are tracking people, stock levels, input credits, field visits, market prices, commodity transfers . . . all on paper. It’s time consuming, prone to errors and rarely gives an owner the snapshot of the market and business they need to react to ever changing market dynamics. With Esoko, businesses can profile thousands of individuals, group them, and then send important messages to them via discounted SMS. They can schedule, repeat and track how these messages are delivered. They can target specific individuals with personalized messages based on their occupation, location and value chain. So an input supplier can easily choose ‘cassava farmers in northern Ghana’ to advise of pests, events, or promotions.  Similarly, businesses can program Esoko to ask simple questions over SMS to field agents: ‘Have you planted yet?’, ‘Have you deposited funds?’, ‘How much have you harvested?’.  Mobile handsets provide a powerful tool for businesses to interact quickly and cheaply with thousands. This builds relationships, saves money, and expands the scope of what a business can operationalize.

For NGOs & Projects (I feel like this has the least pizzazz out of all descriptions)

Similar to business, projects and NGOs need to manage people and information. A range of powerful mobile-based applications and reporting tools enables them to do just this on Esoko. Health projects seek to collect data on a regular basis from field staff. Ag projects seek to improve inter-regional trade or boost smallholder farmers’ revenues. Esoko allows any project to profile people, send out targeted SMSes, or even ask questions and map answers back into the system automatically. Where projects are seeking affordable ways to communicate important and timely information, they can program Esoko to send out reminders. They can even set up Esoko to ask beneficiaries (or their representatives) for snap polls for monitoring purposes on issues such as whether they have been visited by program officers, how they rate the program, or if they can quantify benefits.

For Government

Government agencies are tasked with policy design but often lack the market information that shapes what those policies should be. With Esoko, agencies can track market prices, production data, commodity quantities, and field activities, all in real-time. This data provides snapshots of the macro environment that can be used on a regular basis to adjust and inform an otherwise less frequent, intensive field investigation. Providing government enumerators with a suite of mobile-enabled smart tools so they can upload data from the field in real-time makes public officials empowered to track market trends as they happen.  Similarly, where governments seek innovative ways to serve citizens, mobile phones present yet another exciting opportunity to get government closer to the people. Information services can use Esoko’s powerful tracking tools to send out personalized and customized alerts to  targeted people in specific regions. If there are disease outbreaks, special events, or general announcements, Ministries can schedule messages and disseminate them quickly and cheaply. Furthermore, for those governments seeking more in-depth support services, they can build content knowledge bases on the Esoko platform and publish these onto mobile phones for field officers trying to access and provide actionable, localized and relevant advisory content.