Esoko mobile app changing farmers lives in Ghana and beyond

A team from the New York University in the US is in Ghana to undertake a study on the effectiveness of the esoko platform in aiding farmers’ access to agricultural price information.

Esoko is an agricultural market information platform. It is a response to the explosive growth of cellular services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agri-business, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. The Esoko platform provides automatic and personalized price alerts, buy and sell offers, bulk SMS messaging, stock counts and SMS polling.

Esoko was developed by software engineers in Ghana and allows different parties in the agricultural value chain to exchange real-time market information.

Selected farmers in the Volta region will be assessed over a three year period to ascertain how market information via the mobile phone has impacted on their livelihoods.

Managing Director of Esoko Ghana, Robert Owusu, believes the outcome of the impact assessment would propel the extension of the technology to more farmers in the country and beyond.

“They have a group of 500 farmers who are receiving the message and another 500 who are not receiving the message. So over the three year period they will assess and see the changes in terms of their income, livelihood and in terms of their social wellbeing to see whether there is any difference between those who have information about market prices and those who don’t have”, he stated.

Through its network of agents in 38 Markets across the country, Esoko is able provide market prices on various agricultural commodities directly unto the mobile phones of farmers.

Farmers receive current demands, prices of crops, and the location of seeds and fertilizers directly on their mobile phones.

Owusu says farmers on the Esoko network have been exposed to markets and improved income levels.

“Now through Esoko, farmers are able to get market prices of their produce and that can help them to negotiate with traders to get a better deal for their produce. The farmers from what they’re telling us, have been able to increase the income between 25 and 40 percent and it has also given them the exposure in terms of the various markets where they can sell their produce”.