Reflections & Summaries: Mobile Information Services for Agriculture

Benjamin Kwasi Addom has posted some very insightful reflections and summaries of the online discussions hosted on the e-agriculture.org platform late November to early December 2011. The forum was on "Mobile Information Services" [for Agriculture] - The Benefits of Forming Strong Partnerships to Create Sustainable and Scalable Information Advisory Service. (See here for the original forum posts.)
Benjamin has kindly agreed for us to re-post his blog post with the links to his summaries here on iConnect-Online.org - Thanks Ben!!

"The mFarmer Initiative, a partnership between GSMA, USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in collaboration with e-Agriculture, initiated an online discussion late November to early December 2011.

The 2-week forum which was organized around six main questions, touched on critical issues from partnerships, barriers to scale, business cases/models, content, and mistakes committed by service providers in delivering these services.

As one of the participants in this forum, I have decided to reflect on the discussion which falls within my professional interest of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the living conditions of rural people in the developing nations, most of which are farmers by enhancing their access to resources.

There are six reflections in the series that are available through this portal for readers. Below is the list of titles, links, and dates of the posts:

1: Reflections on mAg Services: Partnerships Between MNOs and APs (Available on 12/22/2011)

2: Reflections on mAg. Services: Barriers to Scale (Available on 12/26/2011)

3: Reflections on mAg Services: Is there a Business Case for Serving Farmers? (Available on 12/29/2011)

4: Reflections on mAg Services: Financial Sustainability (Available on 12/31/2011)

5: Reflections on mAg Services: Content Sourcing, Quality Assurance & Dissemination (Available on 01/02/2012)

6: Reflections on mAg Services: Mistakes and Pitfalls of MNOs/NGOs (Available on 01/05/2012)

 NB: These posts are summaries of the discussion and my personal reflections on some of the key points, and do not reflect the views of any of the sponsors, experts or contributors to the forum.

I hope we can continue the discussion."