Monday, March 17, 2014

Icow : how the kenyan mobile revolution also contributes to agricultural developement

M-pesa, the mobile payment system invented by Safaricom already years ago, allows to send money by mobile phone. It has revolutionized how people make transfers, in particular for women with micro credits. With m-pesa, they can directly reimburse their credit as they earn money, they don't need to keep it in the house until the payment day and in this way they avoid that their husbands use the money for something else (drinking)...




The developed world, that did not know about this technologies until recently, is now realizing that Africa has developed its own solutions and every day is pushing them further, as the above extract from the Swiss news shows.
The latest Kenyan mobile phone innovation is icow, a system that sends you weekly tricks and tips about dairy farming. It also allows you to register your cow and get personalized information such as reminder about which cow needs to vaccinates. Finally it also allows you to get the phone number of your nearest vet.

A pretty cool mobile phone solution that does not even need a smartphone... maybe one could use this information for crowd sourcing

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