Getting the business model right to make mobile telephony work better for farmers

The transformative power of mobile telephones has everyone abuzz with excitement, not least of which includes the e-Agriculture community. And rightly so! As urban markets in developing countries are becoming increasingly saturated and tariff wars have almost cannibalized the sector in some cases, mobile telephone companies have had to rely more and more on value-added services to ensure a captive audience in the rural areas. Just what differentiates a company from another depends on the types of service innovations a mobile phone company can introduce. And this creates a real opportunity for development agencies to facilitate and leverage the power of the private sector to effect large scale change.

Be it Vodafone’s M-Pesa or Grameen Phone’s Village Phone concept, examples are abound that mobile phones have transformed lives the world over. So what lessons can the e-Agriculture community learn from the large scale success due to mobile telephony? It is essential to understand the business of mobile telephony first and foremost and link that with the needs of the agriculture sector. If overlapping interests make sense, then the chances of success of an initiative increase multifold. In other words, mobile telephone companies must make money by catering the specific needs of the agriculture sector. This is a simple but sometimes-forgotten concept among development practitioners. For example, where a mobile phone companies develops text messaging services or a call center for farmers to call in for solutions to their problems, the innovation must add to the bottom line of the company one way or the other. Often, development practitioners invoke and subsidize corporate social responsibility to facilitate, which in reality are really philanthropic activities of mobile companies, and these initiatives do not sustain over a long run because they are not part of the overall business strategy of the companies.

Included in the business model is the service offer which puts the focus on content for the agriculture sector. It is important to identify not only the type of information required by the agriculture sector, but more importantly, the type of information that is feasible to deliver effectively through this medium. Often, mobile phones are misunderstood for panacea for all ills that befall the agriculture sector, and this cannot be further from the truth. Mobile phones have limitations. Experience around the world, particularly in South Asia, shows that mobile phones are best equipped to provide price, vendor and weather information; and quick solutions to problems such as endemic diseases. Mobile phones have limitations in delivering more nuanced information such as soil fertility, cultivation techniques, post-harvest processing, among others.

Another challenge development practitioners regularly face is in ensuring the quality of content. Focus should be on the process of collecting, collating, vetting, packaging and updating the content on a regular basis. And this works only if there are real incentives for actors involved to play their respective roles over the long haul. The mobile phone company plays an important role to incentivize the actors.

In short, development practitioners must see the bottom line of the mobile phone companies to inspire innovations and ensure provision of sustained services to those at the bottom of the pyramid.

Manish Pandey is the South Asia Regional Director at Swisscontact (Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation), and is based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.