Ubia Soko: The story of Tech and Smallholder farmers

We were finalising our initial field training  sessions today. It’s been an insightful and valuable stage in our rollout. We are continuing with further farmer registration over the next 2-3 weeks. The traders with whom we have been working are taking over this part of the process  - keen to extend registration. Our target is to have registered some 10,000 -15,000 farmers during 2019 with them trading mainly rice using Ubia Soko and ordering inputs provided by our distributors. We will continue to blog of our progress over the coming weeks. However if you have any questions please let us know by sending a comment

While we know some international development agencies encourage participation through so-called "sitting fees" - Ubia Soko relies on word of mouth, farmer networks and the usefulness of the product to attract interest - we use the app to message farmers. 70 plus smallholders, both men and women, travelled up to 4 kms to attend the Ubia Soko training session in Michenga today. Almost all participants had phones but not all phones were reliable. It was a very wet day but farmers overcame their logistical problems to be trained to use the Ubia Soko app.

In July a few of the Agriinsight team visited Mbalaji village. When we returned today we were encouraged to see that the farmers had kept their passwords and wanted to continue to use the Ubia Soko service. We worked with farmers who were keen to train and learn more and some helped new farmers to register. This was a succesful farmer association; the secretary of the association can run the training himself. We will work with these proactive groups and their leaders. This village was also well supported by mobile network operators - how can we replicate these optimal conditions?