Taking the Kenyan M-Farm as an inspiration, Tigo Tanzania,
the mobile phone service provider firm has taken an initiative to come up with
SMS based project which will help stakeholders in the Tanzania agriculture to
increase their efficiency and productivity through the ability to have weather
information and complete details on time. Speaking the project manager of the
‘Kilimo’ Project, Swahili term for agriculture, he said “Through this service
the firm will offer cost effective and scalable solutions to address these
challenges”.
The aim is to expand the project and enhance it so that the
system would be able to give comprehensive details on the agriculture industry
market prices as well as implementing interactive help line where by the users
of the service would be able to call for advice from professionals in the
industry.
The project entitled “Tigo Kilimo” will be targeting
specifically the local farmers and provide to them these sensitive details they
need to develop their business and facing the challenges raised up during their
production.
Although the project is still in pilot stage some of the
codes are yet working and you can try to access and have some details on what
it’s going to serve by dialing *148*14# on your registered Tigo Tanzania mobile
number. Some of the services which are going to be included on the USSD
platform include Weather, Crops, Livestock and My Farming those are among the
services in which people can access from the system.
About the usage farmers could easily access the service by
simply dialing *148*14#, it will direct them to the Tigo Kilimo menu from
there; they just have to follow the simple structured wizard to attain service.
We expect the application to provide general information on Daily weather
forecast, comprehensive details on soil management, pests control methods on
more than 20 common vegetables, fruits, grain crops and information on
Livestock care and Life style.
The Swahili version of the platform can be accessed by
selecting the fifth option on the platform
written in Swahili ‘kwa kiswahili’ which means in Swahili, so that the
intended members of the community which is the local farmers would be able to
access and use the platform accordingly
and efficiently.
Yaya Ndjore project manager for Tigo Kilimo said “Using
mobile based agriculture solutions will create linkages and help farmers
improve their farming practices”.
Tigo is the official sponsor of the National Holiday “Nane
Nane” which is marked every year to recognize the contribution of the
Agriculture sector to the central economy. Since the holiday is celebrated in
the month of August, Tigo has declared the service to be free for the whole
month of August for people to use.