Ghana farmers get SMS info service

VALUE ADDED SERVICES

MTN Ghana has launched the MTN/Esoko M-Agric Service, aimed at providing agricultural information in the form of SMS alerts to its customers.

The service will provide information on farming and agric produce through the short code 1900 at a cost of 8p per text. Customers can request for information such as produce price alerts, bids and offers, and news and advisories, using the short code. Other services available on the platform include, inventory counts and transport information.

MTN is sponsoring the training of 500 farmers on the use and benefits of the Esoko Information Product. These farmers will also enjoy free SMS subscription to Esoko’s market information for one year.

This initiative provides a platform for famers and agricultural enterprises to interact with their customers through the mobile phone.  

Launching the service, the Corporate Services Executive of MTN, Mrs. Cynthia Lumor, expressed the telecom giant’s excitement at being part of a project which demonstrates MTN’s commitment to innovation and the provision of world class telecom services to Ghanaians.

“We at MTN are very excited to partner Esoko on this project to make available to our valued customers relevant and up to date information related to farming. This is aimed at enriching the lives of our customers by providing them unlimited access to agricultural information,” she said.

She expressed the hope that the project would further boost the growth of the agricultural industry, described as the backbone of economic development of Ghana.

Esoko is an agricultural market information platform created to respond to the ever increasing cellular services in Africa which is managed on the web and delivered via mobile.  Individuals, agri-business, government and projects can use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. The platform provides automatic and personalized price alerts, buy and sell offers, bulk SMS messaging, stock counts and SMS polling.