When farm meets city, and an age-old industry meets the high-tech world, you get ‘Meet the Market.’
It’s an event where mobile and web application, or app, developers aiming to use information and communications technologies to improve agriculture presented their ideas, in a move to attract investors and connect to farmers. Meet the Market took place recently at K Lab in Kigali, Rwanda.
The organizers say that their objective was to provide opportunities to farmers and organizations that support farming-related projects to get enough information about ICT products and services available in the market. They said they also wanted to create opportunities for farmers’ cooperatives and app developers to discuss business proposals, which could lead to deals.
“We are not developing these applications to keep them on our own,” said Claude Migisha Kalisa, Manager of K Lab, in his introductory remarks.
Four mobile and application developers presented their project ideas to the audience. They focused on business models, partners, competitors, finding solutions to agricultural problems, and showing how their apps work to help farmers access agricultural information.
Apps presented included: Sarura, a voice and SMS application to help farmers get relevant information to increase productivity; Eagreconnect, which is a web application to publish East African agricultural and investment information; e-ikigaga, a platform using the latest technologies (video, web, SMS) to develop business solutions in agriculture; and Agrilink, a platform for connecting agricultural stakeholders to exchange ideas and network.
After each presentation, the audience was allowed to ask questions, and make clarifications, comments or suggestions on what can be done to improve the application’s functionality to become more efficient to solve problems farmers face.
At the end of all of the outstanding presentations, there was a brainstorming session in which attendants shared what they thought about the mobile and web applications, and got a chance to meet developers in one-on-one or group discussions to learn more about their innovative projects.
Some attendants suggested that the applications should be translated into Kinyarwanda, since many farmers know it better than English.
“Meet the Market has been very successful. It is a learning process. We heard challenges and recommendations from the audience on how these apps can work better: for instance, cost issues, language translation, etc.,” Espérance Mukarugwiza told VijanaFM. She is the coordinator of Agri-Hub, the event co-organizer and an organization that promotes farming entrepreneurship.
“The event was good, well attended, exposing young developers to the market. We hope that deals will be signed to promote [these projects],” said Alex Ntale, director of Rwanda ICT Chamber.
Initiatives such us Meet the Market are a good move to promote effective use of ICT to solve local problems. All stakeholders in ICT and other development partners’ collaboration is key to achieving a knowledge-based economy, one of Rwanda’s Vision 2020 goals.
