With iCow and M-Farm, smartphones reboot African agriculture | Top News | Reuters: "The growth of Africa's middle-class combined with a fall in the prices of technology has opened up opportunities for investment in farms on the world's poorest continent.
"Africa is key to global food supply and we need to unlock its potential," said Mark Davies, a dotcom veteran who runs Esoko, which provides advice to farmers and links them with traders in a virtual marketplace.
Esoko charges farmers $1 a month to use the service and businesses pay between $3,000-$20,000 annually. Other apps recently launched include a Kenyan cattle-monitoring app called iCow and online marketplace M-Farm, which has partnered with Samsung.
By 2025, half of Africa's 1 billion population will have Internet access and there will be 360 million smartphones on the continent, according to McKinsey consultants.
Internet technology could increase annual agricultural productivity in Africa by $3 billion-a-year, McKinsey says."
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Tuesday, March 17, 2015
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