Smart Village system

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Presenters:
Stuart Mugabe (CEO TTCS Rwanda)
Josphat Chitombo (Pre-Sales Consultant – TTCS Global)

Smart Farmer Solution

Agricultural communities currently face countless challenges which negatively impact their operations. Among these are limited access to extension services, information on diseases, weak networks with stakeholders and markets, and limited real-time information on national, regional and international market prices.

Some of these challenges are more critical than others; the lack of insight and access to markets often results in revenue loss to unscrupulous middlemen who buy from desperate producers and resell to markets at marginally higher prices. Further, poor disease warning and reactionary systems lead to loss of produce worth millions every year. The poor communication channels between producers and prospective buyers dampen profits even more.

All these challenges are characterized by the common root of lack of access to crucial information on-the-go.

The Smart Village system provides a multichannel access platform which allows farmers to send and receive agricultural information, sell and buy agricultural produce, retrieve and track prices of particular agricultural commodities.

The following are some of the high level services:

• Farmer to farmer collaborations and interactions , sharing ideas, opinions and experiences
• Farmer and Government communications and interactions, e.g. alerts on diseases, weather, announcements etc
• Farming guides where the farmer have detailed outline of activities involved when embarking a specific agricultural activities e.g. how do one grow strawberries.
• Crop budget where a farmer can simulate the required inputs and the expected output under specific climatic conditions.
• Price retrieval and tracking by the farmers and other stakeholders
• Sending and receiving of agricultural alerts
• Commodities offering and bidding
• Location services for service providers e.g. transport, agricultural inputs, etc
• Marketplace location services
• E-extension services

These services assist farmers throughout the production cycle – from planning stage until sale, whether locally, regionally or globally. Smart Village solution offers a new way through which agricultural activities are improved.

The platform has already been set up at Broadband Service Corporation (BSC) and can be , before going live.