MoMo Kampala cordially invites you to attend The Role of Mobiles in Reaching out to Farmers in the Last Mile, co-hosted by Grameen Foundation and MTN Uganda Monday 18th July at MTN Nyonyi Gardens, with Fenix Intl sponsoring the catering for the informal networking. 

The event will be in a panel  format (see speakers panel below) and will explore several key questions:

To what extent might a group of small scale farmers, using information from their mobile phones to increase their productivity and market access, enjoy higher prices and better terms, indeed greater prosperity?

The dramatic increase in quality and decrease in cost of information collection and distribution associated with mobile data collection has the potential to improve the development and delivery of products and services to the rural BOP. How much could this information impact future development projects and business proposals?

A world bank funded project to survey watershed distribution with the aim of protecting those watersheds critical to agricultural productivity was able, thanks to GIS mobile apps, to take advantage of mobile phone GPS functionality, to conduct 800 surveys in only a month, an otherwise impossible task, and thus provide highly cost-effective timely decisions to be made by development organizations to be made in water resource management.  Apropos of which, consider the productivity losses incurred by lack of rural infrastructure, for example by a mother and daughter having to walk a few kilometres to a borehole to bring water for their family, maybe twice a day, not to mention firewood, and the time – and kilocalories expended by their efforts, which require that they eat that much more of their own crop.  How much could this kind of information impact positively on future development projects? http://dispatch.ug/2011/07/07/can-a-mobile-phone-help-farmers-yes/

MoMo Kampala will explore these ideas by convening expert speakers on the topic who can generate rich discussion among participants on what constitutes best practice in mAgriculture and to generate new ideas for how mobile technologies can be leveraged to deliver needed products and services to farmers in the village.

Chair: Sean Krepp, Country Director Grameen Foundation Uganda

Richard Mwami, Head Public Access & Mobile Money, MTN Uganda, Mobile Poverty Transfers

Mobile Money Payments with WFP

Robert Kintu, Managing Director, FIT Uganda, Market Information Systems

Creating Sustainable Farmer Services with Mobile technologies

Geresom Okecho, Senior Program Officer Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, NAADS

Mobile Application in Agricultural Extension in Uganda

Luke Kyohere, Technology Manager, Grameen Foundation

Smartphones in Last Mile Agriculture