In order to better understand our market and potential customers, we investigated several existing products and services that provide information through SMS. Because of the vast number of products and services currently available on the market-- albeit extremely fragmented, we only considered those who have made an impact significant enough to learn strategies of adoption, proliferation of technology, and overall success factors. M-PESA M-PESA is a new Safaricom service allowing you to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all members of the public, even if you do not have a bank account or a bankcard. M-PESA provides an affordable, fast, convenient and safe way to transfer money by SMS anywhere in Kenya. Through M-PESA you can: deposit money, withdraw money, transfer money (send) to another M-PESA customer, transfer money (send) to someone who is not an M-PESA customer; in fact they need not even be a Safaricom customer, buy Safaricom prepaid airtime, manage your M-PESA account (i.e. show balance, call support, change PIN and change language). Organization/Partners: Safaricom and Vodaphone Technology Used: SMS, M-PESA Agents Business Plan: Premium Services Ushahidi Ushahidi's goal is to create a platform that any person or organization can use to set up their own way to collect and visualize information. The core platform will allow for plug-in and extensions so that it can be customized for different locales and needs. This tool will be tested and made available as an open source application that others can download, implement and use to bring awareness to crises in their own region. Organizations can also use the tool for internal monitoring purposes. The core engine is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time. It is being developed by a group of volunteer developers and designers, hailing primarily from Africa. So far there are representatives from Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, Ghana, Netherlands and the US. Organization/Partners: Frontline SMS, Humanity United, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Peace Caravan Technology Used: Frontline SMS, GIS and Mapping Software, SMS Business Plan: Non-profit status, pro bono Frontline SMS FrontlineSMS is free software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub. Once installed, the program enables users to send and receive text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. What you communicate is up to you, making FrontlineSMS useful in many different ways. It does not require an Internet connection, works with your existing plan on all GSM phones, modems and networks, is laptop-based so it can be used on the road or during power outages, stores all phone numbers and records all incoming and outgoing messages, all data lives on a local computer, not on servers controlled by someone else, is scalable, messages can be sent to individuals or large groups, enables two-way communication, useful for fieldwork or during surveys, it is easy to install and requires little or no training to use, it can be used anywhere in the world simply by switching the SIM card. Organization/Partners: Partnership Innovation Limited, Forensic Mobile Services, and the MacArthur Foundation Technology Used: Specialized software package, SMS, mobile phone as SMS gateway Business Plan: Open source software Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (KACE) Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (KACE) is a private sector firm launched in 1997 to facilitate linkage between sellers and buyers of agricultural commodities, provide relevant and timely marketing information and intelligence, provide a transparent and competitive market price discovery mechanism and harness and apply information and communication technologies (ICTs) for rural value addition and empowerment. Organization/Partners: Kenyan Ministry of Business and Agriculture Technology Used: FM Radio, SMS, Virtual Trading Floor Business Plan: government funded SMS Sokoni Kenya’s SMS Sokoni project provides agricultural information through SMS for a fee. The project is run by the Kenya Agricultural Commodities Exchange(KACE), a private firm, in partnership with African mobile service provider Safaricom Limited. Information kiosks are located near where agricultural commodity buyers and sellers meet to provide low-cost access to farmers. KACE workers collect information on prices from these kiosks and then send it to the farmers, buyers and exporters through SMS. Although the entry costs and per-unit costs for a KACE user are low, farmers need to feel that they get value for their fees to sign up and for the service to be sustainable in the longer term. According to the KACE website, farmers have quadrupled their earnings because they have access to information about potential buyers and prices. Organization/Partners: Safaricom and the Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange Technology Used: SMS, information kiosks Business Plan: Premium Services Agrotext Agrotext is service for farmers to use text messaging (SMS) to access a database of agricultural knowledge, including information on suppliers, appropriate seed variants for the region, disease threats, and more. Organization/Partners: The Harvard College Global Hunger Initiative Technology Used: Database, SMS Business Plan: Premium SMS, support from USAID Agriculture ECAMIC Tradenet (Ghana) TradeNet, a software company based in Accra, Ghana, will unveil a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in west Africa. It lets buyers and sellers indicate what they are after and their contact information, which is sent to all relevant subscribers as an SMS text message in one of four languages. Interested parties can then reach others directly to do a deal. Listing offers is free, as is receiving the texts. TradeNet plans to earn revenue by putting advertisements in the messages, though it hopes the service will become so useful that recipients will eventually want to pay. For the moment, though, the company is busy signing up users and swallowing the cost of sending the messages. TradeNet is the brainchild of Mark Davies, a British dotcom tycoon who gave up the rat race and went to Africa in 2000. In 2005, he started the prototype for TradeNet using around $600,000 of his own money and about $200,000 from aid agencies. An early set of trials last year generated a plethora of trades, such as a sale of organic fertilizer between a person in Yemen and another in Nigeria. Organization/Partners: Mark Davies Technology Used: website, SMS Business Plan: capital investment, premium services UmNyango Project The UmNyango Project will use SMS technology for rural women and men to access information to and report incidences of violence against women and children, as well as violations of women’s right to land. This initiative will be tested out in Dondotha, KwaDlangezwa, KwaGcwensa, Limehill and Muden, and if successful, will be rolled out on a wider scale. As well as using text messaging, the project will be enable women in these areas to produce their own radio programmes which will be made available to local radio stations, as well as being distributed over the internet as ‘podcasts’. Adv. Anil Naidoo, Project Team Leader said: “We have successfully tested the use of SMS technology for rural women farmers in KwaZulu Natal to access agricultural extension information. There is every indication that this technology will also work for rural women reporting on human rights abuse, including domestic violence.” Organization/Partners: Fahamu and partnerships with the Centre for Public Participation, Community Law and Rural Development Centre, Domestic Violence Assistance Project, Indiba-Africa Development Alliance, Participatory Development Initiative and the Rural Women’s Movement Technology Used: SMS Business Plan: funded by the Dutch International Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries |