Prior to the establishment of the ECAMIC project, farmers in the Eastern Corridor used the women traders who came to buy from them as sources of information about the prices of the produce they were coming to buy. This phenomenon meant the buyer was in control of the vital market information about what they were coming to buy. The intervention of ECAMIC is gradually giving way to the seller also being able to refer the buyer to what they know about the previous day’s price from the various market centres thereby taking control of decision making. The provision of accurate and timely market information to farmers in the Eastern Corridor has enhanced their negotiations and marketing decisions concerning the sale of their produce. Market information is now made available to the larger community through notice boards instead of only the cooperatives.

Despite the successes achieved, one of the biggest challenges of the ECAMIC project is how to reduce the recurring costs of the project activities to ensure sustainability when the project ends. Maintaining VSAT for internet access to be able disseminate information to the project field Offices /centres was very costly for farmer cooperatives to pay after the close (project funding ends). Furthermore, the End-User Evaluation of the pilot phase acknowledged the critical role the market price information has been making to the lives of the farm-families despite the challenges associated with the transmission of such information. The principal challenge has been the delay between the information at the field office to the farmers in the communities. To address this challenges, the project resorted to the use of mobile phones to disseminate market information by SMS alerts to farmers. A system called TRADENET (www.tradenet.biz) is an electronic platform that permits users to sign-up for SMS alerts to receive market information for commodities and markets they are interested in. Users can also indicate their areas of business and receive instant SMS alerts for offers to buy and sell as soon as anyone else on the network has submitted an offer via their mobile. This system permits the project to publish any information to farmers through their phones by SMS.

To increase accessibility to mobile phones among farmer cooperatives in the Eastern Corridor he ECAMIC project facilitated the procurement of mobile phones for farmers in view of the shift in emphasis from internet based access to SMS via cellular phones. The process would involve the deployment of a total of 200 cellular handsets at subsidized rates to the farmer’s cooperatives. Women paid 60% and Men paid 70% of the total cost of a mobile phone. Building the capacity of farmer cooperatives on the use this phones to access market information is key in assuring farmers continuous access to market information after the close of the project. To this effect, series of training has been conducted for farmer cooperatives on the use of mobile phones to facilitate accessing of market information. Farmers now receive text messages on update of market price, request for market prices of commodities form various market centers and send offers to sell their produce.

The vision of the Community Information Centre concept is to create rural access centres and use the medium of ICT to promote community-based ICT applications that will promote operational efficiencies delivered through effective and timely availability of information. The purpose is to provide community development information and business services to remote communities. CIC’s will provide access to: Internet-enabled computers, software based on the local information needs, Fax machines, Printers, Copiers, Telephones, Television and Radios. In addition there will be an adjoining library with books and daily newspapers and magazines.

The International Institute for communication and development(IICD) is partnering with GIFTEL to support the Community Information Centres (CICs) in the the north. The CICs are Salaga,Walewale, Bimbilla and possibly Nkwanta. Following from this, Officials from IICD and GIFTEL visited those districts to meet the various District Chief Executives.

In the meetings with the DCEs in their respective district, It came out clearly that one key area that IICD can support is capacity building for the managers and staff of the centers.

Officials of IICD and GIFTEL meeting with Salaga District Assembly

Simpa Open Summit has open the pace for me to embrace wireless technology as the cost effective means of connectivity (building networks) .

The design of a network, like any technology solution, begins with a requirement which is then introduced to the limitations of the medium – good architecture optimizes the trade offs, resulting in a creative design which at least meets the requirement within safe working limits.

To make good use of the knowledge acquired at Simpa (wireless networks), I intend to:

• Build on whatever I have learnt ( go through the topics covered)
• Setup an appropriate security feature on our wireless network to determine who has access.
• Manage and maintain our network
• Install appropriate software on the network( additional software
• Search for more information on wireless networks

One Village Foundation-Ghana (OVF-Ghana) in partnership with Ghana Information Network for knowledge Sharing (GINKS), IICD and Wireless Ghana organized a 10-day Wireless Training workshop called Simpa Open Summit. This is taking place at the Winneba Open Digital Village (WODiV) in Winneba from August 1 – 10, 2007.This is a point of convergence for at least fifty (40) personnel from the IT Community in Ghana and Nigeria.

Topics covered in the 9-day hand-son session are:

• Setting up, installing and configuring wireless networks
• Open Source and wireless LAN
• Network Security
• Bandwidth management

• Managing and trouble-shooting the wireless Network
• Setting Up a Community Wireless Network
• Wireless Business Models
• USB WiFi Technologies and
• Building Antennas with local materials.

7th day of the summit.

Participants are taken through practically how to setup and configure wireless networks. It’s intresting here at Simpa and everybody is putting up his best to gain knowledge on Wireless Technology. See picture below.

Hi,

I’m Mumuni Mohammed. I work for SEND Foundation of West Africa . I’m happy to part be of th e blogging fraternity and promise to share with my colleague bloggers current issues on ICT4D.

Best regards