The Elusive SMS Interface

When you spend time in Africa you realize immediately that the use mobile phones for SMS is huge. In the big cities just about everyone has a phone. Even in rural areas, most farmers use mobile phones regularly. Applications such as FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS have made it relatively easy for NGOs and others working in Africa to setup and deploy SMS broadcast to provide a variety of services.

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AGCommons Data Search

We will be making some changes to the AGCommons Data Search in the coming months after the launch of the revamped web site. The existing Data Search was created at the beginning of the program to provide a centralized location for spatial metadata discovery and management for AGCommons partner organizations.

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Applying mapping technology to make spatial information useful in Africa

In the last post I tried to summarize some of the goals and inputs to the AGCommons technology platform that will ultimately benefit small-holder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

From a technical perspective what does it take to do this?

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AGCommons technical infrastructure – How to make spatial data useful to farmers?

A major component of the AGCommons program from the beginning has been to find a way to make spatial information more relevant and useful to small-holder farmers in the field. The idea that we can bring the same level of location intelligence used by large scale farming operations and agribusinesses in North America to small-holder farmers in Africa is not far fetched. This was validated during the AGCommons outreach trip(s) last April and has been proven by the Quick Win projects started last year but now wrapping up.

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Target Architecture – Information Delivery

A large consideration in Africa for building systems to deliver data and information is the delivery mechanism itself. Unlike the highly connected, relatively cheap bandwidth environments of the United States and Europe, most of Africa is not connected. This is especially true for rural farmers, the people who we are eventually trying to serve.

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