Zowasel Receives Technical Support From Mercy Corps AgriFin To Develop USSD/IVR Infrastructures

Zowasel has received technical assistance from Mercy Corps AgriFin to develop Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)/Interactive Voice Response (IVR) infrastructures for farmers-facing organizations to access its products and services through mobile-based messaging to drive smallholder farmers’ productivity, sustainability, and profitability.

The Mercy Corps AgriFin-supported project aims to provide demand-driven R&D content support through its Sprout digital open content platform. During the first phase, Zowasel will develop infrastructures to facilitate digital advisory services to be accessible to farmers, using simple technologies like Short Message Service (SMS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) — sometimes referred to as “Quick Codes”, and interactive tools like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for learning, improved productivity, and inclusiveness.

During the second phase, the company will collaborate and co-create digital content with various scaling partners through data-driven research. It will improve its technology to include WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Chatbots, API, and other user-friendly mobile apps for farmers-facing organizations.

According to Jerry OCHE, Zowasel’s CEO, “The goal is to provide farmers with a platform to unlock the potential of digital solutions to transform farming across communities. “We believe that by leveraging simple data protocols like IVR, USSD, and SMS, we will enable farmers to connect over their existing telco networks using their feature phones, and we will significantly impact smallholder farmers across remote communities to access Zowasel’s full suites of digital solutions using their preferred local languages”, he added.

The support will enable Zowasel to harness, digitize, and scale its digital products and services including Market Information, Market Access, Precision Agriculture, and Alternative Credit Evaluation Scoring System (ACESS) to smallholder farmers by employing mobile phone-based messaging channels anywhere, anytime.

“We’re supporting Zowasel to develop USSD and IVR infrastructures to increase access to its existing digital solutions through real-time mobile phone-based messaging channels. This deepens the learning curve for us at Mercy Corps AgriFin as we explore how effective it is to provide digital content to smallholder farmers through a platform like Zowasel that provides services to other farmer-facing organizations,’’ according to Oludolapo Olusanmokun, Program Engagement Consultant, Mercy Corps AgriFin.

This partnership will also help tackle the challenges of inadequate infrastructure, access to reliable and affordable internet connectivity, low smartphone ownership, low levels of digital literacy, and insufficient customized content that smallholder farmers face.

About Zowasel

Zowasel leverages technology and data science to develop sustainable value chain solutions for farmers-facing organizations from knowledge, finance, and market to improve smallholder farmers’ productivity, sustainability, and profitability.

About Mercy Corps AgriFin

Mercy Corps AgriFin programming works with a network of more than 150 partners across Africa to support the development of digitally-enabled products and services for smallholder farmers (SHFs) to increase their productivity, incomes, and resilience by 50% while reaching at least 40% of women.

For inquiries and partnerships, please feel free to email us at partners@zowasel.com.