By Djibi Dem and Mikaila Issa
The Senegalese primary sector is booming with a range of technological solutions for the rural world. In the region of Thiès, farmers have welcomed the digital platform ”Mlouma” with open arms; a technological innovation that facilitates the sale and online purchase of products from different agricultural activities.
Paul Diop is a young Senegalese vegetable farmer specialized in tomato, chilli and potatoes. He periodically receives emissaries of Mlouma in his field, located in Mbawane in the region of Thiès.
“I would sell my produce of the last harvest more quickly on the internet if Mlouma had been there earlier,” Paul hints. In the same village, Talla Mboup, another farmer, was surprised at the village market Keur Abdou Ndoye, a short distance from Thiès, for the sale of his agricultural products. “I appreciate the technological innovation of Mlouma for the rapid sale of agricultural products,” says the farmer.
In landlocked areas of Senegal, where the internet is not accessible to the population, ‘Mlouma’ can work thanks to the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) service accessible from simple mobile phones to facilitate the use of the virtual market even without the internet connection.
With the USSD service, growers can send the necessary information about their products to the platform, while buyers have access to details of product availability and pricing. Once collected, this information is processed and validated before being published on the Mlouma website.
“The farmer just needs to dial #112# on his mobile phone”, explains the initiator Aboubacar Sidi Sonko, “He then follows the instructions and pays a subscription fee of about 300 CFA francs (less than 50 euro cents) to find a product or to advertise the existence of a product”.
Through its representatives in the seven regions currently covered, the Mlouma application organizes meetings with peasants to collect information on their crops and prices. At the same time, agricultural producers are informed about the registration to its services online and via mobile phone. In fact, the platform will provide them with real-time information on the offers and demands of the agricultural market.
The Mlouma start-up is the initiative of a young Senegalese engineer, Aboubacar Sidi Sonko, who decided to help the farmers quickly find markets for their crops. Originally from the Casamance region, he is himself a peasant son and hopes to contribute to agricultural development. In May 2011, Aboubacar started searching for a technological innovation to benefit the Senegalese agricultural sector. To do this he joined the CTIC Dakar incubator where he received all the necessary support.
The young computer engineer decided to repair an injustice suffered by the peasants who had no control over the marketing of their agricultural products. Mlouma has seen the end of post-harvest losses and poor sales.
The website www.mlouma.com provides an interconnection between farmers and potential buyers. It gives a sample of the agricultural products available in each of the production zones, and each market. The producers can post the products they wish to sell, whilst the buyers can reserve the products that they want.
An SMS application accessible to farmers
Thanks to a partnership with Sonatel (Orange), Aboubacar and his staff have developed a mobile application using the USSD service. This application, which can run on any mobile phone, has been specially designed to promote interaction with the Mlouma web platform. Until 2015 there were some 500 users connected to the platform, but since incorporating the USSD system, Mlouma now has more than 100,000 users.
The platform includes a service to address the concerns of its potential customers. The members of this service provide customers with all possible details on how the start-up works.
A call center for real people has been set up to assist all those who do not have access to the services of Mlouma. This helps to help everyone buy and/or sell agricultural products.
Mlouma is now one of Africa’s leading web and mobile service providers dedicated to the agricultural sector and the rural world. This business model is based on subscriptions available to farmers, producer groups, and agro-food industries.
This reporting is a part of the Agritools project, which is supported by the European Journalism Centre and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
