The government in collaboration with the World Bank, and the West Africa Agricultural Production Program (WAAPP) has started piloting the e-Agriculture & extension program throughout the country.

The initiative is part of government’s effort to promote productivity in the agricultural sector.

The e-Agriculture & extension program which is being spearheaded by an indigenous company, Prep-eez Ltd, is working on expanding a free multi lingual interactive voice response (IVR) system and audio conferencing/free messaging services (farmer/expert meetings) that has currently attracted over 40,000 active subscribers and an average daily usage of 2000. It can be accessed using standard mobile phone with languages, including, Twi, Ga, Ewe, Nzema, Dagbani and Frafra.

According to the CEO of Prep-eez Tech Ltd, Kow Sam, the company under the e-agricultural program is up-scaling the service to cover the entire country in the next couple of months.  He also noted that over 8 languages would be added to the existing ones.

Similar project is being executed in Nigeria, La Cote d’Ivoire and other West African countries.

The company is also building a toll-free multi lingual call-centre at the Ministry of Food and Agricultural (MoFA) resource centre.

This, he said, would allow direct access to information in real time from experts by farmers through standard phones at zero cost to them.

Mr. Sam said three e-resource centres are being established in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale. This would afford women and youth in agricultural the opportunity to build business plans, research and experimentations, as well as cash flow and productivity and performance analysis for effective output.

While users can access the centres for free, MTN is also offering a 60 percent discount to enable farmers on the platform to interact among themselves to boost their productivity, he said.

In addition, a centralized web portal is being developed as a one stop shop for agric- related business institutions and research.

Prep-eez is a fully Ghanaian-owned communications, content & integration entity specializing in the design and deployment of convergence of mobile, web and PC collaboration platforms. It has used technology to deliver relevant content to players in the educational, road safety, health and agricultural sectors.

Meanwhile, countries such as Sierra Leone, Togo and Liberia, who have expressed immense interest, have visited Ghana and tested the system and are already preparing for the deployment of a similar concept in their various countries, he added.