Research on “Mobile Phones for Agricultural Development in Sri Lanka”

With the exponential growth of mobile telephony in developing world, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the mobile phone has become one of the best channels to reach the rural farmers.

Here in Sri Lanka, already there are some mobile phone (telephone) based initiatives to provide the agricultural and other related services. In this research some of the existing initiatives were studied to understand the reasons for success/failure and new ways for improvements;

Following are three main initiatives studied;

1920 – Agrarian advisory service by Ministry of Agriculture
1919 – Government Information Centre, Telephone Service
GovSMS –SMS based Commodity Price Dissemination Service

The survey was conducted in Dambull (in Central Province of Sri Lanka) area with hundred (100) vegetable and fruit farmers and covered many areas such as; Agricultural information requirements of farmers, practical challenges, their existing information sources, their perceptions and expectations with regard to mobile telephony in agriculture, technical aspects, financial aspects, etc.

Hoping to share some of the findings here in the future.

-Sameera.

Dialog tradenet - Agricultural Commodity Prices via Mobile Phones

Minister of Trade, Marketing Development, Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs, Bandula Gunawardena, is addressing gathering at the launch on 22nd December 2009.

Dialog Telekom, a telecommunication company, together with Farmer Intelligence Services [Govi Gnana Seva (GGS)] has launched a service to deliver spot and forward agricultural commodity price information via mobile phones.

Dialog tradenet is a project initiated by the Dialog’s ICT4D team to go beyond the conventional entertainment focused Value Added Services and make a meaningful relevance of ICT to the all the segments of the society, especially to the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). So everyone will be able to reap the dividends of ICT for their own socio-economic development.

Initially this will provide agri-produce price information from three Dedicated Economic Centres in Sri Lanka (Dambulla, Meegoda and Narahenpita). The scope of tradenet will be gradually expanded to industrial and service sectors also. GGS, as an organisation with the expertise on agriculture markets has joined with a technology expert, Dialog to make this initiative a success, by making it a win-win-win solution for all, including the poor farmers.

Among many other unique features, the usage of multiple channels/technologies to reach the end-users has made the system Affordable, Available and Accessible to the all the levels of the society including the BoP.

Call Centre : 977 (in local languages)

SMS : (in local languages)
Web : http://www.tradenet.dialog.lk/ (in local languages)
WAP : tradenetwap.dialog.lk
USSD : #977#

Moving farmers from subsistence agriculture to some level of agri-business will help them to come out of poverty. But for those poor farmers to actively participate in agri-business we have to create efficient agricultural markets with minimum information asymmetry.

-Sameera.

Disaster Emergency Warning Network (DEWN)

Sri Lanka’s First Mass Alert Emergency Warning System Launched

30 January 2009, Colombo: The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) of Sri Lanka, together with Dialog Telekom launched Sri Lanka’s first mass alert warning system – the Disaster & Emergency Warning Network (DEWN), under the patronage of Hon. Mahinda Samarasinghe, Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights. DEWN was developed by Dialog in collaboration with its partners the Dialog-UoM Research Lab and Microimage, following research and development undertaken after the tsunami disaster of 2004. DEWN is controlled by the DMC and is an Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) initiative by Dialog.

How DEWN Works

The Emergency Operations Centre of the DMC has been given access to the secure DEWN alerting interface. When information is received by the DMC, the information is verified and alerts can be issued.

In a potential disaster scenario, the DMC will first use DEWN to alert the emergency personnel on their individual phones, and public alerts will be issued only when a threat is adequately verified. In addition to messages received on mobile phones, specially designed DEWN remote alarms will also be used to alert nominated emergency personnel.

SMS -> District Coordinators of the DMC (25 Districts)
SMS -> Members in the Key Contact Database (heads of different institutions such as schools, hospitals, police stations, etc.)
SMS -> To the DEWN alarm devices which are located at the community centers
Cell Broadcast -> to the General Public (DEWN Alarm device too supports CB)

Sameera.