Understanding Crowdsourcing of Agricultural Market Information in a Pilot Study

Abstract

Access to agricultural markets and marketing information are essential factors in promoting competitive markets and improving agricultural sector development. The agricultural sector employs majorities in developing countries and contributes greatly to its development. Unluckily, majorities of the farmers are smallholders living in rural areas and thus, lack appropriate access to markets for their products and also, they are deprived of agricultural market information. As results, farmers are exploited by middlemen who offer low prices for their agricultural produce. This study presents the best way for the agricultural stakeholders to obtain easily agricultural market information service. This study presents a novel agricultural market information system which was implemented using some concepts of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing allows sellers to broadcast whatever produce they want to sell and customers are allowed to submit their requests using either SMS or web.

Transforming African Education Systems in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Using ICTs: Challenges and Opportunities

“…ICTs can be defined as a shorthand for the computers, software, networks, satellite links, and related systems that allow people to access, analyze, create, exchange, and use data, information, and knowledge in ways that were almost imaginable. e prevalence and rapid development of ICTs have transformed human society from the information age to the knowledge age in almost all sectors (e.g., ICT4agriculture [2][3][4][5], education [1,6], etc.). While that is the case, ICT is at an embryonic stage in the majority of African countries.…”