The Government of Rwanda contends that investment in knowledge of ICTs will open doors to global interactivity and competition thus paving way to a future of endless opportunities. The Government believes that all citizens must be equipped with the basic IT skills as a prerequisite for existence in the ICT age. The focus here is most definitely on people: The Government of Rwanda is striving to ensure that all citizens get the opportunity to continue, start or restart on the path to success.

With more than 75% of Rwanda's economically active population earns their living, directly or indirectly, from agriculture and mostly through subsistence farming. The success of these farmers has been greatly affected by lack of access to pricing information. Many times, farmers speculate what crops to grow and what prices to charge at harvest. Some farmers depend on middlemen to dictate the prices and in most cases the latter exploit the former. For any farmer to earn a decent living from agriculture, easy access to information on market prices is of paramount importance.

The eRwanda Project, a World Bank funded ICT for Development project being implemented by the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) intends to remedy this critical information gap with the use of ICTs through its e-SOKO Project that seeks to empower farmers to enable them make more informed market pricing decisions and ultimately more successful farming. This Agricultural Market Pricing Information System will also significantly enhance the Ministry of Agriculture – MINAGRI’s interaction with the farmers and traders as well as the planning function.

The eRwanda Project will provide training to the farmers on the use and maintenance of the eSoko System equipment in order to sustain the new communication channels that will have been introduced by the system. For farmers without mobile phones, village phones can be used to access the prices. The field staff employed by MINAGRI to collect this information will be equipped with smart phones to collect and enter the pricing information in the databases.

The Vision for the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources [MINAGRI] is to modernize Agriculture and Livestock to achieve food security. One of the key pillars of the ministry is “Transformation of Agriculture from subsistence to a productive high value, market oriented farming that is environmentally friendly and has an impact on other sectors of the economy”.

In its process of transformation and modernization of agriculture and livestock, the Ministry has set up this Market Price Information System (e-SOKO) that leverages the power of Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of MINAGRI’s process of collecting, processing, and diffusion of market information including market prices and other relevant data.

For more information and details on ongoing initiatives – refer to the links below;

www.minagri.gov.rw

www.amis.minagri.gov.rw

www.esoko.gov.rw

www.library.minagri.gov.rw

The eRwanda Project, a World Bank funded ICT for Development project being implemented by the Rwanda Information Technology Authority (RITA) intends to remedy this critical information gap with the use of Information and Communication Technologies through its eSoko Project that seeks to empower farmers to enable them make more informed market pricing decisions and ultimately more successful farming. This Agricultural Market Pricing Information System will also significantly enhance the Ministry of Agriculture - MINAGRI’s interaction with the farmers and traders.

The eRwanda Project in its bit to have farmers and traders fully utilise the eSoko system will provide training to the Ministry officials, farmers, traders and the overall general public on the use and maintenance of the eSoko System equipment in order to sustain the new communication channels that will have been introduced by the system.

For farmers without mobile phones, village phones can be used to access the prices. Farmers will be given additional training such as using telecenters, computer, business development and managerial skills (in collaboration with Private Sector Federation). It is hoped that ultimately, groups of farmers who are empowered to make their own decisions based on accurate, up-to-date and timely information will contribute greatly to rural development and the fight against poverty.

eRwanda

The eRwanda project, supported by the World Bank, has an overall mandate to deliver a better life for all. The eRwanda project aims at use of ICT to simplify Government procedures, bringing transparency, accountability, allowing greater public access to information and making credible timely information available to all citizens, as well as providing all services in an efficient and cost-effective manner on an online basis.Read more

MINAGRI

Agriculture has played a distinctive role in Rwandan culture and history. Through enormous expenditure of human labour, livelihoods have been sustained for ages and generations given rise to others.

Rwanda ’s current agricultural status and orientation for the future entails primarily, the stepping up of activities that develop and promote agricultural and livestock production.Read more

VOXIVA

Voxiva is a leading global provider of mobile centric information solutions. Our solutions let clients collect and analyze real-time data from the field, communicate and interact with their staff and clients more effectively. Our solutions leverage the world's 3.5 billion mobile phones as well as fixed phones, PCs, PDAs, the web and other technologies for a much broader reach than Internet-only solutions.Read more

Other Partners
Ministry of Commerce
Nation Institute of Statistics of Rwanda