Esoko is a pioneering technology company driving Africa’s digital revolution. The company achieves this through the development of simple yet powerful mobile and web-based tools and services that empower organisations seeking to provide critical services to the last mile. The company’s mission is to improve the revenues of the continent’s rural population and it hopes to encourage their economic empowerment through digital and financial inclusion.
Organisations worldwide use Esoko technology to collect and disseminate data about people and markets via smart phone, tablet, web, SMS and voice SMS. Based in Accra, Ghana, the company has a geographical footprint that spans Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Burkina Faso, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria and South Africa.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Insyt
Insyt provides a mobile and web-based platform for data collection, paper-form digitisation, agent management and data analysis – helping agencies convert from paper, thus reducing cost, time and errors in targeting customers or gaining visibility and insights into their own operations. Via a simple mobile device, organisations can:
- Digitise all paper forms and customise work flows and then migrate into the digital space
- Capture any type of data from the field including socio-economic data, registration of people or assets, household data, farm-level data, images, signatures, fingerprints and GIS
- Track inventory, monitor last-mile distribution and manage field-level transactions and sales from multiple locations in real time
- Map land areas into GIS polygons or point maps without a separate GPS receiver
- Collect data in both online and offline mode.
The web management portal features real-time data monitoring and insights through analytics. Insyt has been the backbone technology of many government-led agricultural and social protection programmes including the Ghana National Household Registry, the Planting for Food and Jobs programme and Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty initiative in Ghana – a flagship social protection programme that helps government agencies profile more than 3.7 million individuals, map 42 087 ha and capture 695 000 biometric profiles for improved targeting.
For medium- to large-scale survey exercises Esoko offers field-agent recruitment, training and deployment and customised workflows including payment and verifications services. Learn more and sign up via insyt.esoko.com.
Digital Farmer Service
The Esoko Digital Farmer Service is an innovative agricultural value-chain digitisation service that leverages mobile and web technologies to develop a super-agent network across vulnerable farming communities.
Agents equipped with tablets running Esoko technologies are the conduits for providing critical services to thousands of smallholders. These critical services include credit to finance agricultural operations, insurance to increase farmer resilience to emerging threats and economic stressors, input subsidy programmes and access to input and output markets.
The service creates an ecosystem around the agents, comprising key value-chain actors such as input providers, mechanisation service providers, financial institutions (including insurance companies) and grain off-takers.
All transactions within the agricultural value chain are recorded and digitised using smart cards that are enabled by the Esoko mobile money wallet and global payment provider Visa, helping farmers build a history of transactions that can be used by third parties such as banks to assess and provide credit/loans.
The system also enables biometric verification for interventions such as subsidy programmes within the agricultural industry and making cash payments to the last mile.
Information services
Esoko provides a simple but powerful communication tool for businesses, projects, NGOs and governments to connect with farmers. The company offers a cloud-hosted web platform that allows any project or organisation to customise its network and areas of interest; profile recipients; then send information to them at a low cost via SMS, voice SMS and a call centre.
Esoko’s original content and e-extension offering includes:
- Market prices covering more than 52 agricultural commodities
- Climate-smart agricultural technologies and seasonal forecast delivered via SMS, voice SMS, interactive voice response and call centre
- Bids and offers, linking buyers to sellers
- Good agronomic practices
- A call centre staffed with agricultural experts who speak the local languages
- The facility for organisations to send their own content – promotions, announcements, reminders and so on – via the platform.
More than 1 million farmers have received 30 million SMSes via the Esoko platform, with 220 000 calls coming in through the call centre.
Knowledge Plus app
Knowledge Plus (K+) is a digital extension and training app that allows users to create any kind of content on the web and publish it to mobile devices for offline access in hard-to-reach areas. K+ is a direct response to the problem of low-extension worker-to-farmer ratios in Africa. K+ features include:
- A web portal to create and publish content, including text, video, photo and quizzes
- A mobile-based app, where published content is accessible offline after initial syncing
- Report and feedback functions.
The K+ app is being used by the Farm Africa-led Sesame project in Tanzania to provide rural communities with better agronomic practices.
