Answers for Nigerian Farmers: A Mobile Phone Service for Nigerian Farmers

In this document we describe the design and development of mobile phone-based question and answer service for Nigerian farmers and its planned deployment in two pilots in Nigeria, one in Sokoto and the other in Abuja. The service is intended to provide farmers with the opportunity to receive answers to their questions about what crops to plant, how to care for their crops and to help them bring their excess produce to market. The work is the result of a three-way partnership involving experts in Agriculture and Computer Science at Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto and at the Digital Bridge Institute in Abuja and researchers from IBM’s Social Computing Group at the TJ Watson Research Center in New York.

By: Catalina M. Danis; Ahmed L. Ala; James E. Christensen; Jason B. Ellis; Hassan A. Faskari; Wendy A. Kellogg; Aminu Mohammed; Paulinus O. Ugwoke

Published in: RC25246 in 2011

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