Mobile Landscape Analysis: Tanzania

Abstract

By the end of 2016 it was estimated that more than 420 million people in Africa owned a mobile phone, a penetration rate of 43%. In the agriculture sector in Africa, mobile-mediated services therefore appear to be well placed to deliver the information that smallholder farmers urgently need to boost their productivity and profitability. But what is the reality on the ground and the potential for establishing sustainable services? This mobile landscape analysis for Tanzania was undertaken to help answer these questions. It has drawn on literature and specially conducted research, including key informant interviews with representatives of leading players in the agriculture added-value services (Agri VAS) landscape in Tanzania. A key finding is that the main mobile network operators (MNOs) and other organizations have struggled to develop sustainable business models to deliver validated agronomic and up-to-date market information to farmers on a useful scale. Some services have been discontinued, and a major constraint identified by the service providers was the unavailability of the ‘right content’, i.e. validated and up to date. None of the farmer-focused information services covered in the survey were sustainable and the UPTAKE campaign was dependent on donor funding. This raises important questions about how the knowledge partners’ input should be funded; key amongst these questions is: is it desirable to extract revenue directly from poor farmers or should the costs be covered by grants, at least in the short to medium term?