The Vodafone Group, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and non-profit organisation TechnoServe‘s Connected Farmer Alliance (CFA) has announced that it will provide 30 000 Tanzanian farmers under Olam International with mobile phones to help increase productivity and income.

With the mobile phones, the farmers in the coffee, cotton and cocoa industry will receive agriculture advice via text message, notifications about upcoming training sessions and events, real-time information about changes in market prices and the introduction of mobile money transfers using Vodafone’s M-PESA service in place of cash starting in December 2014 onwards.

Farmers and Olam International staff will also receive training from TechnoServe.

According to Vodafone,the agreement will lead to increased productivity and revenues for smallhold farmers supplying cash crops to Olam.

“Working with the CFA, we can put agriculture expertise, accurate data and payments in to the hands of smallholder farmers in real time and at considerable scale, no matter how remote,” said Olam environmental and social manager for South and East Africa, Jeremy Dufour.

[Image- CC 2.0 by Geograph.co.uk]