VPs listen as SlimTrader team members demonstrate the MoBiashara service in a makeshift training center.
Now that we’ve provided background on the area in which we’re working and detailed how the MoBiashara service helps farmers connect with Notore, let’s talk about the implementation process.
The setting: Jalingo, the capital of Nigeria’s Taraba state. The participants: 17 Village Promoters (VP), representing eight local governments; two representatives of Notore; and three Slimtrader team members. The goal: to make MoBiashara that much better going forward for Notore and the farmers in Taraba, as well as our other clients in our other areas of operation.
MoBiashara helps distribute crucial Notore fertilizers from trading centers in Taaraba (pictured) to farmers.
After demonstrating MoBiashara to the VPs, they noted a variety of benefits, which, in the aggregate, had the ability to positively, and profoundly, impact the means of distribution. This would have a number of equally positive-and yes, profound-effects:
- Despite the distribution challenges the localities are currently facing, MoBiashara engenders efficient supply chain management.
- The VPs felt MoBiashara would help them increase sales of Notore products among their existing farmers, who would in turn benefit by having higher crop yields, among other things.
- MoBiashara drives consumer demand by communicating the availability of Notore’s product.
So, as indicated by the final bullet point, by allowing farmers to query Notore’s inventory from their mobile phones before journeying to a distribution center, MoBiashara is empowering them. We’re saving them time, which for “base of the pyramid” consumers is literally money. In the process, we’re creating a positive feedback loop which travels up and down the supply chain, and beyond. Notore widens its market penetration. Farmers know what and where to get the products they need. And everyone from the bus drivers who bring the farmers to the distribution centers to the shop owners who sell them lunch, benefits.
One final point: In order to make the querying of Notore’s inventory even more accessible and efficient, the VPs stressed that the service must be in the local dialect of Hausa. (Deploying the service in any other dialect in any other African state is 100 percent doable. Flexibility of performance is yet another benefit of MoBiashara.) By traveling to Taaraba and working directly with both our client (Notore) and our client’s clients (the VPs and the farmers they represent), the SlimTrader team was able to identify, and implement, a crucial component to the MoBiashara platform there. Being hands-on counts.
