iCow Blog

 

iCow Innovation Prize for Africa Finalist

Snapshot results of Impact study on farmers who joined iCow in June 2011

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In Sept 2010 we did an in house survey of a focus group of farmers who had registered for 3 information prompts a week.  Seven months later in Jan 2012 we repeated the survey of the same group. The results indicate that iCow is reaching it’s core objective of enabling small holder farmers increase productivity, and more!

More than ever before, technology is transforming Africa and unlocking its potential. As the rest of the world leapfrogs in technological innovation, African software developers are doing the same. They’re creating ground-breaking, cutting-edge mobile technologies to solve African problems in communities closest to them. The Best African Mobile Apps will be a regular feature in which I will profile the best mobile apps from Africa – just like iCow.             

 

Mfongobong Nsehe

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iCow Soko, a new feature on iCow, only 8 days from release successfully enables farmers trade livestock across the mobile platform. A farmer in Bomet posted his friesian cow for sale on iCow and was found by a buyer in Kericho,who paid him  a tidy sum, 25% above local market price.

iCow is generating  a new kind of farmer, we've named this farmer the "Urbal" farmer.

Sitting in her office in Nairobi city, Susan, is confident that her livestock investment is under good hands even though her farm is over 140km away. Susan is the first of a new kind of urban/rural farmer we are seeing through the iCow customer care center, which handles the back end systems of iCow, thanks to the Indigo Trust. She has registered her cows and calves on iCow and co-manages their upbringing with her manager on the farm site. In so doing, Susan is pushing the normally defined parameters of agriculture and almost on a daily basis requests the development of new features on iCow for her benefit.

First_farmer_to_reg_on_iCow_at_Show_Naomi_WambuiShe liked iCow because she would like to know what to look out for  through the gestation period esp the date of delivery. She likes the fact that she would recieve nutritional information from iCow. She has 4 cows and a calf and she wants to register all of them on iCow.

Naomi Wambui, From Nyeri, Rare 

The launch of icow 5024 on the 3rd of June, 2011 was a huge success with guest speakers voicing their support and the practicability of the application. Have a look at our picture story photo gallery.

 

Basic usage instructions:

Send the following to 5024

Find a vet: Vet#county#location#

e.g Vet#nakuru#njoro#

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Register for iCow:

Simply SMS the word

iCow to 5024 to register

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