DEMRI: A Web/SMS based Application for Agriculture

Africa is going through a mobile phone-based revolution. The increasing use of mobile phones by the agricultural population in Africa in general and sub-Saharan region in particular offers a favorable ground for the development of new technologies capable for boosting yields of farmers. But, in many parts of Africa, mobile phones are not sufficiently used to support agricultural activities. This work aims to provide a design approach and a mobile application that will help farmers in their daily activities. In order to avoid discriminating users with basic phones, the proposed architecture inspired from M-Kulima considers both web and SMS interfaces. It is implemented using the framework RapidSMS and several backends among which Kannel. The application will provide farmers with relevant information on crop production and market prices.