The Chief
Executive Office, Prep-eez Tech Limited, Mr Kow Sam, has said the company is partnering
the World Bank and the West Africa Agricultural Production Programme on
piloting the e-Agriculture and extension programme, reports NaijaAgroNet.
He also revealed
to NaijaAgroNet that they are up-scaling
services to cover the entire Ghana in the next couple of months, covering over
11 languages and also executing similar projects in Nigeria, La Cote D'Ivoire
and other West African countries.
The programme, he
told NaijaAgroNet is to expand a
free multi-lingual interactive voice response system and audio conferencing and
free messaging services across the region.
As said by him, the
service has currently attracted over 40,000 active subscribers and an average
daily usage of 2,000 accessing each day on their standard mobile phone with
languages, including Twi, Ga, Ewe, Nzema, Dagbani and Frafra.
"The company
is also building a multi-lingual call-centre that is toll-free at the Ghanaian Ministry
of Food and Agricultural (MoFA) resource centre," he said, stressing that
this would allow direct access to information in real time from subject matter
specialist as well as experts to farmers through standard phones at zero cost
to the farmer.
In addition, Sam
said three e-resource centres are being established in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale
to help build ICT agricultural resource, where MoFA staff, extension officers,
women and youth in agriculture would learn to build business plans, research
and experimentation, cash flow and productivity and performance analysis for
effective output.
Nenye Dom/GEE
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