Call Centers for Agricultural Information

This model has been implemented in several countries, including India and Kenya, to address the challenges of providing farmers with locally relevant and specific information. In India, the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation (DAAC) established the Kisan Call Center (KCC) in 2004 to complement its extension workers. The KCC operates daily between 6am and 10pm, providing farmers with answers to their queries in their local language on topics such as disease and pest control, crop and livestock information, market information, government programs, and organic farming. The KCC has a knowledge management system (KKMS) that enables agents to consult for an appropriate answer, and in the event that an answer cannot be found, the call is forwarded to a subject area expert for response. The Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) established its own Kisan Call Center in Madhya Pradesh state in 2009, expanding upon the original KCC model. The ISAP KCC has a variety of experts on call, including agronomists, horticulturists, entomologists, veterinarians, and a farm machine expert, who are able to provide a more comprehensive response to all queries. Each expert is required to spend at least three days per month with farmers to keep them connected to the reality on the ground. In Kenya, the country's largest provider of business process outsourcing (BPO) services, KenCall, has expanded into the business of agricultural call centers. The company launched the M-Kilimo (aka Kenya Farmers' Helpline) service as a CSR initiative in late 2009 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation through the GSMA Development Fund. The service provides farmers with real-time answers on a wide variety of topics related to agricultural information, and is staffed with trained agriculture experts with access to a content management system. The M-Kilimo service is similar to the other models, with questions that cannot be answered immediately being sent out to subject area specialists and a return call with the answer provided within 24 hours. The service is available in English, Swahili, and other local languages, and is free, although standard calling fees do apply. KenCall plans to commercialize the service, although it is unclear if the service will be financially self-supporting without ongoing donor funding. More recently, the Grameen Foundation launched a 6-month pilot of its new Farmer Call Center (FCC) in Uganda in January 2012. The service is currently available to farmers in more than 20 districts throughout Uganda during business hours on weekdays and has been logging about 300 calls a month so far. Farmers using the MTN network call via short code and pay 90 Ugandan shillings per minute (approximately US $0.03). Calls are routed through an interactive voice response (IVR) and automated call distribution (ACD) system to five agricultural specialists who are able to provide support on a broad spectrum of agricultural topics. The implementation of call centers for agricultural information has the potential to address the challenges of providing farmers with locally relevant and specific information, and has been shown to be effective in several countries. The models implemented in India and Kenya have been successful in providing farmers with real-time answers to their queries, and have the potential to be scaled up to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.