Esoko

Esoko is an agricultural profiling and messaging service. It is a response to the explosive growth of cellular services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agribusiness, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. The Esoko platform provides automatic and personalized price alerts, buy and sell offers, bulk SMS messaging, stock counts and SMS polling.

Esoko
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
mobile integrated agricultural marketing service
Available inEnglish, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabic
FoundedAccra, Ghana
HeadquartersAccra
Employees65 (March 2011)
URLesoko.com
Registrationoptional, Subscriptions (Bronze, Silver, Gold)
LaunchedJanuary 2007

A private initiative based in Accra, Ghana, Esoko was built and is supported by a team of over 60 local developers and support staff. Along with the technology, Esoko has a partner support program focused on capacity building and financial sustainability, with an emphasis on market data enumeration and business development services.

History

Esoko began as TradeNet in 2005 with the encouragement of the UN's FAO,[1] and in partnership with FoodNet[2] in Uganda. Focused on agricultural marketing it provided current market data via SMS and the web to stakeholders within the agriculture and trade sectors in developing countries.

In 2005 TradeNet signed a three year agreement with USAID's MISTOWA program[3] to adapt the product and make it available to their target beneficiaries (MISTOWA's mission was to increase regional trade in West Africa by 20%). Esoko was described as 'a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in West Africa'.[4]

In April 2009 TradeNet rebranded as Esoko, switching to a new platform with a broader set of tools. The name Esoko originated from the Swahili name Soko which means Market; the 'e' representing 'electronic'. The eSoko name was also an idea brought from the eRwanda Project in Rwanda where they have a different version of eSoko, owned by the Ministry of Agriculture (www.esoko.gov.rw). In 2008, the eRwanda Project granted permission to TradeNet to use the name Esoko.

Currently Esoko is active in 16 countries through different partnership agreements; both public sector agricultural projects and Esoko country resellers and franchises.

Investors

Mark Davies (founder), Jim Forster, International Finance Corporation, Soros Economic Development Fund

Working in

Partners

References
  1. FAO agmarket
  2. "FoodNet". Archived from the original on 2009-04-02. Retrieved 2019-08-11.
  3. MISTOWA USAID's MISTOWA program
  4. Economist The Spread of Mobiles in Africa, 25th Jan 2007
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