RFP: IT service provision for 8028 IVR/SMS expansion to Somali language Livestock and Irrigation crop extension and advisory Service

ADD 1335/2021

Brief Summary Description of Project:
With the aim of providing an updated agricultural extension advisory to the remotely located rural smallholder farmers with very small level human involvement and quickly disseminate information to a larger scale with very small cost, ATA designed and developed an Interactive Voice Response and Short Message Service (IVR/SMS) platform and implemented it in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Resources, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, and Ethio Telecom. This platform named “8028 Farmers Hotline” can be accessed by calling the short code 8028 without any payment. The new approach of providing information and sharing of knowledge with the smallholder farmers renovate the
old ‘door to door’ extension service which is proven to be time-consuming and ineffective for the remotely located rural farmers of Ethiopia. ‘8028 Farmer Hotline’ is Ethiopia’s first agricultural hotline which seeks to support sustainable agriculture by empowering smallholders with access to agronomic best practices. Thus, the 8028-hotline service could be
taken as a good means of revolutionizing the way smallholder farmers access vital information.