JM So­cial Icons

    On­line mar­ket­place help­ing Kenyan nomads avoid per­en­nial losses

     

    AbdullahiDriven by their child­hood ex­per­i­ence of no­madic life­style where they wit­nessed their par­ents lose live­stock to drought and lack of drugs and vac­cines, two young en­tre­pren­eurs from Wajir County are now lever­aging on tech­no­logy to provide mar­ket and veter­in­ary ser­vices to small­holder pas­tor­al­ists in rural Kenya.

    Driven by their child­hood ex­per­i­ence of no­madic life­style where they wit­nessed their par­ents lose live­stock to drought and lack of drugs and vac­cines, two young en­tre­pren­eurs from Wajir County are now lever­aging on tech­no­logy to provide mar­ket and veter­in­ary ser­vices to small­holder pas­tor­al­ists in rural Kenya.

    Fed up with the situ­ation, Ibrahim Ahmed, 28, and Ab­dirah­man Ab­dul­lahi, 27, in 2018 star­ted doing some re­search on how they could come up with a solu­tion, which birthed Geljir Tech­no­lo­gies Lim­ited, a so­cial en­ter­prise firm that they foun­ded in April 2019 to en­gin­eer in­nov­at­ive solu­tions in the live­stock sec­tor in sub-saha­ran Africa.

    RE­LATED CON­TENT: Agri-En­tre­pren­eur: How I have used tech­no­logy to con­nect 7,000 Kenya small­holder farm­ers to global mar­kets

    “Our plan was aimed at im­prov­ing the lives of pas­toral com­munit­ies in Kenya and Africa by using mod­ern tech­no­logy to solve their chal­lenges, hence we did not just want to make profit so we came up with a so­cial en­ter­prise that is driven by im­pact,” said Ibrahim Ahmed, co-founder and CEO of Geljir Tech­no­lo­gies.

    The new busi­ness then set about cre­at­ing an end-to-end di­gital plat­form to con­nect small­holder pas­tor­al­ists in rural areas to the live­stock buy­ers and meat pro­cessing com­pan­ies loc­ally and in­ter­na­tion­ally and present a con­veni­ent and re­li­able al­tern­at­ive to the cur­rent live­stock value chain that was in­ef­fi­cient, risky and ex­pens­ive.

    Three months ago the duo launched M-nomad, a live­stock mar­ket­place web plat­form as their first product to the mar­ket.

    The idea was to test the mar­ket with urban pas­tor­al­ists and live­stock traders who have ac­cess to the in­ter­net be­fore de­vel­op­ing other tech­no­lo­gies and to their amazement the feed­back was in­cred­ibly pos­it­ive.

    “We are fol­low­ing this with a USSD and SMS plat­form where we want to reach the rural pas­tor­al­ists who use fea­ture phones and have no in­ter­net ac­cess,” said Ahmed.

    How M-nomad works

    Once on m-nomad.​co.​ke, a seller (an­imal owner) is re­quired to click sell, fill the product in­form­a­tion and set the price of the product, which in this case is the live­stock to be sold.

    Geljir team then moves promptly to verify the seller’s in­form­a­tion and the seller is in­cluded in the sys­tem upon qual­i­fic­a­tion.

    As a buyer, the user is re­quired to fill the in­form­a­tion of the de­sired product from the cat­egor­ies provided of which the com­pany’s cloud-based sys­tem matches the buyer with his or her pref­er­ence.

    Users (seller and the buyer) are then al­lowed to en­gage in a trans­par­ent and free mar­ket­place where the seller closes deal faster and buyer matched with re­li­able sup­ply.

    When all is done, Geljir through M-nomad fa­cil­it­ates the lo­gist­ics and de­liv­ery which has been a prob­lem in live­stock mar­ket­ing, and cuts a com­mis­sion be­fore pay­ing the seller within 48 hours of the sale through their phone.

    This elim­in­ates the middle­men who by con­nect­ing small­holder pas­tor­al­ists as live­stock pro­du­cers dir­ectly to bulk buy­ers and meat pro­cessing com­pan­ies, and thus elim­in­at­ing costs in the selling chain – see­ing small­hold­ers get bet­ter prices, and buy­ers be­ne­fit­ing from bet­ter prices too.

    Users can ac­cess the re­spons­ive web plat­form through www.​m-nomad.​co.​ke on their phone or desktop.

    “In this,” said Ahmed, “M-nomad uses tech­no­logy to solve farm­ers/pas­tor­al­ists prob­lems by firstly giv­ing them ac­cess to all mar­kets where there is huge de­mand for live an­im­als by vari­ous buy­ers who have been un­able to reach the rural small­holder pas­tor­al­ists.”

    RE­LATED CON­TENT: New tech­no­logy to help farm­ers raise har­dier and more pro­duct­ive an­im­als de­veloped

    Ac­cord­ing to the Kenya Na­tional Bur­eau of Stat­ist­ics’ Eco­nomic Sur­vey 2019, the value of mar­keted live­stock and live­stock products in­creased by 8.3 per cent to Sh146.8 bil­lion in 2018, a clear in­dic­a­tion that there is huge de­mand for live­stock and live­stock products.

    M-nomad is also en­abling pas­tor­al­ists to ac­cess qual­ity in­puts, vac­cines and veter­in­ary ser­vices through a fran­chise model being put in place by the com­pany. This re­duces live­stock dis­ease and mor­tal­ity rate and en­able them to run sus­tain­able live­stock op­er­a­tions.

    The pro­du­cers also get alerts on weather, prices and an­imal hus­bandry through their phone for free, via sms, and they can no­tify stake­hold­ers of any dis­ease out­break to trig­ger a quick re­sponse mech­an­ism.

    Cur­rently, the com­pany is work­ing with women live­stock groups in Wajir and Isi­olo and work­ing to en­gage with groups from other counties in the arid and semi-arid lands. “Our goal is to em­power women and in­teg­rate them into the live­stock value chain,” said Ab­dirah­man Ab­dul­lahi Co-founder, Dir­ector of In­nov­a­tion and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment.

    The Min­istry of Ag­ri­cul­ture es­tim­ates that about 60 per cent of the live­stock pop­u­la­tion is found in the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) where the in­dustry em­ploys nearly 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

    So far, Geljir’s M-nomad has re­gistered 42 sellers and is work­ing with live­stock groups and live­stock or­gan­iz­a­tions in North East­ern Kenya that rep­res­ent more than 5,000 pas­tor­al­ists.

    Image: Ibrahim Ahmed Co-founder, CEO (left) and Ab­dirah­man Ab­dul­lahi, Co-founder, Dir­ector of In­nov­a­tion and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment

    Email: info@​m-nomad.​co.​ke
    Phone: 0723990204, 0727440240
    Phys­ical ad­dress: Wam­bco Court, Be­hind Nex­t­Gen mall, Mom­basa road.

    Com­ments (0)

    RSS
      At­tach im­ages by drag­ging & drop­ping or by se­lect­ing them.
      The max­imum file size for up­loads is 10MB. Only gif,jpg,png files are al­lowed.
       
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      The max­imum num­ber of 3 al­lowed files to up­load has been reached. If you want to up­load more files you have to de­lete one of the ex­ist­ing up­loaded files first.
      Post­ing as

      Com­ments powered by CCom­ment

      Ed­itor's Pick

      All News

      Powered by mod LCA
      Farm­Biz Africa © 2020