DIGITIZING AGRICULTURAL SERVICE DELIVERY AND MANAGEMENT THROUGH NANDI E-FARM SYSTEM
The step wise progression by County’s ICT& e-Government section in automating service delivery by the departments to the citizens is now setting its foot in the Department of Agriculture and Co-operative Development. It is focussing on digitizing Agricultural extension services for farmers through a mobile application and is therefore planning to roll out NandE-Farm system that help Farmers in the timely and effective access of services from extension officers, Veterinary Officers and Artificial inseminators within the County.
NandE-Farm is an integration of two platforms; DIGICOW by FarmTech Company supporting the dairy farmers and DIGIFARM by Safaricom for both Crop and Livestock farmers. The implementation of this system will aid the farmer through: requesting services by just dialing a toll free USSD code, getting the services at subsidized cost through monthly subscription, accessing proper records of the services, quick access to information, ensure quality service delivery by the Officers, acts as the best platform for training and dissemination of information, timely provision of critical services especially emergency services, marketing of agricultural products as well as
sending timely reminders to farmers.
For farmers to enjoy these and other services especially the subsidized veterinary services, they are expected to be members of a registered cooperative society within the county. Farmers who are not members of any cooperative society can equally access these services but with less privileges compared to those registered under cooperatives.
The implementation process of the system just started with the department of Agriculture and Cooperative Development together with ICT and e-Government sub sector rolling out training of all the stakeholders. Among these stakeholders are: ICT technical team,Call Centre agents and officers from the user department (Agriculture and Cooperative Development) especially the Veterinary and extension Officers at the Sub-County and Ward level.
The team from Safaricom and FarmTech
today trained the Technical team. They are also training the call centre agents so as to help the farmers who request services via the County’s Call Centre (1548). After training all stakeholders, the farmers are then registered. Thereafter, the farmer can request the services through their mobile phones via a USSD code that will be provided. The system the dispatches the nearest extension officer to deliver the requested service.