How Jamila Abass is Leveraging Mobile Technology to Help Subsistence Farmers in Kenya

The fire for internet startups continues to be rekindled across the globe, and it is only necessary for each person to identify emerging markets and fields that would suit their purpose.

Jamila Abass is the African queen of agritech, who was born in Northeastern Kenya, the desire to give back to her community prompted her to start her mobile platform, M-Farm in 2010. The platform was created to help farmers who are trapped in subsistence agriculture move into commercial farming through the use of mobile technology that provides needed real-time information and incentive collective action.

Jamila’s technology platform links farmers to markets and creates an ecosystem of knowledge exchange, aggregation and opportunity spotting that shifts them into productive commercial farming. Thus, Jamila is creating a path out of poverty for these farmers and enabling them to meet the growing demands for produce across the region.

The platform creates an accessible, easy-to-use tool that enables farmers to acquire information about the current prices of different crops in specific markets throughout Kenya. Jamila is also working on bolstering their bargaining abilities. Using their mobile phones, farmers can send simple inquiries and gain access to real-time price information for specific crops in the regions where they live. It also serves as a virtual marketplace for small-scale farmers in Kenya because individuals who use the system to check prices are also logging their available offers on the platform.

Jamila is an internationally recognized champion of Agritech revolution in Africa, she has received several accolades including 2015 New African Woman of the year, Forbes 10 Female Tech Founders to Watch and 20 Young Power Women in Africa, Quartz’s 30 African Innovators as well as 2015 100 most Influential Africans.
Jamila continually strives the empower the downtrodden, those at the lowest rung of the economic ladder.