On June 30th in Makuleke, South Africa, Alcatel, Manobi, an operator of mobile and Internet business services in developing countries, and Vodacom, the main telecom operator in South Africa, launched a groundbreaking pilot project to connect rural farmers to real-time market information. This service will enable producers, intermediaries, and wholesalers to use a GSM mobile phone to obtain real-time prices for produce that is being traded on the main wholesale markets of Johannesburg and Pretoria, located hundreds of kilometers away. They can also sell their harvest to other potential buyers (restaurant and lodges for example) by making proposals through SMS to all other Manobi's subscribers. Approximately 200 farmers in this town of 15,000 inhabitants will be trained to use the service in the pilot phase.

Thierry Albrand, Vice-President of Digital Bridge for Alcatel, who negotiated this partnership and took part in the launch celebration, tells us more about it.

Mr Albrand, this story sounds familiar, isn't Alcatel involved in a similar project in Senegal?
Yes, indeed, following our successful initiative in Senegal with farmers and fishermen, we have again partnered with Manobi to provide value-added services to farmers in rural areas. We believe that partnering with Vodacom will help ensure the success of this project and will pave the way for the future expansion in South Africa. As a matter of fact, a few months ago, Alcatel signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Manobi to implement similar projects in Africa and the Middle East for the next three years. Projects like these are all part of Alcatel's Digital Bridge initiative launched in 2001.

What makes projects like the one just launched in Makuleke so successful?
This is a win-win undertaking for everyone involved. For the end-users, it can improve their productivity, their revenues, their sale margins and their quality of life; the operator can find new opportunities for profitable growth by tackling unserved or underserved rural areas, equipment and application suppliers can increase their sales, the government and local authorities can take advantage of a better phone coverage by pushing new applications like e-government, e-health or e-education and consequently fight rural exodus.

This is a three-way collaboration, what is each partners' role?
Alcatel pre-financed the Manobi hardware required for building its platform, hosted it and provided communication links as well as 200 mobile handsets to support the Manobi service provision. Manobi built the local platform and connected it to the Vodacom network. Vodacom extended the GSM coverage by completing construction of a base station at Ndlaveni (near Makuleke). It also introduced GPRS within the Makuleke area as well as provided 360 starter packs and airtime vouchers.