By Adekunle Adekoya
LAST week, on these pages, we brought you excerpts from a feature story culled from the Christian Science Monitor on how a Kenyan developer came up with an app that cattle herdsmen can use to manage their herds. The app, called iCow, was developed by a Ms Su Kahumbu, and as the author of the story wrote, “it’s an example of how high technology can help out even in the low-tech business of agriculture, in which 80 percent of Kenyans make a living.”

iCow app

iCow is a mobile-phone application that allows herders to register each individual cow, and to receive individualized text messages on their mobile phones, including advice for veterinary care and feeding schedules, a database of experts, and updated market rates on cattle prices.

Kahumbu speaks further of the app:

“Eighty percent of Kenyans are farmers, and by that I mean people who make a living off of the land, and 80 percent of the food people eat comes from people who sell in the rural marketplace,” says Kahumbu. “So, even though I’m not an expert in technology or development, I thought, why not take the gestation calendar of a cow and send it to agriculturalists, and that can help them increase their productivity, and also increase their savings.”

Well, here we are, Nigerians. Kenya was also a colony of Britain like Nigeria, but in terms of approach to development, we are miles apart. Politically, the country has been stable until the recent Kibaki-Odinga face-off, but thanks to a continental leadership mediation effort, the country is also putting that behind it.

Kenya lives on agriculture and tourism; but here we have not only abandoned the land, policies put in place to revive interest in agriculture have not had the desired effect. It is not unlikely that Kenya may be a giant of Africa if it had just half of our oil resources.

Now, see how high-tech (software engineering) is being used to help cattle rearers. Here, the Bororodje (cattle Fulani) still drive their herds across hundreds of kilometres from the northern parts of the country towards the markets of the south, losing much of them in the process. In fact, this migratory movement had been the cause of not a few ethnic clashes as the herds devour farmlands in the course of their movement.

Put simply, we have not been able to help these people whose herds provide us with the meat for our stews, pepper soups, kilishi, suya, and of course, ponmo!

From the Kenyan experience, we need not reinvent the wheel. NITDA can take this up, and explore how using the app can benefit the cattle market here, both for the herdsmen and those of us who eat cow meat. In fact, it can be developed further to take care of other animals that we may need to grow, like pigs, goats, sheep, rams, and perhaps, poultry. It is worth the effort.

Challenge

Still on using apps to boost business and improve lives, software developers are the ones who have the challenge but NITDA needs to come in, even if only to help point noses in the direction of the scent. As I see it, our policy efforts, both conceptualization and implementation, has largely been a top-bottom approach, and the results have refused to percolate downwards.

That is why the rural farmer can’t get loans and tools of modern agriculture, whereas the big farmers who do can’t just grow enough for all of us. Time for a bottom-top approach, so we can all get the benefits faster, and technology is the great enabler. Hope the right people are reading!