The E-Commerce for Non-Traditional Exports Project being implemented by the Ministry of Food & Agriculture, Ghana, and supported by the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) seeks to:
"provide efficient promotion and increased market transparency to improve the negotiation position for small and medium scaled producers and exporters/traders of non-traditional exports in the local and international markets by the bringing together of the supply of and demand for critical marketing information at the local level". Ultimately, the project aims at enhancing the standard of living of small and medium scaled producers and traders in rural areas in Ghana. In practice, the project aims at providing Internet-based (or alternative) marketing information services to small producers and traders/exporters of Ghanaian non-traditional export products. Apart from providing information, producers and traders can promote their products via the web-based information system. On longer term, the information system will develop into a market place for supply and demand of products. The system will as such provide better access to export markets. In addition it will function as a market place for the national market. In meeting the set out aims above, one of the main activities of the project was to set up what is call "District Agricultural Information Centres (DAIC) in the districts. These centres are the information access points for the producers and traders/exporters. Connectivity has been the main challenge for this project, considering the fact that infrastructure in general is limited to the major cities in the country. Computers with mostly dial-up internet connections have been set up in most of these centers. Although the dial-up is slow and expensive, considering the fact that users have to make a trunk call to the capital city, it is the cheapest connectivity so far. Some areas are without telephone facilities at all. In these cases, the project is experimenting with some radio equipment that is able to transfer a telephone link from a range of up to 100km and can carry data at speeds up to 32 kbps. The other altenative being used is to send the information on CD ROMS to these centres. Recently (Sept. 2003), the District Assembly (DA) in one of the districts (Twifo Heman Lower Denkyira District Assembly) in the Central Region has put up a VSAT for internet and voice telephony for mostly the government departments in the district. This is a breakthrough that will be replicated at other districts if it works well. The major problem being considered here is the ability of the DA to pay for the recurrent costs (which are quite high in our part of the world). The main people expected to use this system are the few schools in the area, a couple of Banks and some agro-based industries in the district. These are expected to contribute to the payment of the recurrent costs. It is expected that if this cost issue is worked out well, it will greatly open up the district because information, which is the life-blood for development, will be available to all. ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
