Photo of the week: An Innovative Application helps Low-Literate Vendors to Enroll Farmers

myAgro developed a mobile application to meet the needs of low-literate vendors. The app ensures that vendors are able to quickly and easily learn to proficiently utilize the mobile platform, without the need to read or write much.

The application works by minimizing data entry and replacing text with pictures. For example, instead of reading a list of package choices, vendors can simply select a photo with different maize sizes to indicate the farmer’s package selection. Additionally, when farmers purchase scratch cards, vendors can simply take a photo of the cards instead of entering the data.

Although still in pilot phase, this innovation has enabled low-literate vendors to enroll clients and submit payments quickly. The app has also freed up a lot of field agent time that would otherwise have been spent on supervising and training vendors to be more autonomous. By decreasing our employee to farmer ratio, myAgro will also be able to scale more quickly.

“There are nine women’s savings groups in my village, and the women like to be able to buy myAgro cards at their group meetings. As the myAgro vendor I need to attend all the meetings,” says Fatou Coulibaly, vendor in the Kadiolo district in Mali. “Thankfully the enrollment and card payment app on the myAgro phone is really fast and easy to use, so I can quickly get to all the groups and be present for all the clients to make payments during their meetings,” Fatou adds.