An Agricultural Product E-Business System: Case of Khat E-business in Kenya

Abstract

With the consistent increase in level of economic constrains which was as a result of the rapidly increasing travelling costs in Kenya among others, businessmen are eager to come up with various ways to cub financial problems. The night travel ban had really caused a tactic problem to business men in Kenya. People used to travel during the night, perform their activities during the day and go back again over night. The development of (Agribusiness Products E-businesses System) APEBS enabled the Miraa business agents to carry out their business activities effectively and efficiently any time regardless of the rules implemented in the country. The study was approached through the following methods: requirements definition, selection of vendors, demonstrations and reviews, Implementation of the system, users and technical staff training, establishment of support processes and system maintenance. The study resulted to a web application linked to a database for data storage and processing. The product management system and the data security system for the ebusiness portal were developed in selected web programming languages. These involved PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery. In order to build the product, merchant and customer database, the researcher used Wamp Server with the MySQL Database Manager package. The APEBS application has a public view where members were able to access information about business agents, different types of the product and their availability in a central database. Clients could also order products online, make payments using PayPal, and receive feedback via email. The APEBS also has a private view for use by administrators who were responsible for updating the records of the members, generating account reports and maintaining the system as a whole. Keywords— e-business, agribusiness, Khat, miraa, ecommerce