Serving the Poor: Designing a Mobile Service Platform for Smallholder Farmer Inclusion in Global Value Chains

Abstract

The starting point for this research was the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, which had covered 95% of the world’s population by 2014. This research addresses the role of multi-sided mobile service platforms in improving the lives of smallholder farmers, who make up a large proportion of the world’s poor. The mobile phone has the potential to serve as a ‘two-sided market’ to intermediate between two or more groups of agents, smallholder farmers at the one hand and, providers of public and private services at the other hand, to offer each other network benefits, particularly in the application of traceability to connect smallholder farmers to global value chains. First, mobile service approaches for the rural poor in agriculture were reviewed, followed by semi-structured interviews with key informants to identify platform providers, stakeholders and business models. We then investigated the role of smallholders, use of mobile platforms to enable traceability from farms to consumers, and user context of smallholder farmers in Indonesia. Then we described the methodology for the design of requirements, structural specifications and a prototype mobile service platform. Through user and stakeholder interviews in Indonesia between 2011 and 2013, requirements for the platform were used to analyze both from a service provider and consumer aspect, where the service offers marginal benefits and serves strategic and operational interests. Through a field experiment, we investigated the technology acceptance model for smallholder farmers to deliver traceability data to global value chains, adding value to the market for premium cocoa and creating a better economic position for themselves. This research makes a strong case to focus on designing solutions using the principles of two-sided markets, service platforms, stakeholders and business models, to include the world’s poor in the global economy.