The World Bank and other organizations have gathered information on many agricultural mobile applications and produced detailed case studies on such apps in select countries.  Perhaps best known for providing market and extension information and increasing purchasing power of farmers, mobile agri apps can also improve agricultural supply chain integration, increasing access to extension services, and facilitate global market links.

Mobile innovation in the agricultural sector faces at least two major challenges:

1) While there is a proliferation of market information mobile apps, few of these have been adopted widely across the African continent, making it difficult to achieve scale and profitability.

2) Despite proven benefits of mobile agri apps, the mobile entrepreneurship community and the agribusiness community often suffer from a lack of obvious linkages and ways to collaborate.

The mAgri challenge is one of infoDev Mobile’s many initiatives aimed at providing entrepreneurs with tools and expertise to assist in the creation of viable mobile application businesses.

Who Should Apply

We encourage you to apply if you are:

• An entrepreneur with a mobile business based in Africa
• Working on a prototype of a mobile agriculture application
• Looking to grow your business and seeing good growth prospects locally and/or abroad
• Impatient to grow your market share and product portfolio in your quest to grow your business, substantially
• Open to innovative methods/business approaches/products/processes that could be applied to your business to drive its growth
• Would benefit from business coaching support

How to Apply

Step 1 – SUBMIT your concept and completed form to zlu1@worldbank.org. Your app will be featured in the GSMA’s mAgri Deployment Tracker and eligible for consideration in our upcoming mAgri challenge.

Step 2 – COMPETE by entering your business plan into the mAgri challenge for a chance to pitch before investors in November 2013. All submissions must be received by July 31st, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time.

Step 3 – PITCH Select finalists will be chosen to pitch their products before a panel of industry experts in November 2013.

The Challenge will be kicked off at the end of May and completed by the end of November 2013.

Have questions about the competition or application process? Email them to zlu1@worldbank.org.