Esoko: Mobile Market Information for Smallholder Farmers

Esoko is an agritech company founded in Ghana in 2009 (building on the earlier TradeNet platform) that sends smallholder farmers real-time crop prices, weather forecasts, agronomic tips and digital payment tools via SMS, voice, IVR and USSD — channels that work on basic phones without internet access. The service has expanded to roughly ten African countries.

A study of the Northern Region of Ghana found that farmers receiving Esoko's mobile market-information service earned about 10% more for maize and 7% more for groundnuts than farmers without access to the service, evidence that better price information strengthens smallholder bargaining power. By 2024 the platform reported reaching over 2 million farmers.

Esoko has sustained itself for over 15 years through a mixed model of donor funding and paid services to agribusinesses, NGOs, mobile operators and governments — a contrast to peer projects that folded once grant funding ended, and a useful reference point for digital-inclusion programmes weighing free vs. revenue-generating designs.