Esoko – a market information exchange launched in Ghana

Mark Davies, Esoko CEO with the Esoko Team
and a Representative of IFC

Today, more than 100 invited guests, some from as far as the United Kingdom, witnessed the launch of Esoko, a direct, simple and effective market information exchange, in Ghana. The launch ceremony was held on the seventh floor at Esoko’s new offices situated on the Ring Road in the heart of Accra.

Esoko, formerly known as TradeNet, allows anyone to distribute or collect market information over their mobile phones. Market information in Ghana is being collected from 34 markets all over the country and the platform is active in 15 countries, including Nigeria where some major markets are linked to Esoko. Users of Esoko, businesses and individuals, can access market prices, browse offers to buy or sell, or advertise their own products and services. The services available include SMS messaging, SMS price alerts, SMS bids and offers, SMS websites, Maps, SMS polls, Upload via SMS/Web and Inventory Reporting.

Mark Davies, CEO of Esoko Networks, also announced an investment of over US$2 million in Esoko from the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The event also saw the launch of the following products and services:

• Scout and Stock applications – a tool for polling thousands of Esoko users and reporting stock quantities using SMS;
• Esoko 1900 short code – SMS service available to users in Ghana, and anyone can text for top commodities and get price results from all over the country;
• Agricultural Commodity Index – providing market trend analysis on both wholesale and retail commodity trading levels. The index is made public on a weekly basis.

Esoko's goal is to improve market efficiencies throughout the value chain, thus reducing poverty and contributing to the role of agriculture in Ghana’s development.

The Friends of My Friends Are My Friends: Not Necessarily So!

Professor J. A. Barnes coined the word social network, in the 1950s, as an association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby and the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to 150 people. Online social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace and others, have brought about a new way of networking with friends. Once you create a personal account on Facebook you are presented with an opportunity to connect with individuals on your email contact lists if they are already on Facebook and an opportunity to invite them to join Facebook if they are not yet members. Well, as the saying goes - the friends of my friends are my friends. Facebook will recommend friends of your friends and their friends to you.

Recently one of my friends was surprised when he found that although I joined Facebook in 2006, I only have about 30 Facebook friends. This is very little compared to some Facebook users who have hundreds or thousands of “friends”.

Well, although, as Tim indicated - "social networks are not just your friends and your friends’ friends and so on. Social networks include people who you can’t really call friends but with whom you have a positive, yet weak, relationship". It looks like I am still stuck with my old and trusted way of social networking that I have been using since I was a small boy growing up in the mining townships of Kitwe, in Zambia.

My first social network, beyond my family members, emerged when I was a young boy running bare foot in the townships of Kitwe, Zambia. External members of my network were mainly from the neighborhoods. I knew them, knew their parents and knew where they lived. When I went to primary school, my social network expanded. It now included members from other townships. The school was our common denominator. It brought us together.

Later, at secondary school, my social network was joined by new members from other communities. These came from among students in my class, and clubs, i.e. Drama Club, Chess Club and History Club, where I was a member. By this time, I had has also lost some network members from the early years and my primary school days.

This approach to social networking continued through my universities days in Lusaka, Zambia, Addis Ababa and Johannesburg and of course into my working life all the way from Zambia to Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and now in Ghana. It has been quite difficult for me to change the approach. I always associate with people that I now well or trust. People that I interact with more often, either at work, at home or in my professional activities. I have no time for weak links, and I don’t think I have the capacity to manage hundreds or thousands of relationships, whether in the real or virtual world.

Well the friends of my friends and the enemies of my enemies are not necessarily my friends.

Time Keeping and Conferences in Africa

I have been presenting papers at conferences in Africa since mid 90s. I have presented papers at national, regional and international conferences to audiences that have included government ministers, academicians and information and knowledge management professionals. Making presentations at conferences is one way of sharing tacit knowledge (personal knowledge embedded in individual experience). It gives the presenter an opportunity to elaborate on the content of his/her paper and to answers questions from the audience. Sharing tacit knowledge at conferences requires time for the presentation, discussion and answering the questions. Unfortunately, of late, I have noticed that in Africa we are running short of time for presentations at conferences.


Justin Chisenga at a conference

The absence of a culture of time keeping among most Africans has finally caught up with conferences. Today it is common for conference organizers to ask paper presenters to prepare for 20 minutes presentations and on the day of the presentations some unfortunate presenters are allocated about 10 minutes or less to make their presentations. The main reason for this in most cases has to do with poor time keeping. I have been at conferences where:

• The first presenters, usually in the morning, are given too much liberty with time and as result later in the day time for the presentations is reduced for some unfortunate individuals.
• The discussions following the presentations take long, beyond the allocated time because the session moderator/chairperson is unable to manage the time well;
• Tea/coffee and lunch breaks go way beyond the allocated time;
• Conference participants arrive late and conference proceedings start late.

The most annoying situation is when you spend the whole morning waiting for a government official (usually senior civil servants and sometimes ministers) to come and officiate at the opening session of the conference. The major consequence is that the programme for the day is derailed.

I have been at conference (in 2006) where I was to make a presentation in just after tea/coffee break. It was later moved to the afternoon. My session has three papers. About one hour before the session, we were asked to reduce our presentations from 20 to about 15 minutes. When the session began, we were allocated ten minutes each. I was to present last, and so I had time to see which slides to delete from my presentation. When I was finally called to make the presentation, I was told to do it in five minutes.

I walked to the podium, greeted the audience, read the title of my presentation and told them that I hoped they had read my paper and that would be available for questions and answers outside the conference room for questions. That was it, in less than one minute.

How do you expect me to spend months writing a paper, sacrifice my time to travel to the conference to make the presentation and only to be given five minutes to make the presentation?