iCow was conceptualised in October 2010 after the founder Su Kahumbu Stephanou an ardent organic farmer, was encouraged to enter the Apps4Africa tech hackathon sponsored by the US State Department. Su was at the time designing a product she had named Mkulima Farmer Information Service and Hotline (Mkulima F.I.S.H), a comprehensive agricultural extension service available to farmers over mobile phone. Building on her experience and interactions with smallholder farmers Su recognised that to be successful, farmers needed access to knowledge on good agricultural practices in both livestock and crop production. She thus set out to develop a service that would enable farmers access the vast amounts of content and verified agricultural knowledge available in the regions agricultural institutions, in a format that would be in line with small holder production systems, simple, cost effective and real time.
Mkulima F.I.S.H was designed to including content on crops, livestock, soils, farmer health and the environment. Being competitive in nature, Su took on the challenge to enter the hackathon with a component of Mkulima F.I.S.H, the cow gestation calendar, and named her entry iCow.
The gestation calendar was designed to solve the problem of lack of monitoring a cow during its pregnancy. By monitoring each cow adequately farmers reduce the risk of illness and death at birthing as well as increase their chances of a healthy calf and optimally productive mother cow. iCow required farmers register individual cows onto the platform after which they begin to receive reminders on dairy cow best practices and actions needed to increase their productivity.
iCow is a comprehensive solution for farmers designed not only to support them with livestock and crop production but also to connect farmers to the vital players in their agricultural ecosystem. These include input providers, agricultural financial service providers, veterinary experts, agricultural extension service providers, NGO\’s, Govt and more!
It is designed for the most basic feature phones and is available in differerent languages depending on the county of deployment. In Kenya and Tanzania it is available in English and Kiswahili, in Ethiopia in Oromiffo, Amharic and Tigringnia.
source: icow.ke
