2017 ICT4D Conference

e-Hinga is a digital platform for comprehensive access to Agricultural information, which is designed to provide a diversified menu to support smallholder farming households with input access, best practice in crop and livestock production and post-harvest technology, value chain upgrading strategies, as well as sharing of lessons in smallholder commercialization - a social enterprise for revenue diversification through partnerships for e-extension systems business model.

e-Hinga is a dynamic mobile and Web based App that runs both on Android operating system for mobile phones, as well as an online database for web based applications. The portal is also designed to run on offline mode on android phones; to optimize data usage as access to mobile data for smallholder farmers is still limited due to higher prices for internet access. Rwanda has close to 7 Million (over 12 million) mobile phone users, of which 80% are smallholder farmers.

e-Hinga’s features consist of audio applications, texts and pictorial presentations as well as interactive segment through which users can reach out to experts and/or extension agents through tele-conversation or online inquiries. E-Hinga also has an ads section through which the management can commercialize the application for related advertisement and outreach to millions of smallholder farmers with new improved inputs, produces and any other best practices.

e-Hinga is now registered with Rwanda Development board as the intellectual property of World Vision Rwanda. Currently, on its final pilot phase (i.e. ready for scale up), e-Hinga is being used by 9,773 smallholder farmers under the Inzozi Nziza (great dream) project.

World Vision is keen to share evidence from its e-Hinga experience and play a key role in laying the groundwork for potential public-private partnership in order to scale up this proven tool as an evolving agricultural and market information system and commodity exchange platform in East Africa, where there’s promising potential for agribusiness and market information system development for its largely agrarian economy.