Esoko

Esoko
Type of business	Private
Type of site	mobile integrated agricultural marketing service
Available in	English, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Arabic
Founded	Accra, Ghana
Headquarters	Accra
Employees	65 (March 2011)
URL	esoko.com
Registration	optional, Subscriptions (Bronze, Silver, Gold)
Launched	January 2007

Esoko is an agricultural profiling and messaging service. It is a response to the explosive growth of cellular services in Africa. Managed on the web and delivered via mobile, individuals, agribusiness, government and projects use Esoko to collect and send out market data using simple text messaging. The Esoko platform provides automatic and personalized price alerts, buy and sell offers, bulk SMS messaging, stock counts and SMS polling.

A private initiative based in Accra, Ghana, Esoko was built and is supported by a team of over 60 local developers and support staff. Along with the technology, Esoko has a partner support program focused on capacity building and financial sustainability, with an emphasis on market data enumeration and business development services.

History[]

Esoko began as TradeNet in 2005 with the encouragement of the UN's FAO,^[1] and in partnership with FoodNet^[2] in Uganda. Focused on agricultural marketing it provided current market data via SMS and the web to stakeholders within the agriculture and trade sectors in developing countries.

In 2005 TradeNet signed a three year agreement with USAID's MISTOWA program^[3] to adapt the product and make it available to their target beneficiaries (MISTOWA's mission was to increase regional trade in West Africa by 20%). Esoko was described as 'a simple sort of eBay for agricultural products across a dozen countries in West Africa'.^[4]

In April, 2009 TradeNet rebranded as Esoko, switching to a new platform with a broader set of tools. The name Esoko originated from the Swahili name Soko which means Market; the 'e' representing 'electronic'. The eSoko name was also an idea brought from the eRwanda Project in Rwanda where they have a different version of eSoko, owned by the Ministry of Agriculture (www.esoko.gov.rw). In 2008, the eRwanda Project granted permission to TradeNet to use the name Esoko.

Currently Esoko is active in 16 countries through different partnership agreements; both public sector agricultural projects and Esoko country resellers and franchises.