| |
ChangeMaker and ICT4D ...
ChangeMaker is one of
the pioneers in advocating the use of ICT for development. As a
member of Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), ChangeMaker is
developing capacities and demonstrating the accelerated growth
that can be achieved through the affective use of ICT for
sharing knowledge and information even in rural areas.
HatBazaar is based on local communities’ demand for information
on sustainable agricultural practices, credit, and marketing of
produce and value addition by agriculture experts. Information
Technology can be a unique opportunity to connect the remote
rural farmers with traders, consumers and experts providing
numerous benefits to the rural farmers and SMEs such as market
information, knowledge, expert opinion, consultation, resource
data-base, contacts, regulations, communication, linkages, etc.
The rural district of Bangladesh has very limited flow of
information with the larger markets of the country. Flow of
information is also inadequate within the markets in rural
district. As a
 |
result, the SMEs in
particular had to relay on the information from the traders,
brokers and commissioning agents. These information often
tend to be biased towards the benefits of the trader groups
and are also often inappropriate and inadequate in terms of
timeliness, content, |
|
s well |
|
scope and choice
of information. The goal of the project is to create appropriate
information service provision for the SMEs in rural districts
that can cater the demand through market principles. The recent
subsector studies on various subsector generally show almost a
uniform trend that SMEs do not have adequate access to quality
information on input and output markets. The SMEs in the value
chain also suffers severely from insufficient flow of knowledge
and information about the market trends, market locations and
clusters, market preference, needs and demands. The farmers also
generally lack adequate knowledge and information about the
various input suppliers and output traders. The farmers
generally do not have sufficient vital information relating to
the market trends, needs and demands of their produce, trader
groups, price fluctuations, etc. The traders on the other hand
also lack information about the farmers/suppliers adequately.
Consequently, the supply chain actors are unable to get the best
from the subsector.
The services of the Kiosks are not limited to only one subsector
rather serves a wide selection of subsectors (vegetables, fish,
poultry, livestock, rice, etc.) as well as information relating
to other trades and commerce such as transportation, cold
storage, etc., for making the service viable and effective.
The proposed Rural SME Knowledge and Information Centers
(Kiosks) also links the SMEs with various experts all over the
country through internet and e-mail and provides access to
extremely valuable expert assistances very quickly. The Kiosks
also provides data base resources about the various subsectors,
production quantum by product types, market size, trends,
seasonality factors, import, export, competition from other
districts, projected demand and supply of a particular market,
etc.
|
|
|
