A generic mobile agriculture architecture: a case study of dairy farming
Date
2011
Authors
Gichamba, Amos Njihia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
The high penetration of mobile phones in the Kenyan market has given lead to the opportunity to
use mobile devices for economic activities such as agriculture.
With Kenya geared towards the accomplishment of Vision 2030, agriculture has been identified
as one of the supporting component of the social and economic pillars of Vision 2030. This
means that the success of agriculture in Kenya will accelerate the realization of Vision 2030.
One of the key agricultural sectors in Kenya is dairy farming . Even though this sector contributes
highly to the country's GDP, it is faced by immense challenges including poor market
information, lack of collaboration platforms for the various stakeholders, lack of easy access of
information and manual processes in produce data collection and access.
The aim of this paper was to determine the extent of usage of M-Agriculture applications in
Kenya, to determine the design requirements for an M-Agriculture architecture and to propose an
M-Agriculture architecture. The paper also highlighted on the development of an M-Agriculture
application suite.
The findings of the study suggest that there are present implementations of mobile agriculture in
developed countries while developing countries like Kenya have only a few cases . However, the
study established that the usage of m-agriculture applications has great potential in enhancing
business processes among various stakeholders of the dairy industry.
The result of the study is the design and implementation of a mobile agriculture architecture that
is applicable in dairy farming.
This research provides a comprehensive approach on how to develop systems using mobile
technology that integrate with existing systems. Future researchers can use this architecture as a
starting point in developing mobile agriculture frameworks and models , while system developers
in the area of mobile agriculture can be able to use this architecture to develop mobile systems in
agriculture.
Description
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in
Information Technology
Keywords
Mobile agriculture architecture, Agriculture, Dairy farming, ICT, Java ME, SMS