The developers of the app met with farmers in M'bayakro. (Photos provided by Kouassi Kotchi Willy Ramses.)

This workshop taught farmers how to sort organic waste. (Photos provided by Kouassi Kotchi Willy Ramses.)



'The only problem that we encountered was that not all of the farmers have a smartphone'

Natural products are really important for people like us – consumers who live in the city. Since the 1990s, people in the Ivory Coast have tried to buy food produced domestically. To respond to that demand, farmers tried to increase their yields by using fertiliser. People weren’t really interested in the quality of the product, just where it was produced.



Before showing the farmers the app, we ran a workshop where we taught them about how to sort waste so that they were keeping organic matter that could be used to make fertiliser.



At this workshop, farmers learned how to make fertiliser. (Photos provided by Kouassi Kotchi Willy Ramses.)



It was only after this workshop that we introduced them to the app, which has different “recipes” for fertiliser that are easy to make from organic waste. The only problem that we encountered was that not all the farmers have smartphones. In fact, out of the 150 farmers, only 80 had a smartphone. That’s how we got the idea to develop a voice-operated server that would work on simple mobile phones