iHub By Jessica Colaco / October 12, 2010
Meet the Lady behind the iCow idea!
Su Kahumbu-Stephanou founded Green Dreams Ltd. in 2000, an organic farm in Tigoni, Kenya, dedicated to serving local consumers. Green Dreams now works with Kenyan farmers to achieve organic certification and connect them with local markets. They opened their first organic store in 2006, and are working to create Kenya’s first organic coffee shop.
Su Kahumbu
“Kenya’s farmers are generally small scale farmers who cannot afford to follow industrialized conventional production. What they have is access to land, farmyard manure and manpower,” Su says. What they’re missing, she says, is the know-how to create a productive farm. “The biggest aspect that is missing in this sector is information,” she says.
Hence the conception of the idea iCow by Su Kahumbu-Stephanou; TED Global Fellow 2010 and Managing Director of Green Dreams Ltd.
According to Su, iCow is a voice based mobile application that will help farmers track the oestrus stages of their cows helping them to manage their breeding as well as cow nutrition leading up to the calving day. Farmers will update the system with definite known dates within the cow calender and the system will send call back voice and sms alerts to the farmer during the year assisting them to make informed decisions.
iCow is a plugin App for the Mkulima Farmer Information Service and Helpline being developed by Green Dreams Ltd. iCow also recently won first place at the inaugural Apps4Africa competition.
Congratulations to Su Kahumbu-Stephanou and Green Dreams on this great idea!!
Author : Jessica Colaco
Founding iHub Manager - 2010 - 2011 at iHub, Research Director @iHubResearch, Mobile and Robotics Tech Evangelist @iHub_Robotics, Co-Founder of @WMIAfrica and @AkiraChix, @TED Global Fellow 2009 and Guitarist.
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6 Comments
Evans MACHERA at 06:07:29AM Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Su, You are an intellectual in community development.Certainly,your innovation will see a farmer who cannot invest heavily be a small investor that will see one grow unto a real investor.
My the lord bless the work you are doing that is focusing on the local farmer.
Evans.
ReplyDavid at 07:50:49AM Wednesday, October 13, 2010
CONGRATULATIONS Su. Now how do we get it onto our phones?
ReplySu at 18:45:12PM Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Evans and David Thank you so much for your support. iCow will be launched soon probably around the end of November. It will be available in the Safaricom app store for folk with smart phones and more importantly available via a USSD number for lower end phones which are used by most farmers. We will be sure to make alot of noise around it’s launch so don’t worry you will definitely hear about it.!
Regards
Su
ReplyDR.VISHNU SHARMA at 11:40:11AM Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Dear Su,
I am an livestock scientist working in organic animal production,spend last 2 yrs at Ethiopia. I am really very happy when some body thinks about welfare of livestock who cannot speak and hear. your innovation is certainly anb example that how technology can be translated for potential use of farmers of 3 developing countries.More over, it is for livestock keepers, who alwayas have 2nd priority than agriculture.
I shall like to have more details in times to come and contribute some suggestions. I really extends my warm congratulations on this great achievement.
Dr.Vishnu Sharma
ReplyIndia
Una vaca en mi iPhone: apps para el desarrollo | Territorio creativo at 10:13:02AM Wednesday, November 17, 2010
[...] iCow, la gran vencedora. Es una aplicación móvil de voz desarrollada por Charles Kithika que ayuda a los ganaderos a controlar las etapas de celo de sus vacas, gestionar adecuadamente los periodos de cría de las hembras, vigilar la alimentación de los animales hasta la fecha del parto y, en resumen, mejorar el rendimiento de sus explotaciones. [...]
ReplyApp 4 Africa at 18:01:28PM Wednesday, April 13, 2011
[...] iCow, la gran vencedora. Es una aplicación móvil de voz desarrollada por Charles Kithika que ayuda a los ganaderos a controlar las etapas de celo de sus vacas, gestionar adecuadamente los periodos de cría de las hembras, vigilar la alimentación de los animales hasta la fecha del parto y, en resumen, mejorar el rendimiento de sus explotaciones. [...]
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