Letter of Inquiry (LOI) 

Smart Farming Innovations for Small-Scale Producers

Submitted By:​ Cowtribe Technology Limited and ​ Farm Radio International​.

Project Title: ​Transforming the livestock vaccine delivery system for smallholder farmers in
Ghana

1. Executive Summary
Livestock plays a vital part in the livelihoods of many smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. However,
the majority of farmers struggle to access information, veterinary services, or vaccines that would enable
them to improve their husbandry practices. Cowtribe developed and piloted a tech-enabled vaccine
logistics platform that aggregates last-mile farmer demand for livestock products and then delivers them
to their farms. Our focus since 2017 has been to demonstrate feasibility of our model in a resource low
environment. After three years of pilot testing, Cowtribe has commulatively served over 39,000 farmers
and distributed over half a million doses of vaccine. A recent evaluation has proven that Cowtribe’s
solution is very successful at increasing farmers' uptake of livestock vaccine services, reducing livestock
mortality and reducing the prices farmers pay for vaccines services.

Our next challenge is to rapidly scale up our operations to serve more farmers and demonstrate
convincingly that we can do so profitably. Our proposed scale up project therefore will focus on (1)
improving uptake through innovative product bundling and integrating new demand generation strategies,
(2) improving logistics and supply chain infrastructure and (3) strengthening collaboration with
government for low-cost scale-up of the delivery at the national level. The main goal is to expand the
geographic reach of the Cowtribe service to 8 additional districts in Ghana covering 43,000 additional
smallholder farmers. At a significant service penetration of 50,000 smallholder livestock farmers at the
end of the project, we expect our model to reach up to 41% reduction of delivery costs. This reduction
will partly be transferred to the smallholder farmers in the form of a reduction in the prices they pay for
vaccines service. In addition we expect a minimum of 15% reduction in herd sickness and a 30%
reduction in herd mortality among farmers accessing Cowtribe’s services. There is also likely to be a
reduction in threats to animal health as encounters with counterfeit products and fraudulent services
diminish in favour of high-quality services. The project will be implemented by a consortium of Cowtribe
Technology Ltd and Farm Radio International for a period of 24 months.

2. Goals & Rationale

The project goal is to increase access to vaccines and other veterinary services by smallholder farmers in
remote and underserved communities in Northern Ghana. This will be achieved by driving demand for
livestock vaccine services supported through Farm Radio International’s innovative radio-based
interactive communication and information services, improving logistics and supply chain efficiencies,
and increasing efficiency of service uptake through innovative product bundling.

Livestock is a high-value asset, and approximately 70% of rural Ghanaians depend on livestock for food
and income outside of harvest season. However, farmers are losing approximately 25% of their livestock
to diseases - mainly due to poor access to vaccines. The vast majority of smallholder farmers struggle to
secure good quality care for their animals, particularly vaccines. Supply chains are inefficient, delivery
costs are high, and veterinary technicians have no current incentive to deliver animal vaccines to
smallholder farms at prices they can afford. Illicit, low-quality, and counterfeit vaccines are often the only
option available to farmers. Access to quality animal health information and extension services remains a
fundamental problem for many smallholder farmers in rural Ghana, due to logistics, resource issues,
remoteness, and a high extension agent to farmer ratio (McNamara et al, 2014). Where extension is
available, it may not meet specific needs, may exclude women, or lack links to inputs and services. Where
it is available and used, it has been seen to be effective in northern Ghana (Anang et al 2019).

In 2017, Cowtribe initiated a simple but powerful idea: to build a technology platform that could enable a
low-cost solution to the vaccine delivery problem. By disintermediating the current inefficient supply
chains, we are able to provide a novel, dedicated supply of high-quality vaccines directly to smallholder
farmers at affordable prices in even the most remote villages. We aggregate demand for animal health
supplies through a simple farmer-facing mobile platform and a team of sales officers. Farmers meet with
our sales officers, who have a Cowtribe app installed on a mobile device. Once a group of farmers sign
up, a lead farmer places product orders on their behalf with the Cowtribe sales officer, who can accept
payments through mobile money. The farmer has the option to pay in instalments, starting from US$ 1.0
within the given season. An SMS panel is used to send text messages to registered farmers about
upcoming vaccinations, and vaccinators are kept informed about delivery campaigns schedules.
Deliveries are made by certified vaccinators employed by Cowtribe. By aggregating demand across
multiple farmers in a district, we make livestock vaccine services affordable for smallholder farmers and
sustainably profitable for Cowtribe. Interactive radio campaigns, responding to farmer’s information
needs, will stimulate and increase this demand. Since its inception in 2017, Cowtribe has commulatively
served over 39,000 farmers. Routine livestock vaccination at Cowtribe communities increased from 19%
to 84%. Vaccine cost to farmers is 30% less compared to that incurred before the innovation. In addition,
farmers also received timely deliveries.

While the positive impact of Cowtribe’s model was immediately evident, last-mile distribution is a
business of scale. With 200 million smallholder farmers in need of quality and reliable access to livestock
health, our next challenge will be how to rapidly scale up our operations to serve more farmers and
demonstrate convincingly that we can do so profitably. The scale-up project is focused on scaling our
current service across 8 new districts in the country, reaching significant service penetration and
awareness, and continuing to drive efficiencies and positive operating margins. We expect continued
month-on-month growth farmer enrolment that will extend Cowtribe’s reach to 50,000 new farmers in
Ghana within 24 months. At this scale, we expect a minimum of 15% reduction in herd sickness and a
30% reduction in herd mortality among farmers accessing Cowtribe’s services. These numbers will
translate into significant, tangible value for smallholders in terms of increased milk production, the value
of the animals themselves, and the value of future calves born from surviving livestock - their
accumulated wealth. There is also likely to be a reduction in threats to animal health as encounters with
counterfeit products and fraudulent services diminish in favour of high-quality services. Furthermore,
despite increased expenditures on vaccinations, Cowtribe anticipates a net 13% in annual cost savings for
farmers, based on the reduced costs of treating sick and dying animals, and reduced travel expenses
incurred by farmers who otherwise are forced to journey to distant towns to purchase supplies.

The project will achieve three ​specific objectives:

● Increase ongoing demand for vaccines and veterinary services offered by Cowtribe through
remote-led radio and ICT based advisory services to 500 communities in 8 districts in Ghana.
● Scale-up service coverage from 7,000 to 50,000 smallholder farmers 50% of whom are women.
● Strengthen collaboration with government for further low-cost scale-up of the delivery across at
the national level.

3. Design, Scope and Approach

The innovative partnership proposes three approaches to improve access to livestock vaccine services for
smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana.
The first element is to provide information and drive demand among farmers. The project will run
interactive radio programming focusing on livestock health in farmer-preferred radio stations. Audience
research will determine levels of knowledge, barriers, gender issues, current access to inputs, and drivers
of change among target audiences. Provision of information and opportunity for discussion will stimulate
demand for vaccinations. Aired in local languages, programs will dispel myths, inform farmers about the
benefits of vaccinations and animal husbandry, and provide links to Cowtribe and their services. As part
of the radio programs, Farm Radio International (FRI) will deliver a full range mobile-based services to
engage farmers. ​Uliza (​ask i​ n Swahili) ​is FRI’s innovative solution for interactivity and quality assurance.
Uliza is used to engage radio listeners using their mobile phones before, during and after agricultural
radio programs. Listeners vote, register for alerts, access additional information and content and get their
questions answered (push and pull content through IVR and SMS). Farmers listening to the radio
programs and interested will be linked to Cowtribe through a ‘missed call’ function offered by Uliza, that
will connect them directly to relevant Cowtribe sales officers.

Once demand is increasingly generated, the Cowtribe delivery model will be deployed as farmers
respond. Cowtribe will aggregate demand for animal health supplies through a simple farmer-facing app
and a team of sales officers who ensure farmers are in a group. With these groups, a lead farmer places
product orders on their behalf with the Cowtribe sales officer, who can accept payments and schedule
deliveries. ​Cowtribe technicians make deliveries. By aggregating demand across multiple farmers in a
district, we make vaccination campaigns affordable for farmers and sustainably profitable for Cowtribe.

As we expand to new districts and new farmers, our greatest challenge and greatest opportunity will be to
drive product affordability. Cowtribe will bundle vaccination service with agro inputs and credit to help
farmers access inputs whilst ensuring their livestock are vaccinated annually. Farmers can sign up to a
service bundle which will deliver all recommended veterinary services along farm inputs like fertilizer
and seeds, on the appropriate schedule throughout the year. “Bundling‟ vaccine services and other fast
moving inputs will allow most farmers who have never used vaccines before to first try out. Experience
from the pilot has shown that bundling makes it more attractive to farmers thereby increasing uptake from
43% to 87% and decreasing the cost of payment collection by 32%. Cowtribe fulfills orders through
pre-scheduled delivery campaigns, usually organized once a month, based on local demand. Campaign
schedules are communicated to farmers by Cowtribe's sales officers, and Cowtribe technicians deliver the
products to farmers on their farm. Finally, we continue to focus on our critical advantage which is being
the extensive logistics platform to optimise scheduling, delivery logistics, and cold chain management
based on geography and customer density, powered by real-time data collection that enables us to
improve delivery efficiency.

Finally with an eye on the longer term, the partnership will support continued access to affordable
supplies - at the logistics level but also in terms of partnerships and at the policy level. For example, the
scale up will target the entire Northern regions of Ghana, where the lack of access to vaccines and
veterinary services is acute. The project will leverage its ongoing collaboration with the Ghana Ministry
of Agriculture (MoFA) in which we have assisted the ministry to establish e-extension hubs offering
advisory services across the country. Focus will be on using the e-extension system to deliver focused
advisory services on vaccines and veterinary practices involving public veterinary staff. The project will
also strengthen its collaboration with MoFA on vaccines procurement. We will equally seek to engage
with farmer’s organisations and women’s organisations to support activities, ensure alignment and
responsiveness, and provide feedback on services and information.

4. Organization Capabilities & Collaboration

The consortium comprises Cowtribe Technology Ltd (Cowtribe) and Farm Radio International (FRI).
Cowtribe is Africa’s first last-mile livestock vaccine distribution platform, leveraging mobile technology
and smart logistics to simplify the supply chain and deliver reliable animal vaccines and other animal
health products to farmers in underserved communities throughout Ghana. Cowtribe is currently
headquartered in Tamale, Ghana with sub distribution centers in five locations in Ghana and a total staff
strength of 63 people. In the three years since it began operations, Cowtribe has cumulatively reached
over 39,000 farmers, delivered over half a million doses of livestock vaccines, and expanded coverage
across 208 farming communities in six rural districts in Ghana.

Farm Radio International (FRI) is a Canadian non-profit organization at the forefront of ICT-enabled
extension and communication for scale. FRI’s interactive rural radio approach addresses the information,
communication and extension needs of millions of small-scale farmers, rural entrepreneurs and citizens.
FRI’s core expertise is collaborative, results-based communication for development combining radio and
mobile phones, other ICTs and face-to-face interaction. FRI has developed a series of interactive
radio-based approaches tailored to achieve different outcomes: awareness, knowledge; market linkages;
adoption of good practice; and changes in attitude and behaviour. FRI is currently operational in 12
countries, and has an extended network of 1000+ radio station partners in 41 countries. In 2019 we
reached over 200 million farmers with radio programming to support improved livelihoods.

Cowtribe will directly manage critical project activities, and support and coordinate the work of the
consortium partners.

5. Scale and Sustainability (~1/4 page)

The innovation will scale through optimising farmers' demand for vaccines on the one hand and
expanding the capacity of Cowtribe to meet the demand on the other. Increased efficiency and business
growth of Cowtribe vaccines delivery business means cost effectiveness, affordability by farmers,
reinvestment and sustainability of the model. Demand generation, and provision of extension services
through radio programming provides scale while being cost-effective. Radio can reach hundreds of
thousands of farmers in an instant, and costs can be as low as ten cents per user, compared to traditional
extension which is estimated at USD50+ per user. It depends on existing infrastructure and is already
accepted in daily use. The project will focus on developing partnerships, capacity building for
broadcasters, providing skills to support long term sustainability measures related to demand by farmers
and e-extension advisory services.

6. Gender and Climate Smart (~1/4 page)

The partners bring significant experience in gender sensitive and responsive programming, integrating
gender equality and women’s empowerment in its activities, projects, and partnerships. For example in
service delivery at the community level, conscious effort is made to increase the number of female
veterinary technicians, and promote women’s participation with men as decision-makers. It is worth
noting that 50% of livestock farmers under Cowtribe’s coverage are women and this is a significant
gender inclusive strategy. The remote radio service is intended to reduce carbon emission associated with
extensive transport to remote communities. We are currently employing climate smart strategies to deliver
vaccines to farmers. These include;
● A range of solar-powered vaccine refrigeration equipment and infrastructure that are energy
efficient and significantly reduce the reliance on energy from fossil fuels.
● Distribution network is optimally planned to include the shortest and most efficient routes that
reduce travel times and minimise energy consumption of vehicles, while increasing service life.
● We have developed a well structured process and protocols for disposing off medical waste and
recycling of storage cans.
● We are also currently using heat-stable vaccines such as the I2 vaccine, which does not require
strict low temperature to be effective. This helps to conserve energy used in cooling.