Field-service software,learned in the field

The roadmap questions could not be answered from Lagos. I travelled across 29 states to sit with the farmers and field technicians using the products. Each visit changed something in the roadmap. The most important finding was simple: many farmers did not own smartphones.

We added ways to use the service without a smartphone. We introduced SMS intake: text what you need and when you need it to a number, and it lands in our database for dispatch. We introduced micro-payment plans so a farmer could buy a smartphone in instalments, and for those who couldn't, we supplied the phone and recovered the cost gradually from the harvest revenue we helped generate.

Our users wrote to us in Pidgin, Yoruba, and Igbo, so staff translated the content manually, in house.

AgriSquare, the community platform for agricultural enthusiasts, grew from 3,200 to 25,000 users in under six months against a twelve-month mandate. Growth came from direct outreach, partnerships, universities, conferences, technicians, and local government relationships. Those channels added users steadily.

Meathub failed even though the app worked. We never solved cold-chain delivery, so the product failed at fulfilment. Farmcrowdy later closed for operational reasons too. Both taught me to test the operating model as seriously as the software.

Farmers, technicians, students, and professionals used the same platform for different reasons. The user base grew, but interaction between those groups stayed low. Since then, I ask early whether the personas in a shared product genuinely need one another.