TARGET:  SMALL BUSINESS EFFICIENCY

Trade at Hand is an ITC service which objective is to make innovative use of mobile phones by business exporters from developing economies.

The service started to serve agricultural product exporters and now moves on to other economic sectors. Since 2006, Trade at Hand projects lead to the creation of four solutions:

	"Market Prices", consists in sending, via SMS, product prices on international markets, in real time;
	"Market Alerts" is a Web-to-SMS tool that enables Business Support Organisations to transmit business opportunities, contacts and market news to targeted business people;
	"mCollect" allows national market price collecting and food security institutions to use the SMS channel to gather price information from their networks of rural market price collectors;
	"Mobile Marketplace", offers a virtual marketplace to small-scale producers who have access to a mobile phone, enabling them to advertise their products to big buyers (i.e. exporters).

Trade at Hand was designed to be self-sustainable in countries where the service is launched. The management of Trade at Hand is given to local organizations (called T@H Focal Points).

For more information, please send your request to Trade-at-Hand@intracen.org

Recent fluctuations in oil prices have had a considerable effect on food prices and food security in many ACP nations. How much the price of oil has impacted the costs of agricultural goods, in particular, is proportionate to the distance these products have to travel to reach customers. This price instability has created significant tensions in several West African countries, for example, which increasingly depend on fossil fuel for their food supply. The ripples caused by the recent oil price shocks demonstrated the relative advantages of regional and sub-regional trade in agricultural produce compared to inter-continental, international trade.

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Mira Slavova, International Consultant, International Trade Centre

Burkina Faso

Mali

Mozambique

Senegal

Maison de l'Entreprise du Burkina Faso - MEBF

Chambre de Commerce et de l'Industrie du Mali - CCIM

Instituto para a Promoção de Exportaçes (Mozambique) - IPEX

Agence Sénégalaise de Promotion des Exportations - ASEPEX