services and products
eMKambo Consultancy
Market-oriented consultancy and research services to businesses and organisations involved in agriculture and value chain industries.
Agric-Markets Value Chain Analysis
We provide whole range of goods and services necessary for an agricultural product to move from the farm to the final customer or consumer.
eMKambo Perishable finance
eMKambo offers a range of agriculture loans for traders in the Market to meet the cost of working capital and allied activities.
Agric- Content Generation and Software Development
eMKambo have a highly qualified team which works on creating and maintaining agriculture related web, mobile and desktop applications.
Knowledge Centre
Creating and managing agricultural knowledge resources, including the analysis and modelling of diverse data sets relevant to management of the produce markets.
eMKambo Bulk SMS
Assists agric- value chain actors e.g input suppliers, agro dealers, buyers of commodities, transporters among other service provides to broadcast messages to facilitate their business.
eMKambo Call Centre
Comprises of 16 mobiles lines (Econet, Telecel and Netone) used to inform various value chain players about agricultural markets status.
Mobile Application
The mobile application avails to share agriculture information and knowledge (content) through mobile smart phones.
About Us
The word Mkambo refers to market in isiNdebele language. It has the same connotation in the Shona language though in Shona, the word Musika commonly refers to the market One of the challenges facing Zimbabwean agriculture and rural development is lack of reliable, usable and timely information, evidence and knowledge for effective decision making. A significant part of the available information is either out-dated or dispersed in various institutions, people and environments. When projects and programmes by various NGOs, private sector players and other development organisations come to an end, in most instances, there is no clear mechanism for the knowledge that was gathered to be handed over and inform new initiatives. In addition, competition rather than collaboration among organisations in the same sector works against knowledge sharing.
Management Team
CHARLES DHEWA
Clever mukove
tafadzwa makumbe
Latest news
African agriculture requires serious disruptive thinkers
If African agriculture is to be truly transformative, there is need for disruptive thinkers who can revisit boundaries between smallholder and large scale farmers. These boundaries have extended from physical (size of land) to the mind-set, creating unsustainable mental blockages. Most smallholder farmers have bought the myth that they cannot think big and challenge conventional[…]
How informal agricultural traders capture and preserve customer loyalty
They may not advertise their products in the formal media, but informal agricultural traders have results-driven ways of capturing customer loyalty. Most of their skills have been honed over generations into unwritten intuitive laws that almost every trader is aware of. They understand customers more than customers know about themselves. According to traders in Harare[…]
How much should farmers and consumers know about something?
The formal education system in many developing countries is organised in such a way that the depth and breadth of knowledge imparted determines grades and qualification levels. Unfortunately, it is difficult to translate this arrangement into real life where societies do not function according to grades and degree qualifications. For instance, farmers and rural communities[…]
How to move from ordinary to best agricultural practices
‘Best practice’ is not even a mouthful but what it means in practice remains unclear to many people who use the phrase. In African agriculture, it takes a lot for a farmer or trader to become a best practitioner. Most value chain actors face challenges in identifying sufficient quality evidence that can be translated into[…]
The power of curiosity and situational intelligence in African communities
In every African community you can find people who are naturally curious and those who lack interest in learning. Those who are curious can describe many aspects of their local environment such as natural resources and man-made features like water sources, dip tanks, schools, markets and business centres as well as the history of their[…]
Many African farmers can perform like Gold Medalists
If agriculture was an Olympics competition, many African farmers would certainly be gold medalists. Zephaniah Phiri, the late world class water harvester of Zvishavane in Zimbabwe would have collected dozens of gold medals. There are many such farmers from Cape to Cairo and Senegal to Somalia. While modernization is trying to present standards of excellence[…]
Limitations of using documents and reports to share knowledge in Africa
Many well-intentioned organisations and people are being frustrated by the shortcomings of using case studies, most significant change stories and conference presentations in spreading success from one African community to another. Most reports produced by several consultants are not making a difference due to multiple reasons (known and unknown). On the other hand, more than[…]
Why some approaches and technologies are not moving beyond early adopters
A lot can be learnt from remarkable ways through which African socio-cultural systems generated and shared knowledge. There were reliable conduits for sharing knowledge from one age group to another, one gender to another and one society to another. Besides respected knowledge brokers, each community had sense making tools linking different communities of practice. Some[…]
From farmers and traders to knowledge artisans
Many developing countries are witnessing trends where indigenous knowledge systems are transforming to a commercial stage. This is exposing the myth that indigenous knowledge can remain pure and undiluted in the current rapidly globalizing world. The modern economy forces farmers, traders and other economic actors to contribute knowledge to their socio-economic networks. Every farmer or[…]
How can we build equilibrium knowledge ecosystems in developing countries?
There are many reasons why developing countries suffer from a severe mismatch between knowledge supply and demand. Less than 20% of knowledge in African countries has been documented. Besides driving policy and economic development, such knowledge is trying to influence the 80% tacit knowledge which is undocumented. While computerisation and digital technology are expanding in[…]