Radiomarché: Distributed voice- and web-interfaced market information systems under rural conditions

Abstract

Despite its tremendous success, the World Wide Web is still inaccessible to 4.5 billion people- mainly in developing countries- who lack a proper internet infrastructure, a reliable power supply, and often the ability to read and write. Hence, alternative or complementary technologies are needed to make the Web accessible to all, given the limiting conditions. These technologies must serve a large audience, who then may start contributing to the Web by creating content and services. In this paper we propose RadioMarché, a voice- and web-based market information system aimed at stimulating agricultural trade in Sahel countries. To overcome interfacing and infrastructural issues, RadioMarché has a mobile-voice interface and is easy to deploy. Furthermore, we will show how data from regionally distributed instances of RadioMarché, can be aggregated and exposed using Linked Data approaches, so that new opportunities for product and service innovation in agriculture and other domains can be unleashed. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.