Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems
60
Figure 22: Denizbank Mobile Platform for Farmers
Source: DenizbankIt is apparent that, by facilitating access to information and services through the mobile
application, DenizBank will be making a valuable contribution to farm management by its
clients. It may be worthwhile, however, for the bank to consider other applications as indicated
in the case in Section 3.6.1, which will improve its capacity to monitor farm performance and
trading. This will reduce information asymmetry between the bank and its borrowers and
contribute to the sustained expansion of finance to finance without increasing the risk of loan
default to which they are exposed.
4.4 MIS IN AFRICAN GROUP OF OIC MEMBER COUNTRIES Table 3 (see Subsection 3.4.2) shows a dependence of some OIC countries in West Africa on a
few staple cereals and root crops. The table also shows that per capita consumption of cereals is
generally rising. A similar situation exists in Central, Eastern and Southern Africa with maize
being particularly prominent in the food systems of the latter two regions. Supply variability,
usually linked to the vagaries of the weather, tend to create volatility in domestic prices for the
staple grains, especially maize, in Eastern and Southern Africa (Corsino, 2016). This situation
often puts policymakers under pressure to intervene to moderate price hikes, sometimes with
deleterious effects (Porteous, 2017). This is despite the fact that agricultural output markets in
these countries have been liberalised to a comparatively greater extent than, especially, the Arab
Group of OIC countries (COMCEC, 2017).