Enhancing Women Participation in Virtual Marketing in Nigeria: Evidence from “KasuwaGo” Mobile App ICT Support Services Agent Programme in Legume marketing

We developed “KasuwaGo” mobile app to remove barriers to market participation in West Africa agri-food value chains. Women's adoption and usage of the app remains low in Nigeria. To deepen usage, we introduced a youth-led market-based agent structure to provide ICT support services in transaction creation and trade facilitation for eighty women managed in eight groups in key markets. About 72.5% of the group members gave no consideration to gender in their choice of agent, as they were more concerned with agent's availability and accessibility. Female-managed groups consummated 18% more transactions than male-managed groups (p<0.05) indicating some level of same-gender affinity on engagements beyond transaction initiation. Although potential trade location counts for group members was higher by 6±1 over a 4-week cycle compared to non-group members, the interaction response time to potential trade partners was lower for non-group members app users who were smart phone owners (p<0.05). We found no significant difference in distance of markets participated in by group and non-group members who were “KasuwaGo” app-users on own-smart-phones. Averagely, women traders were willing-to-pay additional NGN110.13 as monthly subscription for app usage. Our findings suggest that providing marketing ICT support is beneficial to mainstreaming women into priority nodes on food value chains.