In order to support farmers to have better access to markets for their produce, ALIN has been piloting Sokopepe (www.sokopepe.co.ke) an online commodity exchange platform. The aim is to support agricultural producers to access more efficient and effective markets by making their products more visible and easy to find at the national level.

Sokopepe is an integrated supply chain solution that collects agricultural commodity information from the field and disseminates it to end users via various media, including SMS, WAP, e-mail and the Web. It integrates a payment mechanism whereby users can pay for commodities via mobile money transfer. Sokopepe has been piloted at the Ng’arua Maarifa centre but there are plans to replicate it to the rest of ALIN’s Maarifa centres over the cause of the next one year.