Mobile service portal for rural fisher community development

Abstract

Emerging technological advancements are with the potential of delivering numerous services for betterment of local SMEs, entrepreneurs and rural community in general. However, the necessity of high-tech, sophisticated and high cost equipments to access these services has created digital division between socioeconomic layers as well as between rural and communities in cities. In this work, we have illustrated possibilities of adoption of affordable mobile telephony for trade facilitation and information service provisioning in compliance with global standards such as UN/CEFACT's recommendations. We have demonstrated application of a mobile service portal in particular for fisher communities concentrated mainly in rural costal cities.