The efficiency of agricultural markets in developing countries is constrained by the asymmetry of information among actors along the value chains, with farmers being at the weakest position (Fafchamps & Gabre-Madhin 2006). Farmers' access to market information would then improve their spatial and temporal arbitration capacity as well as their market power (David-Benz et al. 2012; Shepherd 1997). This is one of the objectives of the Market Information Systems (MIS), which were first promoted in the developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s. From early 2000s, a second generation of MIS emerged, involving information and communication technologies (ICT) and particularly mobile phone (Galtier et al., 2014). ICT is identified as a major lever for development in Africa (Loukou 2013; World Bank 2012). However, effective use of MIS by farmers in developing countries remains marginal (Galtier et al., 2014), despite the high penetration of mobile phone in rural areas. What are the constraints linked to farmers' adoption of the MIS? According to Galtier et al. (2014), the failure of the second generation of MIS to meet farmers' needs is largely due to (i) the lack of close monitoring and evaluation of the very fast progress in the innovations, and (ii) the risk of exclusion with regards to smallholders' access to ICTs. Compliance with the needs of the target population, as well as their capacity to use SMS-based devises, within fast changing contexts, have been highlighted as one of the conditions for the MIS effectiveness (Burrell & Oreglia 2015, Garuku, Winters & Stepman 2009; Shepherd 1997). This communication is addressing these assumptions. Based on rapid surveys of recipients at the initial steps of the development of new dissemination tools, we analyze the adequacy of the use of SMS to disseminate information to smallholder farmers. In Madagascar, the development of the MIS started in 2005 with the creation of the Rice Observatory (OdR) and the Vegetable Economic Info