Analyzing ChatGPT for Cross-Lingual, Localized and Targeted Agricultural Advisory for Smallholder Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende of Makerere University in Uganda will leverage ChatGPT to provide tailored support to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa in their local languages. These smallholder farmers contribute up to 69% of household incomes, but they are vulnerable to the devastating effects of crop diseases and pests and lack the timely support required to combat such challenges. Digital technologies have been developed to help but they cover a limited number of crop types and languages. They will curate a dataset comprising 1,000 farmer-specific agricultural questions on pests and diseases, markets, and seed advisory services, in English and Luganda. They will then perform prompt engineering of ChatGPT to investigate its potential to provide targeted, accurate, and unbiased agricultural advice on a wide range of crops. The responses will be further fine-tuned and compared with responses from agricultural experts.