Awards

Sanjeev Kumar of The Goat Trust in India will develop animated mobile applications that provide information on improving productivity, veterinary and financial services, and markets for women goat herders in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to increase their income. These women work in remote regions with limited support, and many are illiterate. They will develop simple applications with health, nutrition, animal husbandry, a marketplace, and management components, and integrate value-chain players such as products and services suppliers. In health, they will develop a decision support tool to help farmers identify diseases using 141 symptoms and to select the most suitable treatment in consultation with vets. For the marketplace, farmers will be able to order quality products and pay directly. There will also be a web-based platform for goat sales. They will develop the applications in consultation with farmers and other stakeholders, and perform pilot testing.

Esther Muiruri of Equity Group Foundation in Kenya will expand their Equity Online-Agriculture platform to provide information on agricultural best practices, including smart-farming innovations, as well as access to financing and markets to initially 200,000, and subsequently up to two million, small-scale farmers in Kenya to improve their productivity and income. They will build the platform to digitally disseminate agricultural information such as soil testing and pest and disease control, which will improve timely planting and crop and livestock management. They will also build in training in financial literacy targeted towards women, who make up the majority of agricultural workers, and access to financial support and tailored insurance products by implementing e-vouchers and loans, digital wallets and a credit scoring system. Market information and direct contacts with potential buyers will also be provided through an online platform.

Shafiq-ul Islam of ACME AI in Bangladesh will produce a smartphone-based system that uses computer vision and machine learning to accurately estimate the weight of cows and goats to help smallholder livestock farmers in rural Bangladesh maximize productivity and profits. Accurately determining livestock weight is challenging for these farmers but critical for determining the right amounts of food and medicines. They will develop a machine learning model and mobile application that uses the smartphone’s camera to process distance, height, and depth information and calculate the weight of the animal to within >90% accuracy. They will test three different business cases, including combining the computer vision-based weighing system with products and service providers, and evaluate the impact on food and medicine purchases, and animal growth and quality, which are directly linked with income.