Mulanje, Malawi – Alex Maere survived the destruction of Cyclone Freddy when he tore southern Malawi in 2023. His farm did not do so.
The 59 -year -old man saw decades of work disappears with precious soil that the floods have stripped of his small farm in the foothills of Mount Mulanje.
He used to produce 850 kilograms in good health (1,870 pounds) of corn each season to support his three daughters and two sons. He recovered just 8 kilograms (17 pounds) from Freddy’s wreckage.
“It’s not a joke,” he said, remembering the way his farm in the village of Sazola has become a wasteland of sand and rocks.
Freddy has entered action. He decided that he had to change his secular tactics if he had to survive.
He is now one of the thousands of small -scale farmers in the country of southern Africa using a generative AI chatbot designed by the Up COMPANIUNITY Instructions for non -profit for agricultural advice.
The Malawi government supports the project, after seeing the nation dependent on agriculture recently struck by a series of cyclones and a drought induced by El Niño. The Malawi food crisis, which is largely due to the difficulties of small farmers, is a central problem for its national elections next week.
According to the World Bank, more than 80% of the population of Malawi based on agriculture and the country has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, according to the World Bank.
The AI chatbot suggested that Maere cultivates potatoes last year alongside its basic corn and cassava to adapt to its changed soil. He followed the instructions of the letter, he said, and cultivated half a football for potatoes and made more than $ 800 sales, overthrowing his fortune and his children.
“I managed to pay their tuition fees without worries,” he radiated.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to elect agriculture in sub -Saharan Africa, where around 33 to 50 million small farms like Maere produce up to 70 to 80% of food supply, according to the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development. However, productivity in Africa – with the world’s rapidly growing population to eat – is late despite large expanses of arable land.
As the use of surtensin AI around the world, it therefore helps African farmers to access new information to identify crop diseases, predict drought, design fertilizers to increase yields and even locate an affordable tractor. Private investment in agriculture technology in sub -Saharan Africa increased from $ 10 million in 2014 to $ 600 million in 2022, according to the World Bank.
But not without challenges.
Africa has hundreds of languages for AI tools to learn. Even then, few farmers have smartphones and many cannot read. Electricity and internet service are at best unequal in rural and often nonexistent areas.
“One of the biggest challenges in AI sustainable use in African agriculture is accessibility,” said Daniel Mvalo, a specialist in Malawian technology. “Many tools do not take into account the diversity of languages, low literacy and poor digital infrastructure.”
The AI tool in Malawi is trying to do so. The application is called Ulangizi, which means advisor in the country’s chick language. It is based on WhatsApp and operates in Chichewa and English. You can type or talk about your question, and this answers an audio response or in text, said Richard Chongo, director of the Pays d’Opportunity International for Malawi.
“If you can’t read or write, you can take a photo of your culture disease and ask:” What is it? “And the application will answer,” he said.
But to work in Malawi, AI still needs a human touch. For the Maere region, it is the work of Patrick Napanja, 33, a farmer support agent who brings a smartphone with the application for those who have no devices. Chongo calls him “human in the loop”.
“I used to fight to provide answers to certain agricultural challenges, now I use the application,” said Napanja.
Farmers’ support agents and Napanja generally have around 150 to 200 farmers to help and try to visit them in groups of villages once a week. But sometimes, the majority of an hour meeting is adopted while waiting for the answers to be loaded due to the bad connectivity of the region, he said. Other times, they must penetrate the hills nearby to obtain a signal.
These are the simple but obstinate obstacles that millions are faced with taking advantage of technology that others have at hand.
For African farmers living at the forefront of poverty, the impact of bad advice or “hallucinations” can be much more devastating than for those who use it to organize their emails or make a work presentation.
Mvalo, the technology specialist, warned that inaccurate advice such as a poorly identifying chatbot, culture disease could lead to an action that ruins harvesting as well as the livelihoods of a farmer in difficulty.
“Confidence in AI is fragile,” he said. “If he even fails once, many farmers can never try it again.”
The Malawian government has invested in Ulangizi and is scheduled to align with the Official Agricultural Agricultural Councils of the Ministry of Agriculture, making it more relevant to Malawians, said Webster Jassi, the manager of agriculture extension methodologies at the ministry.
But he said Malawi is faced with challenges to get the tool for enough communities to make a considerable difference. These communities do not only need smartphones, but also to be able to offer internet access.
For Malawi, the potential can be to combine AI with traditional collaboration between communities.
“Farmers who have access to the application help their colleagues farmers,” said Jassi, which improves productivity.
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