Digital agriculture
Useful tools on the phone a farmer already owns.
Almost every farmer we meet has a phone. So we use it. Weather notes, planting calendars, market prices and simple record keeping, in Kinyarwanda, through the channels people already check. No new app to download.
Digital agriculture goes wrong when it starts with the software. We start with the question a farmer asked us last week: when do I plant, what will this cost, and who will buy it.
Short messages, in Kinyarwanda, timed to the season. When rain is coming, when a pest is moving through the district, what beans sold for at the nearest market.
Our field teams record training attendance, plot data and follow up visits on their phones. That data reaches the office the same day instead of three weeks later in a notebook.
We do not build apps that need a smartphone and a data bundle to open. If a tool cannot work for a farmer with a feature phone and patchy network, it is not a tool for this work.
Projects
Every project below sits under this pillar.
Short seasonal messages in Kinyarwanda, sent to farmer groups by SMS and WhatsApp. When to plant, what is moving through the district, and what the nearest market paid last week.
Newsletter
A short email every month or so. Training reports, harvest results, and what we learned along the way. No noise.
