Information technology is growing at a high pace in the world today where most of the activities in various sectors have been digitalized and can be accessed through our mobile phones to improve sales and widen people’s engagement in the business processes using information and communication technology, in this endeavor the agricultural sector has not been left behind as a way to promote access to information and accountability . At eight tech we have supported this cause through the development of web and mobile applications for our customers. Some applications include;
Viazi vitamu App, a mobile application that runs on all devices it empowers farmers who are growing sweet potatoes in East Africa under the ICOPSEA project to have disease free crops starting from buying clean planting material, gardens mapping, farmers certification, reporting of disease instances, Farmer and Inspector profiling, Garden and Screen House Mapping, Garden inspection reporting (Inspectors), Capturing and sending of queries (extension services), Variety Capture (Documentation of Maturity periods and attributes) and Ordering of Roots and Vines. Website: http://www.sweetpotatoeseastafrica.org/
Erignu App, this was designed to introduce green-gram in rice cropping system to increase land productivity, improve soil fertility, and enhance farmer’s income and nutrition among women and youth. Thus to also evaluate use of rhizobia inoculum to inoculate green-gram and develop farmer-centred seed production and business. Website: http://erignu.org/
Surface App, this is designed to help resolve farmers queries easily for example how to fight pests and diseases on the farm, get new ideas on how to improve yields and others. The Uniqueness of this app is that farmers can post queries about the any disease attack on the crops then the experts will have to respond to them by providing them with the solution and these queries can be in form of text, audio and even images of the parts affected.
Cassava Carp App, The Farmer registers himself into the application and can also register his land size on which the garden, the application has got automatic Geo-location Tracker which keeps the co-ordinates of the gardens. This helps the farmer to keeps track of his gardens and their locations, Date of planting and the expected Harvesting Date. With Cassava Carp app the farmers can be able to know who are the service providers going to buy his produce after harvest. Also a farmer gets in touch with suppliers who sale agricultural materials which include pesticides, machinery plus their locations. Website: http://www.cassava-carp.org/
These ICT tools developed have helped farmers in various ways which include connect farmers to other farmers, to potential customers, easily find seed for their next planting, make orders for seed, apply for their field inspections , to machine suppliers, veterinaries and potential investors to help bring the agricultural sector closer to the people thus leading to its improvement.
At Eight Tech we are continuously finding better ways of providing cheap, efficient and cost effective solutions for the agricultural sector. We understand that farmers information priorities include weather information, disease resistant varieties, crop advisory or extension services and price information all of which information can be easily aggregated into one simple solution and that is what we are doing for our partners.
Do you have a great idea on how to integrate ICT in agriculture don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
You can also get all these apps on google play store .
