Agro-extension services made easier with chatbot

Standing on her farm on the hilly terrain of Mukuuri village in Embu County, Doris Mwende Mugendi dips her hand in her pocket to fish out her mobile phone.

She then browses the phone to check out when it is likely to rain in the area, what kind of seeds and farm inputs are recommended for the short rainy season, and if there are any pests and diseases expected to strike.

“I am getting all this information from a service called AgriBot free of charge,” says the 28-year-old farmer, who grows a variety of crops on an acre.

The digital agricultural service was developed by Microsoft and is being rolled out by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) in collaboration with county governments of Kiambu and Embu.

Angela Njoki, a content developer working with Microsoft, says the bot was initially created to enable smallholders who use feature phones access important farming information in a language they understand.

“However, AgriBot has been improved so that farmers with smartphones can access it through WhatsApp and Telegram,” she says.

To register, the farmer dials the code 40139 on a feature phone, and if they have a smart phone, they save the number 0758318589. The farmer then sends the word ‘menu’ to any of the numbers.

Weather forecast

One is then asked to select a suitable language and submit personal information such as name, age, gender and location – from the county to the village.

“Messages related to weather forecast are updated every day, while others such as particular seed varieties to be planted in the villages or the recommended farm inputs are updated every season,” says Njoki.

For Mukuuri village for instance, the bot advises farmers to plant maize, climbing beans, pigeon peas, bush beans, and soybeans because they are the most thriving crops.

Besides that, farmers also get information on how to make and use manure, contain fall armyworms, report locusts, contacts of nearest certified agro-dealers and crop insurance.

To grow climbing beans, Mugendi is advised to till the land and, “prepare rows at a spacing of 60cm and dig planting holes within the rows at a spacing of 10cm.”

The recommended varieties are MAC 64-Mavuno, MAC 34-Tamu and MAC 13-Safi.

Through the AgriBot, village based advisors (VBAs) are using it to reach hundreds of farmers. 

Extension officers

A VBA is an elite smallholder farmer trained to train villagers on good agronomic practices, identification of the right farm inputs and seeds, and they are lead sellers of the certified seeds and farm inputs to village farmers where they earn a commission.

VBAs are also linked to county government agricultural officers so that they can report any new pests and diseases in their areas of operation.

“Before we got this tool, it was difficult to reach out to several farmers. One had to buy airtime, and start calling or sending messages to each one of them,” says Elizabeth Ng’endo, a VBA based in Gatundu North.

According to Nixon Mageka Gecheo, Agra’s ICT officer, the chatbot fills the gap of the ratio of extension officers, which stands at one to 5,000 farmers, far higher than the recommended one to 400.

Patrick Njeru, the head of crop development in Embu County, says they will keep improving it so that it has market information.

“VBAs are also asking if we can make it possible to communicate with a target group so that the same message is not sent to everyone,” says Njoki. 

So far, over 50,000 farmers from Kiambu and Embu counties are using the service and there are plans to spread it across the country.

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