A young female student named Theofrida Muginga from the University of Rwanda is working on a project called ‘Mkulima GPT.’ This project involves creating a Swahili chatbot powered by ChatGPT. Its main goal is to help small-scale farmers by identifying crop diseases and providing them with farming advice that respects their culture.
The project, ‘Mkulima GPT,’ is unique because it combines artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to assist small farmers, especially those who have limited resources.
The founder of MKULIMA CHATGPT, Theofrida Muginga, comes from an agricultural background. She understands that many farmers don’t have access to or knowledge about technology like CHATGPT. She believes that these AI technologies can be very helpful for farmers.
One of the standout features of ‘Mkulima GPT’ is its focus on using local languages. It also aims to expand its services to more African languages. To make it easy for farmers to access the chatbot, ‘Mkulima GPT’ has a website and a WhatsApp phone number where farmers can ask questions about various farming topics, such as preparing the land, managing maize diseases, and handling crops after harvesting.
“We hope that many farmers will use this technology, and we are also considering adding Kinyarwanda to CHATGPT. During the development of the application, we interacted with farmers, and one of the issues they faced was the spread of [head] smut disease.”
“[Head] smut keeps spreading due to poor farming practices, but the application reminds farmers of the good practices to prevent the disease from coming back.”
Currently, the project is in the testing phase and welcomes feedback from users. The plan is to launch it in December, with input from experts in agriculture and AI to improve its capabilities before making it available to small-scale farmers.
