Murangé, Malawi – Alex Maële survived the destruction of Cyclone Freddie when he tore southern Malawi in 2023. His farm was not.
The 59-year-old has lost decades of work in precious soil where floods have been stripped from his small farm in the hilly areas of Mount Mulange.
He was used to producing healthy 850 kilograms (1,870 pounds) of corn per season to support his three daughters and two sons. He recovered just eight kilograms (17 pounds) from Freddie's wreckage.
“This is no joke,” he said. I remember his farm in the village of Sazola became a wasteland of sand and rock.
Freddie involved Maële in action. He decided that he needed to change his old tactics to survive.
He is currently one of the thousands of smallholder farmers in South Africa's country, using generative AI chatbots that are designed for agriculture advice, with non-profit opportunities.
The Malawi government has supported the project, and recently saw a series of cyclones and a country that is a farm-dependent country that has been hit by a drought caused by El Niño. The Malawi food crisis, which is largely dependent on the struggle of small-scale farmers, is a central issue for next week's national elections.
According to the World Bank, more than 80% of Malawi's population of 21 million is dependent on agriculture, with one of the highest poverty rates in the world.
The AI chatbot last year proposed growing potatoes along with his staple food and cassava to adapt to his altered soil. He followed the letter's instructions, cultivated half the value of potatoes on the soccer field, built more than $800 in sales, and looked back at the fate of him and his child.
“I was able to pay their tuition without worry,” he sparkled.
Artificial intelligence could boost agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. But Africa's productivity – fed by the world's fast-growing population – is lagging behind despite its vast arable areas.
With the use of AI surges around the world, it helps African farmers access new information to identify crop diseases, predict droughts, design fertilizers to increase yields and find affordable tractors. Private investment in agricultural technology in sub-Saharan Africa has grown from $10 million in 2014 to $600 million in 2022, according to the World Bank.
However, it is not without challenges.
Africa has hundreds of languages for AI tools to learn. Still, few farmers have smartphones and many people can't read it. Electricity and Internet services are patchy at best in rural areas and often absent.
“One of the biggest challenges of sustainable AI use in agriculture in Africa is accessibility,” says Daniel Mbaro, a technology specialist at Malawia. “Many tools can't explain language diversity, low literacy, and low digital infrastructure.”
Malawi's AI tools try to do that. This app is called Ulangizi. This means national Chichewa advisor. It is based on WhatsApp and works in Chichewa and English. You can enter or speak your question, and it will reply in an audio or text response, said Richard Chongo, country director at Malawi Opportunities International.
“If you can't read or write, you can take a photo of your crop disease and ask, 'What is this?' And the app responds,” he said.
However, to work in Malawi, AI still needs a human touch. For the Maere area, that's the job of 33-year-old Patrick Napanja. This is a farmer support agent who brings apps to their smartphones for those who don't have a device. Chonggo calls him a “loop man.”
“I had a hard time providing answers to some of the farming challenges, but now I'm using the app,” Napanya said.
Farmer support agents like Napanya usually have around 150-200 farmers to try and help them and visit them once a week in a village group. But sometimes, he said, most of the hourly meetings are waiting for answers to the Road due to low connectivity in the area. Otherwise, they have to run up the nearby hills to get a signal.
They are simple but stubborn obstacles millions face, using the technology that millions of others have at their fingertips.
For African farmers living on the edge of poverty, the effects of bad advice and AI “hatography” can be far more devastating than using it to organize emails or put together work presentations.
Technology expert Mbaro warned that inaccurate AI advice, like chatbots that misidentify crop disease, could lead to crop ruination behaviors, while also leading to livelihoods for struggling farmers.
” Trust in AI is fragile,” he said. “If it's a failure, many farmers never try it again.”
The Malawian government has invested in Uranjitsi and has been programmed to match the official agricultural advice of the Ministry of Agriculture itself, and said it is more relevant for the Malawians.
But he said Malawi faces challenges in bringing tools to enough communities to make a big difference. These communities not only require smartphones, they can also provide access to the internet.
For Malawi, AI could potentially be combined with traditional collaboration between communities.
“Farmers with access to the app support their fellow farmers,” Jassi said, which increases productivity.
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