AgServer

In spite of producing about 70% of the food that Africa consumes, most smallholder farmers go to bed hungry ,are poor and among the most vulnerable .In order to earn more and bolster productivity , they need to access  holistic  information and extension services which are in critical shortage. For instance, in Nigeria, the extension worker to farmer ratio is 1:8500! Most of these farmers also live in isolated rural areas so do not have access to internet to source information to improve yield.

AGSERVER is therefore a peer to peer knowledge sharing platform that enables farmers to ask questions and get answers from one another or extension agents via any simple mobile phone with or without the internet .This is at no cost and without leaving their farms

AgServer could impact the 2 Billion people which their livelihoods depend on 500 Million small scale farms from around the globe

The first problem stems from lack of information that could help these smallholder farmers bolster productivity. Most often these farmers live in isolated rural communities and mostly do not have internet connectivity. Hence they lack access to vital information to get quality/affordable inputs, best practices and fair prices for their farm produce.

Secondly even for the few that have access to the internet, agricultural knowledge is greatly fragmented. For instance growing nutritious foods such as vegetables, fruits, fish and poultry profitably is difficult and information . More so when there are even beneficial opportunities such as free training or financial interventions from the government, NGOs or development partners , smallholder farmers are rarely aware of such.

Thirdly there is critical shortage of extension services to help them improve their yields. In Nigeria for instance, the extension worker to farmer ratio is 1:8500! This pandemic has even made this worse with infrequent physical visits for the little number of existent extension agents.

Lastly there is a lack of available and accessible data on this unique and diverse group. This makes it hard to empirically develop and deploy interventions that will make the most impact on the smallholder farmers.

AgServer is a peer to peer knowledge transfer and information sharing network/digital platform for farmers especially smallholder farmers . Farmers can ask questions and get answers in real time from among themselves or from extension agents on the platform.On our platform they connect with one another to solve problems, share ideas, and spread innovation.This is all for free, with or without needing internet connection by sending messages (via SMS/USSD/Voice)using any basic phone.The crowd-sourced information helps farmers increase yields, source the best quality seeds fertiliser,tackle the effects of climate change,gain insight into pricing,access loans/financing and diversify their agricultural interests.With Information and knowledge gained on our platform- smallholder farmers can also solve diseases,create new appropriate technologies,find better markets-generally access agricultural inputs,goods,services to improve their livelihoods -in their own specific native  languages.

We aspire to equip every farmer especially smallholders they need to be more knowledgeable, buy smarter by accessing quality products and thereby sell better farm produce.We are using machine learning (ML)technology and Artificial intelligence (AI) to empower  and make better human intelligence. Farmers can ask questions and get answers in local languages so communication nor literacy isn’t a barrier .

Simply put , Agserver is the Quora for smallholder farmers.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development  (IFAD) (https://www.ifad.org/documents... ) There are about 500 million small scale farms around the world with around 2 billion smallholder farmers working on them . 33 Million of these small scale farms are in Africa with a chunk of those resident in Nigeria .Also at least 70% of the African workforce get their livelihoods from Agriculture . While these smallholder farmers produce at least 70 % of the food consumed on the continent and 80% of the food consumed in Asia, they are off very poor and barely feed themselves.

 So we first and foremost carter to these farmers especially smallholders

To understand their  needs apart from personal experience as smallholder farmers ourselves Are currently piloting with about 1000 farmers as a control user group Then receiving feedback and iterating accordingly to improve product. The farmers are drawn from online communities such as the Agriculture is Sexy Network plus offline from communities such as Iriebe and Aluu inRivers State and Omogho  in Anambra state , Nigeria. The whole process is built around farmer centric co-creation. So we are co-creating AgServer with them in real time. Consulting the farmers dates back even before we started developing the first concept note for AgServer 

We also carter to the enablers of these smallholder farmers i.e. input suppliers , development agencies , the government etc

For addressing the needs

-Farmers especially smallholders

We enable them have access to holistic real time and customized information that could help them bolster productivity

-Input Suppliers

We enable them get information to better reach  the farmers with their products and services in such a way that they are well targeted but also ensure  that they are responding to the exact needs of the farmers.

-The Government and Development Organisations

We  enable them access  data that would help them provide more adequate services to the farmers 

Smallholder farmers largely live in isolated rural areas without internet connectivity are the most affected .

The silver lining is that we are working within the means of what is available to smallholderfarmers in underserved communities hence driving a more inclusive digital future for all.Event hough most of them do not have smartphones and can’t afford one,more than 90% own simplemobile phones.At Agserver we are utilizing these  mobile phones to provide answers for them hence ensuring that they are included/get the dividends of digitization.They don’t need any other tool other than what they have nor get into debt buying smartphones.

We have already launched the online offering for AgServer which is being depolyed to about a 1000 farmers as control users .Please see here 

www.agserver.net

We currently have users from Nigeria,Ghana, Kenya and India.

We have also started building/testing the offline service with farmers in Iriebe and Aluu in Rivers state , Nigeria.Then Omogho in Anambra State Nigeria.

Usually extension services are delivered through in farm physical visits in Nigeria. We are pioneering open digital extension services that is available to any farmer on a plug and play basis once they have any mobile phone whether it's internet enabled or not.  They can get anser in their local languages via text/USSD or Voice for those that cannot read nor write.

We also curate opportunities from other sources for instance (crawled from the web withspiders/bots) and offline(i.e. from ministry of agriculture/parastatals ) which may benefit the farmers (i.e trainings, funding interventions). This information is then deployed to each farmer in a customised and personalised manner to meet their individual needs.

We do expect AgServer to revolutionized how farmers get the required holistic information to bolster yield and connect better to markets in order to earn more. 

We currently server

1,000

10,000 (before this  year runs out)

100,000 ( in the next one year)

10,000,000 (in 5 years)

Number of farmers on our platform

No of question asked 

How use the information provided is for our farmers 

Increase in yield enhance and income earned for  our farmers 

The sense  of community that our farmers feel on  our platform 

 3 Full time

3 part time

10 volunteers 

Ans

Chibuike Emmanuel (Team Lead)

is a practicing smallholder catfish farmer and consummate development entrepreneur.  He has been active in bringing farmers’ practical perspectives to thepolicy table, both nationally and internationally as they are seldom present when decisions are made about them.

Stephen Oladele (Technical Lead)

Cloud Machine Learning Engineer/ Data Engineer

has consulted as a data scientist on  projects in computer vision, business analytics, NLP (document analysis) and Cloud Machine Learning services (i.e.Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure). He is currently a community builder for Amazon Web Services and formerly volunteered with Google and AWS  projects .

John Ebede Technical (Co-lead)

Software Engineer , UI/UX Desiger

 is a fullstack developer with 5 years work experience .He has skills in frontend designnusing javascript and flutter, database management systems and building backend services.He studied Computer Engineering .

We are all deeply connected to the African agricultural sector and understand it’s huge potential as well as  unique challenges .For instance our team lead ,Chibuike has  been a practicing  smallholder farmer who understands fist hand the plight  that  farmers generally face.John who is our software engineer studied computer engineering in a University of Agriculture. 

Summarily this is a cause that each of us deeply cares about and we have the skills/capacity to solve the identified problem.

We believe in inclusion and diversity

 We have a reserved spot for a female cofounder

All or part time workers are female

70% of our current volunteers are female

Our work force we aim to have at least 50% and we actually lead towards having more

This is Critical for a sector that has as nearly women as men is some places and more in soe other places but yet women have been relegated to the background .

For network , mentoring , having a community that we can bounce off ideas , seeking out technical expertise and possible access to funding

As a highly technical platform that is reliant on emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Natural Processing Language , our very small team needs all the help it can get too cross pollinate ideas and get technical support

Hence our ear marking

Human Capital (e.g. sourcing talent, board development, etc.)

Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.)

As  areas we need help with .

For AgServer to scale and reach full potential eventually we will need big ticket sized investment

Financial (e.g. improving accounting practices, pitching to investors)

Our Business model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development) also need to be on point. Because one of main revenue model is playing as a platform it means we might take a while to aggregate data that we can mine and analysis. Hence we are looking for ideas on how to get to monetization faster and cut down the wait period

Lastly  we itemized Legal or Regulatory Matter. As a company with the public data we need to thorough understand what is permitted by the law , moral for our users and ensure that peoples data entrusted to us are secure and handled with uttermost integrity .