Africa’s 33 million smallholder farmers feed an estimated one-third of humanity, and are key to mitigating global challenges such as food security and climate change.
Recently, smallholder farming has also become a solution to high youth unemployment, with a new generations of farmers engaging in agricultural movements across Africa, which is the continent with the world’s youngest population overall.
Reaching these farmers with the information they need, however, remains a challenge due to barriers in connectivity, literacy, and language. Even youth farmers, who are tech savvy and smart-phone empowered, rarely have access to critical information, at the right time, in formats they find easy to understand.
And that is why Farmerline has introduced “Insyght”, an app that connects the isolated with peer-to- peer learning, knowledge sharing, and a user-friendly information database.
For Joel Budu, Senior Software Engineer at Farmerline, Insyght is a solution that creates efficiency, competence and transparency for all key stakeholders. “Insyght allows many agriculture institutions and experts across Africa to share their educational content with farmers anywhere, even in places with little or no connectivity,” he says.
Adomako Pascal Okyere, Software Development Associate at Farmerline, also firmly believes that Insyght is an enabler and through strategic collaborations can achieve the desired impact across the continent. “Insyght’s mobile application delivers young farmers this critical information on their phones, in formats such as voice, video, or games, and allows them to connect with peers to share questions and ideas.”
Insyght is built to scale to over 190 countries to allow young farmers and stakeholders to connect, share knowledge, and learn like never before.