By Rading Biko
The Directorate of Resource Surveys & Remote
Sensing (DRSRS) and the Kenyan Smart Agri-Tech Company (Agrvision) have signed
a 5 years strategic partnership plan in the form of a memorandum of
understanding (MoU) to develop a nationwide unified platform for crop
monitoring and yield forecasting powered by Satellite imagery and artificial
intelligence.
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This agreement aims to bring the two entities’ expertise into action to develop a smart
unified platform to digitally monitor and classify crops around Kenya and to
provide an advanced analytics tool to enhance data-driven decisions. This will
contribute to the social and economic development of the agriculture and
forestry sectors in Kenya.
According to the Deputy Director of DRSRS Mr
Charles Situma, “As the official institution advising the Government of Kenya
on matters related to Remote Sensing and Geographical Information systems(GIS)
and gathering of data on the environment and natural resources around the
country , DRSRS entered into this strategic collaboration
with Agrvision to work together with an Agri- tech expert in
developing the right digital tools and usage of advanced data collection and
analytics technologies that can help the agricultural sector and decision
makers in the country, have full visibility and data driven decisions that
enhance food security programs to achieve better sustainable results”
While the Agricultural sector, including crops and
livestock, is one of the most important sectors in the Kenyan economy with
around 30% contribution to the GDP and as the main source of livelihood for the
majority of Kenyan people in terms of food security, economic growth,
employment creation, off-farm employment and foreign exchange earnings. The
sector is extremely vulnerable to climate change largely due to the increasing
temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and extreme weather events with poor
agricultural practices, low-quality inputs and lack of access to
knowledge.
Serious steps and programs need to be adapted to
ensure the provision of adequate food for a growing population and to increase
export crops to generate foreign exchange. “Climate change is not a remote
future event, it started already and the effect in the agriculture and forestry
sector is high, and as part of government already running programs toward food
security to decrease climate change effect in the sector, traditional ways and
agricultural practices which are based on poor experiences are not sufficient.
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A full transformation in the agricultural sector is
needed, in which data plays a major role for better, more timely and actionable
knowledge is a precursor. And that’s where DRSRS found the
interest to work with Agrvision in using and customizing their
well-developed crop monitoring and forecasting digital tools to develop a
unified platform to work as the main sources for data collection and analytics
to the agriculture sector” Mr Situma added.
With more than 15+ years of domain expertise in the
Agri-tech sector globally.
Agrvision developed a smart crop and forestry
monitoring digital platform analyzing all big data collected through satellite
imagery and specialized drones, using advanced data analytics algorithms,
powered by machine learning, and artificial intelligence customized models and
tools, to help farmers, forestry professionals, agricultural institutions and
NGOs having useful insights and predictive analytics for a better data-driven
decision making, delivered through customized convenient easy-to-use digital
channels.
On his part, Agrvision Chief Operations Officer
Oscar Mwai said, “We believe that agriculture should be not only a Smart but
also a Sustainable industry. That’s why we’re committed to simplifying the
remote sensing-based precision agriculture technology, making it universally
accessible and practical, by using cutting-edge Ai/ML models and algorithms to
analyse big Agri-data that is collected, and provide highly-precise information
about fields, crops and forests, participating in the agricultural
transformation journey with government institutions and decision makers for
creation of more sustainable food security programs.”
With this strategic collaboration and long term
partnership with DRSRS, Agrvision’s mission is to work closely with the DRSRS
team to develop and customize the unified platform with an interactive digital
map classifying all crops around the country powered by Ai .
Linked to field
boundaries and have real-time analytics for crop monitoring and rotation,
weather forecast and soil moisture to be collected from high-resolution
satellite imagery and specialized drones to be able to provide predictive
analytics and yield forecasts.
“Our Crop and forestry monitoring platform, collect
data from different sources like satellite and engage it with advanced
analytics for vegetation indices, water stress, soil moisture, temperature
effect and weather forecast to provide end user with useful descriptive and
predictive insights. These insights are visual, simple-to-understand pieces of
information that can be used to guide action that makes working in agriculture
and forestry easier, and saves precious time and resources, we believe that
this collaboration with DRSRS with the in-depth knowledge they
have on the agricultural mapping and remote sensing, will add strength to the
development and customization process for having the digital platform up and
running “Mr Mwai Added.
As part of this MoU, both entities appointed the
project team to work closely together on drafting the final project scope of
work to build the project strategy and road map for the platform development,
with plans to start directly running the pilot project to analyse the needed
final features to be embedded in the model.
