Let’s think differently and use IoT to solve local problems says Jack Ngaare, MD of Microsoft Africa Development Center, Kenya site. He was sharing insights on Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Internet of Things(IoT) during keynote address at the third East Africa IoT and AI Summit.
Speaking to delegates at the conference he emphasized the need to focus on the problems Africa has and be more deliberate about solving these problems using such emerging technologies.
Let’s think differently and use IoT to solve local[Africa] problems
He asked “What problems do we have? What are the focus areas and what are the simple solutions?
40% of farm produce in Kenya goes to waste, talking about use cases of IoT in the East Africa region. IoT can help solve some of agriculture’s most vexing challenges. By helping farmers connect fields and herds, reduce risks, streamline operations as well as increase yield. IoT technology and data driven agriculture Jack says is one answer to solving the agriculture challenge.
Microsoft research scientists are testing Farmbeats; a data driven solution which help farmers improve their yields and lower costs in Kenya. Microsoft plans to later scale Farmbeats across Africa.
Help rural farmers in Africa predict soil humidity using sensor data from IoT.
Wazihub and Microsoft are partnering with Zindi Africa to create the Wazihub Soil Moisture Prediction Challenge competition. The competition seeks to create a machine learning model capable of predicting soil humidity. Using past data from the soil and getting results in a very short time.
Find out more about the Wazihub challenge
In the face of climate change, the agricultural sector in Africa needs to adapt its practices. Being able to accurately measure and predict soil humidity in their fields will allow farmers to prepare their irrigation schedules optimally and efficiently.
Sensor-based irrigation and machine learning algorithms can provide farmers with a solution to manage water usage more efficiently. However, current machine learning algorithms built on sensor data require a lot of data for proper training. Stable sensor data is difficult to obtain in rural Africa where many problems arise such as accessibility, limited battery power, lack of internet, humidity/heat problem.
The objective of this Zindi competition is to create a machine learning model. Capable of predicting the humidity for a particular plot in the next few days, using data from the past. A part of the challenge is to design algorithms that are resilient and can be trained with incomplete data. (E.g. missing data points) and unclean data (e.g. lot of outliers).
This resulting model will enable farmers to anticipate water needs and prepare their irrigation schedules. This competition is sponsored by Wazihub[webpage] and Microsoft.
In Rwanda Microsoft is supporting African Renewable Energy Distributor (ARED), a technology for social good company. That provides a one stop shop – mobile digital kiosk – platform offering digital services and connectivity to customers in Rwanda. ARED CEO, Henri Nyakarundi says “our solar kiosk platform revolutionizes the way distribution network is built”.
Microsoft’s partnership came in different areas. We won’t be able to do this business without cloud technology. Microsoft is helping us also find investors.
Henri Nyakarundi, CEO ARED
ARED recruits and trains women and people with disability to operate these kiosks to generate revenue by earning commissions. These vendors offer services like selling wifi, airtime, electricity prepaid, government services like Irembo and Rwanda Revenue Tax, etc.. The company understands that when low income people start business they don’t have the capital to do business. So they offer the vendors credit to sell these services and payback.
ARED has about 200 solar mobile digital kiosk and plans to have about 300 mobile digital kiosk around Rwanda soon.
Microsoft Tech Community and Microsoft Student Partners invites students to participate in a hackathon event.
Labelled the Engineers Hack 2019. A 36-hour hackathon event opened to students of all institutions of higher education in Kenya.
The Engineers Hack will bring students together under one roof to build solutions to local challenges. Solutions to challenges in these area of society; Zero hunger, Proper Education, Affordable housing and Health care. Using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, etc.. Selected hackathon participants will receive mentorship on how to build a business model for their products.
Got an idea? Register. 60 participants will be selected based on creativity, innovation and feasibility of their idea. Participants will receive training on Microsoft Azure AI platform. Learning Azure Cognitive-services, custom vision and Azure machine learning studio.
The event is taking place at at the Incubation center (DeHUB), Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Nyeri.
Adjudged winning teams of the hackathon event will receive prizes. The winning teams will also receive mentorship and an incubation opportunity at DeHUB.
Register to participate in the Engineers hack 2019 and invite your frends to join you for an amazing time. Have questions or want more details call 0715208670.
An area of focus in Microsoft’s research is Agriculture. Microsoft research scientists are focusing on unleashing the future of agriculture using data driven techniques called precision farming. The process involves using broadband connectivity through TV whitespaces, connected to IoT sensors that enable data driven farming. These data when collected over time will help farmers improve their yields and lower costs. This initiative from Microsoft is called FarmBeats.
Piloting FarmBeats in Africa
Microsoft is expanding the pilot program of FarmBeats to Africa, starting in Kenya. The program in Nairobi will be focused on addressing the specific challenges of farming in Africa with the intent of expanding to other African countries.
Data-driven digital agriculture
FarmBeats
“AI doesn’t replace human knowledge; it augments it“
Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO says “AI doesn’t replace human knowledge, it augments it. Talking about Microsoft FarmBeats initiative he shares that “Data from low-cost sensors in soil and drones with machine learning algorithms work with farmers’ knowledge and intuition to help them gather and parse data about their farms. Informing what, when, and where to plant in order to drive the highest-possible yields and reduce costs”.
Microsoft FarmBeats will help farmers benefit from technology innovation at the edge. Microsoft says although technology could help the farmer, its adoption is limited. This is majorly due to farms not having power, Internet connectivity on the farms and farmers not technology savvy.
To address this Microsoft says “We are working towards an end-to-end approach. From sensors to the cloud, to solve the problem. As part of the FarmBeats project, we are building several unique solutions to solve these problems using low-cost sensors, drones and vision and machine learning algorithms“.
Bill Gates visited a pilot site and shares his experience in the video below.
If you are a student, there is a Student Kit that will help you learn about precision agriculture.
Now on Azure Marketplace
Microsoft releases FarmBeats on the Azure Marketplace to help farmers with low-cost agtech solutions. Azure FarmBeats in the Azure marketplace will be a business-to-business offering. Offered at no additional charge and users will only pay for the Azure resources used. It will include a Datahub. (An API layer that enables aggregation, normalization, and contextualization of various agriculture datasets across providers). As well as an Accelerator. (A sample solution, built on top of Datahub, that jumpstarts your UI and model development).
