COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

1800+

Farmers supported

17000

User mssages

‍

6700+

Positive feedback responses

Transforming Smallholder Farming in Malawi and Kenya with Farmer.AI

This case study highlights an agri-advisor chatbot developed for smallholder farmers in Malawi and Kenya through a collaboration between Opportunity International, Gooey.AI, and Safaricom. It is intended for development organizations, NGOs, social enterprises, governments working in agriculture, and rural livelihoods.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

1800+

Farmers supported

17000

User messages

‍

6700+

Positive feedback responses

Opportunity International is a global nonprofit organization working to end extreme poverty by equipping people with the tools they need to build sustainable livelihoods. Operating across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, it reaches millions of people each year through financial services, agriculture, education, and digital innovation.

Safaricom is Kenya’s leading telecommunications company and a major technology enabler across East Africa. Best known for M-PESA, one of the world’s most widely used mobile money platforms, Safaricom provides mobile connectivity, digital financial services, and enterprise solutions to millions of individuals and businesses.

Theory of Change

Can personalized AI agri-advisory be useful, viral, and viable for smallholder farmers?

The context

Opportunity International set out to explore whether generative AI could address a long-standing gap in rural agriculture: access to timely, reliable, and expert farming advice. For smallholder farmers in marginalized communities, critical decisions about crops, pests, and weather are often made without real-time support, thus directly affecting livelihoods and food security.

Barriers to agricultural advice

In Malawi, over 80% of the population lives in rural areas, and nearly 30% of adults cannot read or write. Farmers often walk long distances to government offices for agricultural guidance, only to find them closed or understaffed. Living on roughly $2 a day, these farmers depend almost entirely on agriculture, making lack of accessible advice a high-stakes challenge.

The need for a digital advisory

Through a partnership with Gooey.AI and Safaricom, Opportunity International launched FarmerAI—an AI-powered agri-advisory chatbot delivered via WhatsApp and SMS. FarmerAI provides localized, real-time guidance in local languages, connecting with farmers on their terms and removing barriers of distance, literacy, and cost.

Background and Needs

Compounding crises in rural farming communities

Low smartphone penetration and limited internet access meant that most digital or text-heavy agricultural solutions were simply out of reach for rural farmers.

These structural challenges were further intensified in 2023, when Cyclone Freddy devastated large parts of Malawi, destroying fields and livelihoods. In the aftermath, farmers were left with few resources, limited support, and a growing sense of uncertainty. This underscored the urgent need for accessible, resilient advisory systems that could reach farmers in their locations.

The advisory access gap for smallholder farmers

Before the introduction of FarmerAI, smallholder farmers in Malawi and Kenya faced significant barriers to accessing timely, reliable agricultural advice. Extension services were limited, expert guidance was often far away, and farmers frequently relied on informal or inconsistent sources of information.

For communities dependent on agriculture for daily survival, delayed or inaccurate advice directly impacted crop yields, income stability, and food security.

Interventions & Process

AI advisory grounded in local agricultural knowledge

We built a multilingual, multimodal AI chatbot—UlangiziAI in Malawi and FarmerAI in Kenya—to provide smallholder farmers with real-time, context-aware agricultural guidance.

The system was trained on trusted sources, including Malawi’s Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) Manual, ensuring that advice aligned with government-approved, expert-backed farming practices. This grounding helped build credibility and ensured farmers received reliable, actionable recommendations.

Designed for low-literacy and low-connectivity contexts

To maximize accessibility, the chatbot was deployed via WhatsApp and SMS, channels already widely used by farmers, including those with basic feature phones. Farmers could interact using voice, text, or images, enabling them to ask questions by speaking or sharing photos of crops when reading or writing was difficult. This multimodal design reduced barriers for users with low literacy and limited digital access.

Multilingual support

We integrated Azure AI translation services to enable responses in local and regional languages, including English, Chichewa, and Swahili. By supporting farmers in the languages they are most comfortable with, the AI delivered more inclusive, culturally relevant guidance, thus helping to ensure advice was understood, trusted, and usable across diverse rural communities.

Outcomes

On-demand AI advisory for smallholder farmers

Gooey.AI partnered with Opportunity International to build UlangiziAI (Malawi) and FarmerAI (Kenya)—AI-powered chatbots that deliver agricultural advice on demand.

Farmers could ask questions using text, voice notes, or images, enabling them to receive guidance in formats that matched their literacy levels and access to technology. This multimodal approach ensured expert farming knowledge was available anytime, without the need to travel long distances or wait for in-person support.

Rapid adoption and high engagement

Within just the first three months of the Malawi pilot, UlangiziAI handled 4,000+ farmer queries in both English and Chichewa. Questions spanned crops, livestock, and farming inputs, ranging from soil preparation to livestock feed, such as “What’s the best Napier grass for goats and cows?”

This early engagement demonstrated strong trust in the tool and highlighted farmers’ demand for timely, practical agricultural advice.

Measurable impact at scale

Gooey’s intervention reduced the time to access agricultural advice from days to seconds, fundamentally changing how farmers received support. Across Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana, the chatbots supported 1,800 farmers, generating over 17,000 user messages. With 6,700+ positive feedback responses, the results underscored the value of accessible, localized AI advisory in improving farmer confidence, decision-making, and resilience.