Kuzi, Artificial Intelligence Helping African Farmers to Combat Locusts

Kuzi, a free tool has been launched that will enable farmers and pastoralists across Africa to track and monitor locust behavior.

Kuzi, the Swahili word for the wattled starling, a bird known for consuming locusts, is an AI-powered tool that generates a heatmap of locusts across Africa in real time, displays all possible migration routes, and provides an index of locust breeding in real time.

Kuzi can predict the breeding, occurrence and migration routes of desert locusts through the horns of African and Eastern African countries using satellite data, soil sensor data, ground meteorological observation, and machine learning, and uses deep learning to classify the formation of locust swarms.

Kuzi then sends free SMS warnings 2-3 months in advance to farmers and pastoralists when locusts are highly likely to strike farms and livestock in their regions.

A swarm of 80 million locusts will consume food equal to that consumed by 35,000 people a day without preventive steps, devastating food supplies for vulnerable populations.

Implementing early detection and control measures that are essential to the management of desert locusts would provide a valuable opportunity for farmers and pastoralists in the fight against food insecurity.

In the regional languages of Kiswahili, Somali and Amharic, spoken by over 200 million people throughout Eastern Africa, notifications are currently available for Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda.

The free tool is currently accessible in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda with plans to launch across the rest of Africa.

With any mobile device, with or without an internet connection, farmers can sign up for free SMS updates, capture their farm’s GPS location, and they’re good to go, without any fees.