Farming made simple with IoT

News   Hazviperi Mbizi   November 20, 2019
PIC: The Mnduwira brothers with their award
A second year Bachelor of Science in Information Technology student Madalitso Mnduwira together with his brother Cliff, have won an annual Information Communication Technology Association of Malawi (ICTAM) innovation award of the best Internet of Things (IoT) Smart Farmer application which they have created in the category of Smart Agriculture.

The award giving ceremony took place from November 13 to 14 2019 in Mangochi.

Speaking after getting the award, Cliff explained that Smart Farmer App, which will work both on android and personal computers aims at helping Malawian farmers to build their financial management expertise in a number of ways.

“Me and my brother have been practicing tomato farming on a small scale, that is when we encountered problems of how we could keep records. In this regard we decided to come up with this application which could help farmers either on small or large scale,” Cliff explained.

In addition, Madalitso enlightened that the Smart Farmer App will help large-scale farmers in irrigation. The App will have two modes of irrigation namely automatic and manual. The automatic mode, it will first detect the crop and supply water according to the required levels of the particular crop. 

"On the manual mode the Smart farmer app is going to provide a button for watering the crops whilst showing real-time moisture levels. Thereby the farmer will be able to manage their crops for bumper yields,” he added.

The brothers intend to develop the prototype further so that it can be beneficial to farming and development of the economy of the country.

They have been given unlimited Internet usage for six and the award itself.


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