How Ghana is using AI to improve food security
Artificial intelligence is helping Ghanaian farmers in the country's east fight crop disease and boost yields.
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00:00 This drone is preparing the fields here for planting maize.
00:03 The aerial spraying takes just one hour.
00:07 Without this high-tech assistance, the job would take four people several hours.
00:13 It is the first time that farmer Dela Bedia has used the AI-supported drone.
00:20 He hopes it will have a positive effect on his yields. After plowing,
00:25 we use our knapsacks for spraying. What we realized is, after the sprayers finish their job,
00:33 you see patches that the, what do you call it, the
00:36 spray or the chemicals don't touch.
00:39 Technology has been an eye-opener.
00:42 Marcellus Marty works for Precision Solutions.
00:46 The company's AI-supported drones are still a rare sight here in Ghana.
00:52 High-tech solutions like these are only gradually getting off the ground here,
00:56 even though they can save farmers both time and money.
01:00 Imaginarily, farmers think it's expensive,
01:03 knowing that it flies in the air, but it's a bit of a low climate where
01:09 farmers embrace it. We are having difficult times
01:14 explaining to farmers,
01:16 doing demonstrations for farmers in order for them to adapt the system.
01:22 The Afram Plains district in the east of the country is a key agricultural region.
01:27 Maize is the main crop here and one of the country's most important foodstuffs.
01:33 Ghana produces more than three million tons of maize a year,
01:37 but experts fear that a number of threats could jeopardize the country's food supply long-term.
01:45 The threat is real because
01:48 if you look at Ghana and the sub-region,
01:52 we are facing
01:54 key challenges.
01:57 First, there's growing population and also the climate change which is affecting
02:03 climate variability.
02:06 In Ghana's capital Accra, tech experts are
02:09 experimenting with artificial intelligence to develop ways to combat the effects of climate change on farming.
02:18 With the support of the German development agency GIZ,
02:21 Darlington Akogo has developed a program that uses a drone to monitor developments on cashew plantations.
02:29 Even if you have a moderate-sized farm, instead of manually trying to walk in it,
02:35 you see the cashew tree that we are standing right in front of.
02:38 You can't see anything that is going above your height to the feather extension. You can't see what is happening on top.
02:44 So if there's some disease that is spreading from the top, it will come and attack everything and you wouldn't know.
02:50 But if you're using a drone, we can pinpoint it and let you know that this tree that is right behind us is infested.
02:57 The drone takes images of the trees and these are then
03:01 analyzed by the AI software Cardi AI. The program recognizes
03:06 immediately which plants are diseased and where. The farmer can then react quickly before the disease spreads and
03:14 causes major damage.
03:16 What the AI system does is it ranks the trees or the locations based on the volume of diseases and pests.
03:24 Because you don't want to go after every sign of disease and pests or nutritional issue on your farm.
03:29 The whole point is early detection, early detection of disease and pests.
03:33 You don't wait for it to spread and destroy that many things. You catch it early,
03:37 you do your various practices to curtail it and then you end up saving your yield.
03:43 Technology can offer other benefits.
03:45 Alfred Kwenu is one of Precision Solutions co-founders. Their tech uses artificial intelligence to monitor plant growth.
03:54 Farmers can access the data themselves.
03:57 They no longer have to get an expert in which is too costly for many of them.
04:02 When we scan your field, we take pictures of your crops, we analyze it on a software and then we are able to tell you
04:10 how your crops are doing, if there are any
04:13 infestations, if you have too much water, too little water.
04:17 So it actually gives you real-time data on crop performance so that you can do the necessary tweaks to be able to
04:26 improve your yield.
04:28 In 2023, the West African Confederation, ECOWAS, launched a food resilience program to strengthen food security in the region.
04:37 The program aims to reach more than 300,000 farmers in Ghana alone.
04:43 It wants to encourage the use of technology, including AI, to improve harvest.
04:49 Agriculture needs to become more efficient and effective in order to provide for an ever-growing population.
04:55 Farmer Dela Bidia is already on board.
05:00 He is certain that with the help of the new technology, his next harvest will be successful.
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