Beeroole AI – Smart Early Warning for Farmers

Beeroole AI transforms early warnings, weather data, and artificial intelligence into practical farming advice that helps Somali farmers make smarter decisions and build resilience to climate change

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Inspiration

Across the IGAD region, millions of smallholder farmers depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, yet many still make critical farming decisions with limited access to timely and actionable information. Flood warnings, drought forecasts, pest outbreaks, and changing weather conditions often reach farmers too late or without clear guidance on what actions to take.

As we worked with farming communities in Somalia, where we began piloting Beeroole AI, we saw farmers lose crops and income because they lacked a simple way to turn early warnings and weather information into practical farming decisions. While valuable data exists, it is often scattered across different sources and difficult for farmers to interpret.

This inspired us to build Beeroole AI, an AI-powered agricultural assistant that combines official early warnings, weather intelligence, and crop health information to provide personalised, practical recommendations that help farmers act before risks become losses.

What it does

Beeroole AI is an AI-powered agricultural decision support platform that helps smallholder farmers across Somalia, with the potential to scale across the IGAD region, make informed decisions before climate-related risks become disasters.

The platform combines multiple sources of information into one simple mobile experience, including:

  • Official early warning alerts
  • An AI-powered agricultural assistant that answers farmers' questions in natural language
  • Weather forecasts and personalised farming recommendations
  • AI-powered crop disease detection using smartphone images
  • Crop disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention guidance
  • Real-time market price information

Rather than simply notifying farmers about hazards, Beeroole AI helps farmers understand what those hazards mean for their farms. Farmers can ask questions such as whether they should irrigate, plant, or delay farming activities, and receive practical recommendations based on official warnings, current weather conditions, weather forecasts, and crop health information.

How we built it

Beeroole AI was designed as a mobile-first platform for farmers operating in low-resource environments.

The solution combines:

  • Native Android development using Kotlin
  • Google Gemini to power an AI agricultural assistant capable of understanding farmers' questions and providing contextual recommendations
  • Python and TensorFlow to develop AI-powered crop disease detection models
  • A curated dataset of more than 24,000 annotated crop images covering multiple crops and diseases
  • Official early warning data integrated into the platform
  • Weather forecasts, including rainfall, temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration
  • REST APIs for weather and agricultural information
  • Cloud-based backend services for synchronising agricultural information

Before responding to a farmer, Beeroole AI combines official warnings, current weather conditions, historical weather summaries, seven-day forecasts, soil conditions, and crop intelligence into a structured context that enables Gemini to generate accurate, actionable farming advice rather than generic AI responses.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was recognising that farmers often experience information overload rather than information scarcity.

Weather forecasts, early warnings, market prices, and crop disease information are often available from different sources, but farmers are left to interpret them on their own.

Another challenge was ensuring that AI recommendations remained grounded in trusted information rather than generating generic advice. We addressed this by providing the AI with structured context built from official early warnings and weather data before every response.

Developing accurate crop disease detection models across multiple crops and designing an experience that remains simple for farmers with different levels of digital literacy also required significant data collection, validation, and continuous improvement.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have built a working mobile app that combines official early warnings, weather intelligence, AI-powered decision support, crop health monitoring, and market insights into a single experience for farmers.

We are especially proud that Beeroole AI was selected for the UNDP Tadamon Food Systems Accelerator, where it was recognised as one of 50 initiatives selected from more than 1,100 innovations working to strengthen food security and agricultural resilience.

Additional accomplishments include:

  • AI-powered agricultural assistant for climate-smart farming
  • AI-powered crop disease detection
  • Digital early warning system
  • Weather-informed farming recommendations
  • Real-time market price information
  • Practical disease treatment and prevention guidance
  • Mobile-first experience designed for smallholder farmers

Most importantly, we are proud that Beeroole AI helps farmers understand what action to take rather than simply providing more information.

What we learned

Building Beeroole AI reinforced an important lesson:

Farmers do not need more data—they need confidence to make better decisions.

Early warning systems become significantly more valuable when farmers can ask questions about their own situation and receive practical, easy-to-understand recommendations.

We also learned that artificial intelligence delivers the greatest value when it is grounded in trusted data. By combining official early warnings, weather information, and local agricultural knowledge, AI becomes a practical decision-support tool that farmers can rely on.

What's next for Beeroole AI – Smart Early Warning for Farmers

Our vision is to make Beeroole AI the leading AI-powered agricultural decision support platform for smallholder farmers across Somalia and the wider IGAD region.

Our next priorities include:

  • Expanding the AI assistant with more local agricultural knowledge and support for additional crops.
  • Delivering increasingly personalised recommendations based on official warnings, weather forecasts, soil conditions, and crop health.
  • Introducing community reporting for pests, floods, droughts, and crop disease outbreaks.
  • Expanding predictive crop disease risk modelling using weather and environmental data.
  • Providing offline access for farmers in areas with limited internet connectivity.
  • Expanding support for more crops, local languages, and additional countries across the IGAD region.
  • Enhancing market intelligence to help farmers make better production and selling decisions.

Our long-term vision is for every farmer to receive not only early warnings but also clear, personalised guidance on what action to take, when to take it, and why it matters, empowering communities across the IGAD region to become more resilient in the face of climate change and food insecurity.

We believe the future of agriculture is not just predicting risks, but helping farmers make the right decision at the right time. Beeroole AI exists to transform early warnings and weather intelligence into confident action.

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