Project FarmSpeak

1st Prototype of Smart Penkeep
2nd Prototype of Smart Penkeep
3rd Prototype of Smart Penkeep
Smart Penkeep - Market Fit
FS Manager Mobile App

##What Inspired Us FarmSpeak was born out of deeply personal experiences. Myself and Peter grew up watching our parents struggle with poultry farming, losing birds year after year to heat stress, disease outbreaks, and poor monitoring. Despite working hard, our parents often at the mercy of climate shocks and inefficiencies that wiped away income and hope.
Decades later, the reality for many African farmers has not changed. In fact, it has worsened. Rising temperatures, unpredictable weather, and fragile supply chains continue to push poultry farmers into losses of up to 40% of their flock.
Coming from backgrounds in Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, we felt a responsibility to turn our knowledge into solutions that could secure the livelihoods of farmers like our parents. We see poultry farming not just as a family story, but as a cornerstone of Africa’s food systems, a sector that must be made climate-smart if we are to meet **SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth), and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
FarmSpeak is our contribution to making food systems more resilient, ensuring that farmers can thrive and that Africa’s growing population can be fed sustainably.

##What We Built We developed a patented, locally built farm management system that helps poultry farmers prevent climate-related losses and improve productivity. The solution combines a solar-powered IoT device with an AI-driven software platform, enabling farmers to monitor pen conditions, automate climate control, and receive early disease diagnostics.
Our device continuously tracks critical parameters such as temperature, humidity, air quality, water level, water temperature, while the software provides real-time insights and actionable recommendations. Farmers can remotely adjust pen conditions and receive alerts when thresholds are breached, ensuring healthier flocks, reduced mortality, and improved income stability.
Unlike imported solutions that are too costly and not adapted to Africa’s low-resource environments, ours is designed for accessibility, affordability, and scale.

##What We Learned One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that African farmers are far more open to technology than the world assumes. Too often, they are painted as “illiterate” or “resistant to change,” yet our field experience shows the opposite.
Farmers are not only eager to adopt solutions that directly improve their livelihoods, but they also prefer locally grown innovations that understand their realities better than expensive foreign imports.
In fact, 7 out of 10 farmers we’ve worked with own smartphones and actively use them for business communication, market access, and now, farm management. What this tells us is that the barrier was never the farmer, it was the lack of solutions built for them, by people who truly understand their challenges.
This insight fuels our drive: when you give African farmers the right tools, they don’t just adopt them, they scale them.

##How We Built It At the heart of the system is a **patented hardware-software architecture that integrates solar power, IoT, and AI into a single closed-loop farm management device.

Sensing & Monitoring:
We deployed SHT31 temperature and humidity sensors for precise microclimate tracking, alongside MQ-135 gas sensors that detect harmful gases like ammonia and CO₂, key contributors to bird mortality.
Processing & Control:
The STM32 microcontroller functions as the system’s brain, processing sensor inputs and executing control logic. When thresholds are breached (e.g., rising heat or poor air quality), the device automatically activates *actuators such as fans, sprinklers, or heaters to restore optimal flock conditions.
Communication & Data Transfer:
A SIM808 GSM module with SIM card port enables reliable rural connectivity. Data is transmitted using MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), a lightweight protocol well-suited for bandwidth-constrained environments. This ensures continuous updates and remote monitoring without heavy infrastructure.
User Interface:
We advanced from a basic 4x16 LCD display to a 2.4-inch TFT graphical interface, which allows farmers to see visual trends of temperature, humidity, and flock well-being in real time. This leap significantly improves usability and farmer trust in the system.
System Architecture:
The patented design ensures seamless integration of sensors, processing, communication, and control in a modular, solar-powered unit. Data is synced with our backend, where AI models provide predictive diagnostics on heat stress, disease outbreaks, and abnormal flock behavior. This innovation achieves Technology Readiness Level 8 (TRL 8), meaning it is fully field-tested and scalable.

##Challenges We Faced Building a patented solution in Africa came with multiple hurdles. First was hardware sourcing, many of the sensors and microcontrollers we required were either unavailable locally or prohibitively expensive due to import duties and FX fluctuations. We overcame this by designing a locally adaptable architecture, sourcing alternatives, and fabricating parts ourselves where possible.

Second, we faced the challenge of farmer trust and adoption. Many people assume African farmers resist technology, but in practice, their main barrier is affordability and reliability. Convincing them required countless **farm demos, co-creation sessions, and iteration until our solution was simple, rugged, and farmer-friendly.

Third, climate unpredictability itself became a challenge during field testing, from heat waves to power outages. This drove us to design the system to be solar-powered, modular, and resilient, ensuring farmers could rely on it even in low-resource environments.

Finally, as a student-founded team, we had to balance academic pressures with building a startup, which taught us discipline, teamwork, and resourcefulness. Every obstacle sharpened our resolve to make FarmSpeak both **technically sound and contextually relevant.

##Accomplishments That We're Proud Of Some milestones we have achieved include:

Intellectual Property Protection: Secured a **patent for our farm management architecture, along with copyright and trademark registrations, giving us legal protection and validation of our innovation.
Government & Industry Partnerships: Partnered with the **Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Ogun State and the Poultry Association of Nigeria, creating pathways for large-scale adoption and policy alignment.
User Traction: Piloted with dozens of poultry farmers across Nigeria, demonstrating measurable reductions in heat-related mortality and increased profitability.

We’ve been recognised both globally and locally for our impact and innovation, to mention a few:

Google AI Recognition 
NITDA’s 45 AI Researchers in Nigeria 
Top 20 Innovator by RUFORUM 
Top 16 African Innovator by the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) 
Climate Entrepreneur of the Year by Youth Business International (UK) 
Global Entrepreneur of the Year by Youth Business International (UK) 
Worked with 3, 200 farmers across Nigeria.

##What’s Next Looking ahead, we are focused on scaling both our technology and our impact:

Expansion into New Sectors: Our patented architecture is designed to be cross-deployable. We will extend FarmSpeak into **aquaculture and greenhouse farming*, which share similar environmental control challenges with poultry. This allows us to boost our total addressable market without reinventing the wheel.
Farmer Growth: By **Q2 2026, our target is to reach **10,000 poultry farmers actively using our platform, unlocking measurable impact in food security and farmer incomes.
Strategic Partnerships: We plan to secure more collaborations with government agencies, cooperatives, and agribusinesses to scale adoption and farmer empowerment.
Fundraising Milestone: Execute our planned *\$400,000 pre-seed round*, which will extend our runway, strengthen our team, and accelerate market expansion.