YOKE | Devpost

Agriculture in Ethiopia
Problems
World fact about agriculture
YOKE Mobile app
YOKE Mobile application and USSD
What does YOKE app do
UN SGDs that YOKE supports
YOKE USSD

Inspiration

A YOKE is a wooden cross that wooden crosspiece is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart to pull used for farming purposes. YOKE is what more than 85% of our country's poor farmers still use to plow their land.

85% of the population in Ethiopia is engaged in the agricultural sector and it covers 45% of overall Ethiopian GDP, at this concept 12% of the world's land is covered by agriculture.

Even though farmers like Lemma work harder, their income is not enough to support their children's school fees, healthcare, and other expenses, this is due to a lack of information about the current market price of their produce. They also have no access to banking and loan systems because they live far away in rural from where the banks are located. Due to the uncertain weather condition affected by climate change their products face damage by heavy rain and very dry seasons that leave their productivity declining.

In general, most farmers in the rural areas of Ethiopia still face:

Less productivity
Access to capital to expand his products
Low income due to financial inflation
No access to banking and loan
Lack of current market price information
Lack of access to technology
No internet access

What it does

YOKE app is mainly designed to solve the financial problems of farmers living in the rural areas in two ways:

Provide weather and agri-tech information

The app will avail current information and remote support for farmers based on weather, location, and soil type by using Artificial intelligence and sensor to increase their productivity

Provide mobile-based financial services

Transfer money to others
Saving system and loan service based on the saving amount
Current market price of products

In order to address farmers who don't have access to the internet and smartphone we propose a system that uses USSD code and SMS services,

Using USSD and SMS service is simple and easy to use, can be accessed by any kind of mobile phone, and does not require any kind of internet connectivity.

How we built it

We will develop a mobile application that can be installed on a smartphone and access all the above information and service by using an interactive Graphical User Interface and Internet connectivity.