Opportunity International works to end farmer poverty in Malawi with Azure AI

In 2023, Cyclone Freddy dropped six months of rainfall in just six days, devastating Malawi. Over the next month, the storm took lives and destroyed livelihoods. The relentless deluge caused disease in farmers’ fields, particularly affecting the staple soya crop. “Our farmers did not know what to do. Some harvested literally nothing,” remembers Bhahati Zimba, a farmer and Senior Program Officer at Opportunity International.

Worldwide, most of the 659 million people living on less than $2.15 a day are smallholder farmers. Opportunity International develops innovative financial solutions and delivers agricultural support to empower the world’s most vulnerable communities to build sustainable livelihoods.  

“Opportunity has always been an innovator, developing new ways to assist people to lift themselves out of poverty,” says Greg Nelson, Chief Technology Officer at Opportunity International. “We bring the latest and greatest ideas to our mission, and that new chapter is using generative AI.”

Opportunity collaborated with AIS Partners and Artefact to develop a Microsoft Azure-based AI solution that immediately and accurately answers farmers’ questions in Malawi. Called Ulangizi AI, the chatbot solution provides authoritative information in English and Chichewa by text and voice. Ulangizi, which means “advisor” in Chichewa, is using responsibly developed AI to strengthen Opportunity’s network of farm support agents (FSAs), spread sustainable agriculture practices, and help more farmers overcome extreme poverty. 

“With Ulangizi, generative AI brings knowledge, power, and agency to people, even if they have limited educational opportunity or literacy,” Nelson says. “AI is a new enabler for supporting individuals who are the most excluded, so we can end extreme poverty in our lifetime.”

Designing human-centered AI

In alignment with the responsible AI principles of inclusiveness and human-centered design, Opportunity conducted a series of interviews with farmers and FSAs in the wake of Cyclone Freddy. They learned about farmers’ most pressing challenges, including the difficulty they faced in getting timely, reliable agricultural advice. Opportunity leaders tested generative AI’s ability to answer common farming questions. 

One FSA who worked on this demo was amazed. “When can I have this?” asked Anna Chimalizeni, who lost her harvest during the cyclone. “If I had this, I could have saved my crop.”

After going through development, pilots, user feedback, and refinement, Ulangizi AI was built as an open platform using Azure, Azure AI services, and other services. By using WhatsApp, one of the most widely used communications tools in the country, the generative AI solution is readily accessible and familiar to individuals with limited digital literacy. It also works in rural areas without broadband coverage. 

Based in its Azure OpenAI back end, the solution receives a user’s text or audio prompt from WhatsApp. Azure AI speech-to-text services decode voice messages, while machine translation services convert prompts into English and answers back into Chichewa or Nyanja. The chatbot draws on Malawian Ministry of Agriculture information stored in an Azure database, then large language models (LLMs) generate answers to user questions in a conversational tone. Ulangizi AI can even analyze photos to help farmers answer questions about crops and livestock, though this feature is still being fine-tuned. 

Opportunity trained its hundreds of FSAs and government outreach workers to be intermediaries between the technology and the 100,000 households they support. This approach ensures even farmers without a mobile phone can access valuable information, and it reduces risks involved in using a generative AI solution. 

FSAs are knowledgeable about the type of content Ulangizi AI needs (such as soil type) and how to craft prompts for the most helpful answers. Trusted as the most successful farmers in their communities, FSAs help growers apply Ulangizi AI recommendations to their unique circumstances.  

Zimba says, “Ulangizi AI is a farmer advisor in our pocket.”

Educating farmers for sustainable agriculture

Global instability disproportionately affects people who are poor and can worsen the impacts of poverty, especially for people who depend on the land for their livelihood. Opportunity is using generative AI to help farmers in Malawi adapt to more severe and unpredictable weather patterns.

FSAs help farmers ask Ulangizi AI for recommendations on crops and animals better suited to today’s conditions. For example, choosing drought-resistant varieties helps families become more resilient during dry spells. “For the first time, farmers have access to authoritative, accurate content that helps them build sustainable livelihoods,” Nelson says.

Ulangizi AI also empowers farmers to solve problems faster. It could have helped address the moisture-caused disease that devastated soya crops during Cyclone Freddy, for example. The generative AI chatbot surfaces answers in mere seconds, rather than the several days it might take for an FSA to visit a farm, travel to a Ministry of Agriculture extension outpost, and then bring the answer back to the farmer. 

Finally, FSAs are spreading sustainable farming practices. With the support of Ulangizi AI and Opportunity training, they teach farmers to regenerate soil through crop rotation, choose plants to fix nutrients in the soil, and more—all to steward the land for generations of farming families. 

Nelson says, “By preparing smallholder farmers, who are some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, we can strengthen the world’s food supply and help farmers become more resilient in the face of growing instability.” 

Growing farmers’ incomes

Most smallholder farmers produce a fraction of their potential yields, limiting their financial mobility. Ulangizi AI is helping farmers sow and care for the right crops, leading to more bountiful harvests. Farmers then have the capital to plant more, increase their herds, and hire laborers, improving the local economy for the entire community. “When they approach farming as a business, their lives can transform,” Zimba says.

The generative AI chatbot gives detailed guidance, such as how much seed to buy for a farmer’s acreage. It also integrates sources such as weather forecasts and market data so farmers know when to water, harvest, and sell crops for the greatest profit. This circumstance-specific content helps farmers reduce costs and free up time to learn new skills or start another business, Zimba says. 

Extra income can help families build a better life. “We use the money for things like paying school fees, hiring labor in peak periods, and taking care of our children and our homes,” Chimalizeni says. 

Reaching more growers

About 80% of Malawi’s population are smallholder farmers, but Opportunity does not currently have the capacity to support all of them. Technological innovation such as Ulangizi AI is expanding the nonprofit’s reach. 

The chatbot’s speed and ease of use eliminates most of the need for FSAs to travel to agricultural extension offices. They can then spend more time with the families they serve and welcome more farmers into the program. 

Opportunity anticipates that investments in AI will cut the cost of training new FSAs by more than two-thirds, making it financially feasible to scale up its FSA program. Ulangizi AI will bring new FSAs up to speed faster, empowering them with vetted information and leading to even better outcomes for millions of Malawian farmers. 

Ulangizi AI is just the beginning of how Opportunity will leverage technology for life-changing transformation, Nelson says. The nonprofit is developing a suite of AI-powered solutions to support agriculture, education, and upward mobility in Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, and beyond. 

“Generative AI opens up information access like we’ve never seen,” Nelson says. “By applying this technology at scale, we’re going to help hundreds of millions of people. The faster we can go, the more people we can reach.”

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