The farming robot aiming to boost the quality and quantity of crops in Africa

Telegraph

5 hours ago

A farm robot that roams fields to alert farmers to crop disease, health monitors for newborns, and sensors to keep beehives healthy are on the shortlist for a prestigious prize for African inventors and entrepreneurs.
This year's contenders for the Royal Academy of Engineering's Africa Prize will fight it out for a share of a £60,000 prize fund.
The prize, now in its 11th year, is the continent's largest to encourage engineering innovation, with entrants tackling challenges from food insecurity and renewable energy to healthcare.
Alumni from the prize have gone on to raise more than £29m in funding and investment to develop their inventions.
The shortlist for the 2025 prize includes a 'FarmBot' designed by self-taught Togolese software engineer Sam Kodo, which drives through fields collecting data on soil moisture, plant health and pest activity.
Mr Kodo said artificial intelligence linked to a multi-spectral camera would allow the bot to spot early signs of infections and infestations, such as leaf spots or yellowing.
The 30-year-old, who has been building robots since the age of 10, told the Telegraph: 'I have a friend who is a farmer who used to notice each year that he had lost half his crop production.
'He reached out to me as an engineer to see if I could help and I came up with the idea of building a robot.'
The FarmBot also uses humidity sensors to monitor soil moisture levels, showing farmers where they need to irrigate their crop.
Mr Kodo has spent eight months building and testing the robot so far and is hiring it out to farmers.
He now hopes to build 50 more over the next three years, widening their deployment into rural areas with more farmers.
Engineering and business experts at the academy have selected a shortlist of 16 candidates, from seven countries.
This year's shortlist includes entries from Ghana, Nigeria, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Togo.
As well as the FarmBot, other innovations include a bracelet-like device worn by newborns that monitors temperature and signs of fever and transmits real time data to carers, as well as beehive monitors to combat bee colony collapse.
Sewu-Steve Tawia, managing partner of the Jaza Rift African venture capital firm and a judge for the past four years, said the prize was looking at both the commercial viability of the inventions and also looking at the impact they were likely to have.
Finalists are given business and engineering advice and many from previous rounds have gone on to raise further capital and investment.
He said: 'It's always a springboard for a lot of these companies to get to the next level, depending on where they were starting from.'
He went on: 'This is such a valuable programme, that if that could be done 10 times more, with a lot more capital provided to the companies, I think that would be more impactful.'