Messaging has become one of the most popular methods of communication, whether it’s through text messages or messaging apps. With a platform known as Arifu, farmers and rural entrepreneurs from Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Uganda are learning about finances and agronomy by texting an interactive Chatbot.
A chatbot is a computer program that simulates human conversation through voice commands or text chats or both. Chatbot has improved the efficiency of businesses across the world through streamlining communication with consumers.
Technological advancements
In Africa, however, the technology is transforming education, farming, and rural entrepreneurship by making it easy for organisations to pass knowledge and skills to masses through basic phones.
According to a study conducted on 300 farmers with Mobigrow Kenya Commercial bank (KCB), Arifu reports that 81% of farmers reported improved crop production, and 73% of farmers reported an increase in income.
“Amongst that group, 85% said the reason was because of the increased volume of crops sold. For 80% of the farmers, their experience using Arifu was the first time they have been able to access this information (agronomy and financial literacy),” said Mr Craig Heintzman, the co-founder and CEO of Arifu.
Mr Heintzman and his team realized that if they deliver stories about people and their challenges and how they learned skills and succeeded through interactive text messaging, they could see some strong outcomes and interactions
In the next five years, Mr Heintzman hopes to get 10 million learners on the platform and be able to scale across Africa and also other markets in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
