By @riccicoughlan for Innovate DFID
Published on https://medium.com
22 february 2018
We started 2018’s series of innovation talks for DFID staff with a visit from farm.ink’s Adam Wills and Georgia Barrie. The Amplify-funded farm.ink is developing a chatbot which allows farmers to share peer-to-peer knowledge and connect with local farmers and buyers. The farm.ink team believe countries like Kenya could leapfrog the app as chatbots present an accessible and intuitive user experience.
Farm.ink uses the latest technology, such as Natural Language Processing, to engage farmers. Initially, the farm.ink bot is being rolled out in Kenya — thanks to its high smartphone usage — with the intention of creating a product that can be simply scaled to farmers around the world. Farm.ink is working with Amplify to establish the tone and user experience of the chatbot so that both farmers and buyers alike will incorporate it into their day-to-day business. The bot currently has a base of 15,000 monthly active users, and is growing each month.
