KENYA – The Directorate of Resource Surveys & Remote Sensing (DRSRS) and the Kenyan Smart Agri-Tech Company Agrvision have signed an MoU to develop a nationwide unified platform for crop monitoring and yield forecasting powered by Satellite imagery and artificial intelligence.

The MoU was signed by Deputy Director of DRSRS Charles Situma and the Chief Operations Officer of Agrvision Oscar Mwai opening a direct engagement between the two institutions on the implementation of a road map for a Nationwide crop forecasting and monitoring system in Kenya.

The agreement aims to bring the two entities’ expertise into action to develop a smart unified platform to digitally monitor and classify crops around Kenya and to provide an advanced analytics tool to enhance data driven decisions.

This will contribue to the social and economic development of agriculture and forestry sectors in Kenya.

“As the official institution advising the Government of Kenya on matters related to Remote Sensing and Geographical Information systems (GIS) and gathering of data on the environment and natural resources around the country, DRSRS entered into this strategic collaboration with Agrvision,” said Deputy Director of DRSRS Mr Charles Situma.

“to work together with an Agri- tech expert in developing the right digital tools and usage of advanced data collection and analytics technologies that can help the agricultural sector and decision-makers in the country, have full visibility and data-driven decisions that enhance food security programs to achieve better sustainable results”

With more than 15+ years of domain expertise in the Agri-tech sector globally, Agrvision developed a smart crop and forestry monitoring digital platform analyzing all big data collected through satellite imagery and specialized drones.

This is by using advanced data analytics algorithms, powered by machine learning, and artificial intelligence customized models and tools, to help farmers, forestry professionals, agricultural institutions and NGOs having useful insights and predictive analytics for a better data driven decision making, delivered through customized convenient easy-to-use digital channels.

“We believe that agriculture should be not only a Smart but also a Sustainable industry. That’s why we’re committed to simplifying the remote sensing-based precision agriculture technology,” Agrvision Chief Operations Officer Oscar Mwai said.

“Making it universally accessible and practical, by using cutting-edge Ai/ML models and algorithms to analyse big Agri-data that is collected and provide highly-precise information about fields, crops and forests, participating in the agricultural transformation journey with government institutions and decision-makers for creation of more sustainable food security programs.”

With this strategic collaboration and long-term partnership with DRSRS, Agrvision mission is to work closely with DRSRS team to develop and customize the unified platform with an interactive digital map classifying all crops around the country powered by Ai.

This is with field boundaries and have real-time analytics for crop monitoring and rotation, weather forecast and soil moisture to be collected from high-resolution satellite imagery and specialized drones to be able to provide predictive analytics and yield forecasts.

As part of this MoU, both entities appointed the project team to work closely together on drafting the final project scope of work to build the project strategy and road map for the platform development, with plans to start directly running the pilot project to analyse the needed final features to be embedded in the model.

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