Burundi

Weather and crop information through AgriCoach

Over 90% of the population in Burundi is dependent on subsistence agriculture and almost half of it lives in food insecurity, caused by for example a lack of agricultural practices and actionable information. To guarantee food security, it is essential that the population understands and uses weather and crop information effectively to plan their agricultural activities, be more resilient for unexpected events, save costs, and in the end increase their yield and subsequent livelihoods.  Training on the access, use and interpretation of weather information for agricultural practices will therefore directly contribute to increasing the livelihood of the Burundian rural communities.

AUXFIN-Burundi provides financial, market and information services in a network of smallholder farmers. The services provided by AUXFIN are accessible by farmers through the online UMVA (Universal Method of Value Access) platform. One of the services within UMVA is the AgriCoach that is designed to help farmers with their day-to-day farming activities. Our cooperation with  AUXFIN goes back for multiple years. Within several projects, we worked together to reach smallholder farmers with a range of services through the AgriCoach app, to make essential weather and crop information available and help farmers in planning and executing farming activities.

Weather Impact contributed to the development of the AgriCoach app, the provision of spatial information on crop selection and suitability, short-term weather forecast (10 days), seasonal outlook (5 months), rain season status indicator, and link them to good agricultural practices. (Gap4All project)
We continued and expanded our cooperation in delivering weather information to African smallholder farmers in Burundi and Uganda on a commercial basis, which makes the service financially sustainable.

Training to empower 500.000 farmer households on usage of the AgriCoach app

With AUXFIN Burundi’s network of farmers expanding to 500.000 farmer households, limited understanding of weather information is halting the correct usage of the AgriCoach app. While upscaling AUXFIN’s services in Burundi, it is important to ensure that all farmers can benefit from AgriCoach. To facilitate this, Weather Impact conducts a series of trainings on the content, use and interpretation of weather information within agriculture. The trainings are delivered to all AUXFIN staff: key, master and super activators. Key activators will then disseminate the information to the farmers using specifically designed digital tools. Super- and master activators supervise key activators. Additionally, Weather Impact will carry out one higher-level training to the national meteorological institute (IGEBU, Institut Géographique du Burundi).

Starting in Bujumbura, the Weather Impact team will be travelling through Burundi to give trainings to all AUXFIN staff during two periods, one at the end of 2023 and one in the beginning of 2024. In total, 15 trainings will be given to ca. 800 activators. Key activators have direct contact with the G50 farmers (groups of 50 households) and needs to be able to explain the AgriCoach and the weather information in there directly to them. In the end, 500.000 farmer households are empowered with essential climate information. We anticipate that our trainings strengthen the value that Burundian smallholder farmers can obtain from AgriCoach.

 

Location of this project