Mobile App Technology for Rural Farmers in Africa (original) (raw)

Farm operation in recent times has faced the challenges common to crop and livestock production and distribution which have reduced the productivity of most farmers. This is mostly seen in rural areas where farmers depend largely on traditional methods of farming for their farm operations such as ranching, dairy farming, raising livestock, etc. Presently, people are embracing technology and using it in their businesses. Mobile App technology is an innovation that will help farmers; but statistically, most rural farmers do not use farm mobile App technology for various reasons ranging from lack of knowledge to system complexity. Therefore, the motivation behind this paper is to educate farmers and encourage them to use innovative technology to effectively manage farm operations and increase productivity. This paper is accomplished using software development methodology (Incremental model) due to its simplicity in operation; and works well for smaller projects, with clearly defined stages that are documented. The incremental methodology is a model that involves the breakdown of activities into linear sequential phases, where each phase depends on the complete execution of the previous one, peculiar to its objectives; with a language choice of Java, and Spring Boot which is a fully object-oriented programming language. The results obtained show that this App can accurately and effectively manage farm operational activities and optimize planning objectives in terms of production and distribution which would significantly improve decision-making by farmers and promote an efficient market system for farmers.