Mobile application developed to address post-harvest losses

3 July 2017. A mobile application has been developed to assist farmers to address the issue of high post-harvest losses from their produce.

The application, called Chains of Human Intelligence towards Efficiency and Equity in Agro-Food Trade along the Trans-Africa Highway (CHEETAH), addresses losses when farmers are crossing borders.

• The mobile app, CHEETAH Smartphone Application, works by crowdsourcing trade barriers by value-chain players whiles transporting the goods.
• It provides information flow between road users and helps one to determine the duration of transport and duration since harvest, and how the crops have been decaying.

Executive Director for Ujuizi Labs, developers of the app, Valentijn Venus (see picture extreme left), said the innovation will augment government's effort to institute non-tariff barriers on the road.

“There is so much lost to post-harvest but till date, there is no information about the gap and how to partition this gap. It makes the transporter aware of where these losses are incurred the most and how bad deteriorating is at what point in the journey. It makes the driver aware of what is happening and also inform traders who want to use the same corridors to prevent same challenges because maybe the issue is still not solved.

Ministry 0f Dutch Foreign Aid and Development, and Borderless Alliance are collaborating to support the project with funding from Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs is funding.

The group has been engaging traders, transporters, and journalist to test whether the landscape of human and social interactions are ready is ready to adopt the technology.