From crop disease to customer data: Kenyan businesses put AI to work
Emerging applications are less about futuristic machines than about helping businesses make better decisions with data they already generate.
Nairobi, Kenya — Artificial intelligence is being put to work by Kenyan businesses across various sectors. A Nairobi barbershop used an AI tool to identify it had around 180 loyal customers a month, information it had previously not been able to track. This insight helped the business expand. In agriculture, Kenyan farmer Kennedy Kabue developed FarmSawa to help farmers detect crop diseases early.
After losing a greenhouse crop of bell peppers due to a late-detection disease, Kabue created a service that allows farmers to send photos of affected crops via WhatsApp for analysis. The system identifies the disease within seconds and suggests the next steps. It serves over 10,000 farmers across 47 counties and offers services in three languages.
In the retail sector, Kenyan discount supermarket chain JAZA uses AI and data analytics to inform decisions around pricing, customer behaviour, inventory, and logistics. This helps the retailer analyse market data, compare prices in real time, examine shopping behaviour, and make decisions on where to locate new stores.
Written by urgent.news from Capital FM Kenya's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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