AKILIMO
AKILIMO
AKILIMO

Printable guides and worksheets

Printable guides and worksheets

The AKILIMO printable guides are a presentation of agronomic advice rooted in evidence, locally relevant knowledge, experience and scientific advances.

Accounting for the key factors determining cassava response to agroecology, different farming practices, additional farm input and farmers’ socio-economy, the printable guides provide advice to farmers on optimized return on investment.

The printable guides currently work for major cassava growing regions in Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana and Rwanda.

Tailored advice
The printable guides are accompanied by maps and tables when advice on fertilizer or optimized planting/ harvesting time is provided.

The advice is aggregated at the level of national administrative subunits (for example local government areas in Nigeria, zones in Tanzania). The maps and tables also allow the user to select her or his expected planting and harvesting month.

The maps and tables are generated through a dashboard on this website and can be downloaded as pdf files.

Maps and tables are currently available for Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana.

Optimized for profit
AKILIMO is not about yield increase but maximizing profit for farmers.

Factoring the type and cost of fertilizers available, cost of land preparation and weed control on one hand and estimated yield increase and crop price on the other, an economic optimizer searches for the fertilizer recommendations that will provide high return on investment.

Elegantly designed flow to collect prices and unit of sale with maximum flexibility to accommodate users’ experience.

Address several aspects of agronomy
AKILIMO provides advice on:

  • Fertilizer recommendations
  • Best planting and harvest dates
  • Best planting practices
  • Cassava-maize or cassava-sweet potato intercrop.

Locally relevant
Beyond the soil and weather variation and the choice of planting time, crop yields vary depending on the level of investment into management and/or input. Return on investment depends on the locally relevant prices. Therefore, the printable guides account for:

  • Intended planting and harvest dates
  • Produce prices
  • Types and cost of fertilizers and agricultural input
  • Methods and cost of land preparation and weed control

Evidence Based and validated
Crop response to the environment, farming practices and input is modelled using 5,000+ field yield measurements from five countries (Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC) and several agro-ecologies and seasons.

Throughout the development phase, AKILIMO advice was put to test against field observations. Models were recalibrated based on learnings from these extensive validation trials which make AKILIMO unique and robust among other similar products.

Farmer’s knowledge
The powerful piece of information that makes the AKILIMO advice stand out in its accuracy is the use of farm-level productivity indicators. Given the currently available soil and weather data are not sufficient to characterize farm-level productivity, we augment the gap by the smart approach of getting farm-level productivity indicators and processing this information in the machine learning techniques we use.

We gather this information from every individual user through asking questions farmers can easily relate assisted with a visual representation of yield.

Because of this critical step, AKILIMO stands out when compared with agronomy advisory tools lacking local fertility indicators.