Agriculture is the world’s largest business that employs over one-third of the economically active global population and over 70% of the economically active population in Africa [1]. In Africa, which is the focus of this study, the extent of population growth and climate change-induced drought makes traditional rainfall-dependent farming no longer reliable. This resulted in high regional unemployment threats, food insecurity and reduced crop quantity and quality, which require critical attention as recommended in SDGs 1 and 2. Currently, the most promising remedy is the smart and eco-friendly Agricultural Internet-of-Things technology (Agri-IoT Tech), which can address these challenges via precision farming and greenhouses to increase food production capacities on less acreage and crop quality. Primarily, this project aims to address the impacts of climate change-induced droughts on food security and the resulting unemployment/security threats on Africa by building a robust and affordable smast Agri-IoT Tech.

Within this research arena, several current state-of-the-art benchmarking testbed solutions can only be acquired, deployed in farms with cellular coverage, and managed by farmers with sufficient financial resources and technical expertise in IoT, which is generally not the case in Africa. In this study, we  will extend the novel scientific foundations and testbed solutions of Dr. Emmanuel Effah’s Ph.D. research by custom-building adequate sampling-based prototypes for field deployments that are operationally robust, affordable, fault-tolerant, infrastructure-less, adaptive/scalable, and simple to deploy and manage anywhere by non-experts. Although Emmanuel’s study established the scientific foundation of this technology with custom-built designs for field testing, his results are limited by inadequate field testing duration and network participants due to time and financial constraints. Additionally, these results could not validate all proposed theoretical frameworks and realistic performance expectations required to approve the commercial viability of this technology due to lack of sufficient funds and time to build adequate sensor nodes and deploy them over a long period under different seasons.So, these results do not provide adequate justification for the commercial viability of this technology for the stipulated benefits for Africa.

Therefore, this proposal is motivated to address this challenge by building human resource capacities (mentorship) in this field and using the imparted expertise to build adequate Agri-IoT Tech prototypes to validate the commercial viability of our solution in large-scale farm experimentations/testings and greenhouse management.Thus, the final project outcome will be a robust and affordable smart Agri-IoT Tech that can serve as technological backbone for addressing food insecurity issues and the present unemployment threats due to climate change-induced season failure in Africa and beyond.