A Low-Cost, High-Tech Solution To Save Crops
Cisco, Tuesday, May 20th, 2025
This year's Cisco Youth Leadership Award winner combined AI, solar power, and SMS texts to protect smallholder farms across Africa.
As a child on her family's farm in Kenya, Esther Kimani saw the devastating effects of crop losses firsthand.
'Every season we would lose at least a third of our produce to pests and diseases,' she recalled. 'This meant that many of our basic needs went unmet. But my parents were hardworking, and despite the challenges they ensured that I got the best of education.'
That commitment to education helped Kimani become the first member of her village to attend university. Once there, she quickly sensed an opportunity to apply her computer and AI studies to a critical cause.
'When I looked at computer science and the challenges that I had growing up,' she recounted, 'I felt a responsibility to find a solution to some of the pressing problems I had seen.'