A PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr Sheriff Issaka, says a major breakthrough for Ghana’s smallholder farmers lies in a new digital platform called Croppredict, designed to transform fragmented agricultural data into actionable intelligence.
Speaking at the AI and Agriculture Forum at the 2025 Volta Trade and Investment Fair (VTIF), Mr Sheriff said the platform is being developed as a simple, user-friendly tool capable of helping farmers register data, log crop information and receive timely alerts on weather shifts and market changes.
The event was organized by the AI Collective Ghana chapter, sponsored by Knowledge Innovation, and held in conjunction with the Volta Fair 2025.
He said the country’s failure to capture, structure and use farm-level data has long weakened planning, market forecasting and supply chain efficiency.
“We cannot manage what we cannot measure,” he stressed.
In an interview, Mr Sheriff noted that Ghana loses about two billion dollars every year due to post-harvest challenges losses he said could be significantly reduced if farmers had timely insights to guide harvesting, storage and market decisions.
He said more than 80 percent of Ghana’s farmers are small-scale producers, scattered across thousands of farms, making it difficult to aggregate information and build reliable intelligence systems without a technological solution like Croppredict.
“This platform provides the simplest way for farmers to capture data that can later be transformed into predictive dashboards and meaningful insights,” he said.
“It is not technology for technology’s sake. The goal is to turn raw data into tools farmers can actually use.”
The forum, themed “Harnessing AI for Small-Scale Farming: Croppredict and the Future of Agricultural Insight,” brought together experts to examine how artificial intelligence can help farmers counter climate change, soil degradation and limited access to markets.
Also, Cropredict enables the aggregation of crop production data from micro and small-scale farms, offering actionable insights to improve farm productivity, resource management, and market access.
Speakers explained how AI can predict crop yields, optimise resource use and reduce waste, warning that the intelligence of any system depends heavily on the quality of data fed into it.
Rev. Fr. Dr Paul A. Agbodza, a data scientist, also speaking in an interview, emphasised that no AI system can deliver accurate forecasts if the underlying data is compromised.
“The data you put in before you create the system must be cleaned,” he said. “Garbage in, garbage out. If we want an AI tool that truly helps farmers, then we must start with good, reliable data.”
The hybrid event, moderated by Mr Fred Avornyo, CEO of VTIF, also featured contributions from Mr William Dzamefe, Volta Regional Director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture; Mr Mawuli K.E. Sevor, Deputy Principal of Ohawu Agricultural College; teachers; and students from various second-cycle institutions.
Participants agreed that with the right data systems and user-friendly tools like Croppredict, AI could help lift thousands of smallholder farmers into more productive and resilient farming systems.
