AI for Agriculture
Harnessing AI to deliver scalable solutions for Farmers.
This innovation area identifies where AI can deliver the greatest value for farmers and what it takes to scale responsibly.
Meet the AI for Agriculture Technical Panel
The AI for Agriculture Technical Panel is made up of subject matter experts, including academics who conduct research related to the topic, and implementers—multilateral development banks, non-governmental organizations, and foundations—who work to promote and fund the innovation in the field.
Assistant Professor, Information Technology, Wageningen University & Research
Dr. Ayalew Kassahun an Assistant Professor at Wageningen University and teaches and works on topics that are at the boundaries of IT, supply chain management, agriculture, and food systems. His teaching and research activities include transparency and traceability in food systems, machine learning, business process modelling, IoT, software architecture, reference architecture, multi-organizational collaboration, and business-IT alignment. Before joining Wageningen University, Dr Kassahun was a software engineer at two leading software companies: InfoRay (now part of SDB Group) and Baan (currently Infor). Dr Kassahun has professional experience in diverse sectors and diverse educational background including civil engineering (BSc), hydrology (MSc), soil physics and agro-hydrology (MSc), knowledge systems (Ph.D.). In addition to his professional work, he participates in several voluntary, non-for-profit, and community activities.
Senior Scientist Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT
Ani Ghosh is a senior scientist at the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT in Nairobi, Kenya. He leads a diverse team of young and talented specialists in climate services, modeling, remote sensing, economics, and digital agriculture, developing innovative adaptation solutions and driving investments to transform agricultural practices. Previously Ani was at the University of California, Davis where he developed big data and machine learning analytics tools for agriculture monitoring and crop yield prediction, supporting agricultural index insurance. He coordinated the Geospatial and Farming Systems Research Consortium and organized workshops on spatial data science for agriculture using free and open-source tools. His research covers topics from cropland expansion to climate change impacts on agricultural systems and has been published in Nature Food, Environmental Research Letters, and Remote Sensing of Environment. Ani earned his Ph.D. in Natural Resources Management from TERI University in 2014 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Colorado State University, focusing on post-fire vegetation recovery using remote sensing”.
Scientist, International Center for Tropical Agriculture
Dr. David Guerrena is an Agricultural scientist with expertise in soil carbon and fertility, plant nutrition, agronomy, geospatial analytics, data science, and technology development. Regional experience in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America with emphasis on tropical smallholder farming systems. Management skills include grant writing, donor relations, team building, and project management.
Principal Research Science Manager
Girmaw is a Principal Research Scientist and Manager at Microsoft AI for Good Research Lab which aims to develop AI solutions for critical problems across sectors including agriculture, healthcare, biodiversity, etc. Prior to that he was a Staff Research Scientist at IBM Research Africa working on detecting and characterizing systematic deviations in data and machine learning models. At IBM Research, Girmaw led multiple projects in trustworthy AI including evaluation of generative models, representation analysis in academic materials and data-driven insight extraction from public healthy surveys, with active collaborations with external institutions such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stanford University, Oxford University and Harvard University. Previously, Girmaw also worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, where he primarily developed deep learning techniques to assist diagnosis of multiple diseases, with collaborations with clinicians and hospitals in China and Vietnam. Girmaw completed his PhD at Queen Mary University of London, under the Erasmus Mundus Double Doctorate Program in Interactive and Cognitive Environments, with a focus on computer vision and machine learning algorithms for human activity recognition using wearable cameras. He has interned/worked in various research groups across Europe, including the UPC-BarcelonaTech (Spain), KU Leuven (Belgium), and INESC-ID (Portugal). Girmaw is an Executive Member for IEEE Kenya Section, and he is currently serving as a reviewer and program committee member for multiple top-tier AI focused journals and conferences.
Director of Global Partnerships, One Acre Fund
John Mundy is Director of Global Partnerships, Climate Finance and Technology at One Acre Fund, the world’s largest social enterprise supporting smallholder farmers across Africa, where he leads efforts to connect farmers with climate finance and emerging technologies.
Previously, John served as Strategy Director for WFP’s Farm to Market Alliance and as Director at Mercy Corps AgriFin, where he led digital agriculture platforms across East and West Africa, including Safaricom’s Digifarm. Earlier in his career he worked as a rural community organiser on the first Obama campaign, advanced ecological justice initiatives in the US with MacArthur Award-winning pioneer Majora Carter, and co-founded a social enterprise in Peru linking voluntary carbon markets to remote communities.
John holds an MA in Social Enterprise and a BA in International Development. He advises Producers Direct, serves on the ISF AgFinance State of the Sector advisory board and the FAO Technical Advisory Finance Committee, and holds fellowships with Acumen (2015) and Imagine (2026).
Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, School of Computing and Informatics Technology, Makerere University
Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende holds a PhD in Computer Science from Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, a Master of Science in Computer Science from Makerere University, Uganda and a Bachelor of Computer Science from Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara, Uganda. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing and Informatics Technology, College of Computing and Information Sciences. She is the current head of the Makerere Artificial Lab under the department of Computer Science. Her major research interests are in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language processing and Business Process Management. She contributes to building the capacity of African data scientists and ensures diversity and gender equity in her research. Currently, she is a member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery, a board Member Data Science Africa, a member of the Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAIN) Africa Network, a founding Member of the Open for Good Alliance Inclusive AI Commons with Localized Data by FAIR Forward and GIZ and a research scientist as part of the ARUA – The Guild Cluster of Research Excellence Addressing Global and African Challenges through Methods from Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Theoretical and Computational Thinking.
Senior Specialist in Rural Development at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
Romina Ordonez is a Senior Specialist in Rural Development at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) based in Chile, where she leads the development and implementation of agriculture and rural development projects in Chile and other countries in Latin America. Her expertise spans the design, supervision, and evaluation of development projects, with a focus on sustainable rural development. Previously, Romina worked as an economist at IDB Invest, concentrating on the agribusiness and tourism sectors. Her work included measuring the development impact of private sector operations, designing and implementing advisory services and impact evaluations. She holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics, a Master in Public Policy, a bachelor’s degree in Economics, and a technical degree in Journalism.
CEO & Founder, Gooey.AI
Founder of Gooey.AI where he share AI Workflows Create Measurable Value. Gooey.AI is a low-code AI orchestration platform for global impact. We help NGOs, governments and companies democratize AI across their industries and organization to deliver AI solutions for measurable impact.
Product Lead, Google Research Africa
Tavonga Siyavora is a Product Lead at Google Research Africa where he leads product strategy and roadmap development for AI-driven initiatives (incl. food security, weather prediction and language accessibility). Tavonga is a results-driven technologist leveraging experience from AgTech and complementary sectors to collaborate with partnesand stakeholders to advance the most impactful solutions for AI-powered solutions in the African landscape. His background spans hardware and software engineering, deal scoping and negotiation with key partners, and leading cross-functional teams through delivery; bridging the gap between innovation and real-world impact. Originally from Zimbabwe, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizona and a Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering. Before his work at Google (including time with Google X / Moonshot Lab), he worked as a program and product manager at companies like John Deere. At Google Research Africa, his work centers on impactful AI and digital initiatives across the African landscape, such as open-access speech technology resources for Sub-Saharan languages
Senior Program Officer for Digital Agriculture Solutions at the Gates Foundation
Stewart Collis is the Senior Program Officer for Digital Agriculture Solutions at the Gates Foundation. With over 20 years of experience in agricultural information technology, he specializes in digital farmer services, smart farming, and digital agricultural ecosystems in low and middle-income countries in Africa and South Asia. Previously, Stewart was the co-founder and CTO at aWhere, and he contributed to climate-driven spatial crop simulation modeling and ag-data management tools at Texas A&M University and the International Center for Research in Agroforestry. Stewart holds a Masters of Engineering Science in Geomatic Engineering from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Vikram Adve is the Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is a Co-founder and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture and leads AIFARMS, a $20M National Artificial Intelligence Research Institute funded by NIFA and NSF. Adve’s research interests lie in developing and using compiler techniques to improve the performance, programmability and reliability of computer systems. Adve and his Ph.D. student, Chris Lattner, co-designed the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, which enables a novel approach to “lifelong compilation” of programs in a wide range of general-purpose programming languages. For example, most mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV are shipped by developers to Apple in the LLVM compiler representation called “LLVM bitcode” and then compiled and specialized for the various end-user devices. LLVM is widely used in industry today, ranging from mobile devices (e.g., iOS and Android) to supercomputers (e.g., at NVIDIA, Cray, IBM and Intel) to data centers (e.g., at Google). Adve, Lattner and Evan Cheng received the ACM Software System Award in 2012 for co-developing LLVM. Adve has won a ten-year-retrospective Most Influential Paper award at CGO 2004, and distinguished paper awards at several conferences including PLDI 2005, SOSP 2007 and ICSE 2011. He has served as the Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, and co-chaired the Program Committees for ASPLOS 2010, VEE 2008, and LCPC 2007. One of Adve’s Ph.D. students, Robert Bocchino, won the 2010 ACM SIGPLAN Outstanding Dissertation Award and another student, John Criswell, won Honorable Mentions for both the 2014 ACM SIGOPS Dissertation Award and the 2014 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. Adve is a Fellow of the ACM and was named a University Scholar at the University of Illinois in 2015. He served as Interim Head of the Computer Science Department from 2017 to 2019.