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Good practice Imported

Smart Nkunganire System — Rwanda's AI-Assisted Fertilizer Recommendation Tool for Smallholder Farmers

Rwanda · Kigali · See the Rwanda profile · See the Kigali profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 62% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Rwanda's Agriculture Board channels over 90% of the country's subsidized fertilizer through the Smart Nkunganire System, whose CGIAR-built machine-learning models reached 97% accuracy recommending crop and fertilizer choices in field validation for rice and potato.

97%
Model validation accuracy
1,500,000+
Registered SNS farmers
10,000
Initial pilot farmers reached
~300,000 farmers (20% of SNS base)
2025 scaling target
Smart Nkunganire System — Rwanda's AI-Assisted Fertilizer Recommendation Tool for Smallholder Farmers

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), with CGIAR's Excellence in Agronomy Initiative and One Acre Fund
Period
2018–2021 platform pilot; ML fertilizer recommendations scaling 2023–2026
Keywords
agriculture, digital agriculture, food security, agricultural extension

Context

Rwanda's Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) runs the Smart Nkunganire System (SNS), used by over 1.5 million registered farmers to order subsidised agricultural inputs. Since 2023, RAB has worked with CGIAR's Excellence in Agronomy Initiative, BK Techouse and One Acre Fund to layer a machine-learning fertilizer-recommendation tool onto SNS using the CGIAR AgWise toolkit and multi-season trial data, for six priority crops.

Results

CGIAR reports the underlying prediction model reached 97% accuracy in validation trials, with rice and potato recommendations fully validated as of 2024 and the remaining four crops still in validation. An initial rollout reached 10,000 pilot farmers supported by 200 farmer facilitators and 10 sector agronomists, with a 2025 scaling target of roughly 300,000 farmers (20% of SNS's registered user base).

Conclusions

CGIAR's own reporting is candid about the tool's limits: a cumbersome USSD interface, heavy reliance on agro-dealers and cooperative leaders rather than direct self-service use, delayed subsidy payments disrupting affordability, connectivity-dependent stock-tracking discrepancies, and no coverage yet for organic fertilizer, lime or micronutrient recommendations. CGIAR explicitly flags sustainability risk if government subsidy support lapses.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy Initiative, BK Techouse, One Acre Fund, 200 farmer facilitators, 10 sector agronomists

Conditions for success

  • CGIAR AgWise toolkit with multi-season, multi-location fertilizer-response trial data
  • layered onto an existing platform already reaching 1.5M+ registered farmers

Common failure modes

  • cumbersome USSD interface requiring dozens of steps; heavy reliance on agro-dealers/cooperative leaders rather than self-service; delayed subsidy payments; sustainability risk if government subsidy support lapses

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Digital Europe Programme

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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