Mustapha Diyaol-Haqq, a 23-year-old Ghanaian young man has beaten other innovators from across the world to win an enviable prize that comes with $600,000 for developing an agricultural app.
He received the prize from the Zayed Sustainability Prize in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after emerging as the winner of the contest in 2020.
The prize aims to reward SMEs, high schools and NGOs that offer innovative sustainable solutions. It is open to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and non-profits. The money given to the winner is used to develop the pitched solution and more sustainable developmental projects.
The app that won Diyaol-Haqq the prize helps farmers to detect disease in crops at an early stage and act proactively to save the situation.
The graduate of Blue Crest University College is also a co-founder of the Okuafo Foundation, an organization that develops sustainable agriculture technologies for farmers.
It is this foundation that has developed an app called the Okuafo AI App, which allows rural farmers without internet access to detect diseases in crops at an early stage. The app uses numbers and colours to send signals to the farmers, making it easy for the users to understand and take proactive steps. This helps farmers spend less or no money on pesticides and increases crop yields.
The Zayed Sustainability Prize said on its website that the app has helped about 30,000 farmers to increase their crop yields and reduced losses by 50 percent.
Farmers from Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, and Burkina Faso have all benefitted from the Agric app.
Aside from the agricultural app, Diyaol-Haqq is reported to have developed a pregnancy app to help predict preeclampsia.
