Makerere Students Build AI Tool to Detect Coffee Leaf Disease
The smartphone app uses image recognition to identify common coffee diseases, aiming to help farmers act before crop losses spread.
A team of computer science students at Makerere University has developed a smartphone application that uses artificial intelligence to detect common coffee leaf diseases from a single photograph.
The app, trained on thousands of images of Ugandan coffee crops, can identify conditions such as coffee leaf rust and berry disease with over 90 percent accuracy in early testing.
"Coffee is central to so many livelihoods here. Catching disease early can be the difference between a good harvest and a ruined one," said one of the student developers.
The team is now working with the Uganda Coffee Development Authority to pilot the tool with farmer cooperatives in the Rwenzori region.