PlantHead Platform: Digital Diagnosis for Agriculture in Africa

EWA-BELT Final Conference, 15-17 July 2025, Ethiopia, Addis Ababa

By Camilla Fumagalli

On the occasion of the EWA-BELT Final Conference, held on 15-17 July, 2025 at the African Union HQ in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, OCCAM, the Observatory on Digital Communication in collaboration with the Center of Desertification of the University of Sassari, presented the results achieved with the PlantHead Platform, developed as part of Subtask 3.1, aiming to implement a Telediagnostic Network across the Eastern and Western African Belt. The PlantHead Platform is part of the Horizon 2020 EWA-BELT Project (GA #862848), which is mainly focused on strengthening food security and sustainable farming systems across Sub-Saharan Africa. Within this framework, PlantHead represents a key feature of digital innovation, offering a participatory and scalable system that supports the early identification and management of crop diseases.

The Platform is an advanced ICT tool developed to address the challenges of crop disease management, demonstrating how digital technologies can effectively able to strengthen sustainable agriculture, mitigate rural poverty, and enhance resilience in dealing with climate change.

PlantHead Platform testing on field, Kenya, 2024

How does the PlantHead Platform work?

As plants are increasingly vulnerable to pest pathogens, an early and accurate disease identification becomes critical. The PlantHead Platform enables farmers, extension agents, agricultural professionals, and researchers to work together and remotely identify crop diseases, analyse the situation, and recommend sustainable treatment strategies. The Platform allows users to submit alerts through a dedicated mobile application; the ticket contains the information on the crop and its problem, along with georeferenced pictures of the symptoms. Once the alert is sent, it is stored in the HUB and an email is sent to the closest Local Node, where Service Providers will manage the request. Once a solution is found, the Local Node marks the ticket as solved, and the farmer receives a notification on his phone to view the solution.

The PlantHead Platform is tailored for offline accessibility, especially in low-connectivity regions, as its mobile application enables farmers to create alerts even without internet access. The app itself is intuitive, and its ease-of-use ensures farmers to actively engage with the platform, regardless of their level of digital literacy.

Training and Development of the PlantHead Platform across Africa

Throughout the EWA-BELT project, an active collaboration among partners from the six African countries has been implemented for the experimentation of the PlantHead Platform. On-site training sessions have been organized, such as the PlantHead training workshop held in Karachuonyo Farmer Field Research Units (FFRU), Homabay County, Kenya, in January 2024, where the University of Nairobi conducted a training session with 22 local farmers focusing on peanut cultivation. Furthermore, OCCAM organized online bilateral Zoom sessions and weekly online support services, along with the creation of dedicated video tutorials, handbooks that reinforced the platform’s use and impact.

The PlantHead Platform’s innovation also lies in its dynamic and evolving diagnostic database. As alerts are processed and resolved, the corresponding images and control solutions are automatically archived, enriching the system with each new case. Over the course of the EWABELT initiative, more than 3,000 georeferenced photos of crop diseases were collected and analysed, while 25 validated disease control strategies, ranging from agronomic and biological methods to chemical ones, were stored within the Platform repository, thanks to the close collaboration with the African partners, that contributed to define the most common diseases affecting key crops in their regions and provided high-quality images of both diseased and healthy plants. This diagnostic database serves as the basis for a future Artificial Intelligence image-based diagnostic system that could further accelerate and simplify disease identification.     

A Scalable Pathway Toward the Future of Resilient Agriculture

The PlantHead Platform demonstrates the transformative power of digital tools in agriculture, standing as a model of technological inclusion and sustainable innovation. By empowering farmers with knowledge, connectivity, and support, PlantHead is not just an ICT tool; it represents a step forward in the fight for food security and agricultural resilience in a changing world.