Smart Irrigation System

Northern Nigerian farmers are known to engage in dry-season farming where they use traditional irrigation systems to water their crops. The majority of these farmers are illiterates and lack basic knowledge of water requirements, irrigation scheduling, and skills in maintaining and operating the pumps. This, in many cases, affects the yield of the crops as the crops are either over or under-irrigated, leading to waste of water.

While looking for innovations in Nigerian academia, Our The Bridge team came across a technology developed by Dr Olugbenga Kayode Ogidan, a senior lecturer in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department of Elizade University. He developed the Smart Irrigation system using micro-controllers which can be controlled through an Android App. This we believe is a breakthrough to dry season farming.

Innovation that makes life easy, and better, and enables people to do more with less effort is what we are on the lookout for. Spotlighting these innovations is our way to connect the innovators with those who need them.

He wrote in the paper, “In many parts of Africa, irrigation is carried out using traditional procedures such as the use of watering cans and when electrical pumps are used for the irrigation, they are manually operated. Many times people saddled with the responsibility of operating the irrigation equipment reside in locations several kilometers away with very poor access roads. These conditions make irrigation practices to be inefficient and ineffective.

There is therefore the need to develop effective and efficient methods that optimizes water usage during irrigation as well as reducing the drudgery associated with the operation of irrigation equipment. Several attempts have been made to automate irrigation systems.”

The system uses sensors to measure humidity and temperature and as a result, it can predict when a farmer should plant crops and also when to release water to the crops. Through the mobile App on Android, a farmer can control the irrigation system from any part of the world. Readings from the sensors are transmitted to the app from where the farmer can decide what to do.

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