Degas Ghana Ltd. announced today that it is a winner of a Grand Challenges grant – an initiative fostering innovation to solve pressing global health and development problems and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Degas will pursue an innovative global health and development research project focused on Catalyzing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use, titled “Supporting Field Agents to Scale Climate Action”.
When harnessed equitably and responsibly, AI has incredible potential to help solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and reduce global inequity. Supporting AI research in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) will help ensure that AI technology is tailored to local health, education, agricultural and other contexts and designed with the needs of the world’s most vulnerable at the center.
Image displays a Degas field agent using the agent-facing mobile application to onboard a farmer.
Degas faces two key challenges in achieving this goal; scalability and novelty. To tackle these hurdles, Degas proposes an unconventional solution: developing an LLM-based system and integrating it into Degas’ existing agent-facing mobile application. This initiative is directed by Degas’ CTO, Yohei Nakayama, Ph. D., a former AWS senior scientist who has led projects on developing LLMs. This innovative approach provides a simple interface for field agents to access insights and guidance on implementing techniques for regenerative agriculture. With financial support from the Gates Foundation to bolster Degas’ human resources and computing power, Degas will develop LLM-based solutions to strengthen farmer support and hasten process adoption.
Degas has already made waves in the African agricultural sector, having financed over 46,000 smallholder farmers by adopting an AI-credit scoring model based on over 1.2 million data points collected via an in-house native application and satellite observation. This project will utilize this multimodal credit scoring technology as its base infrastructure. The integration of LLM into its agent-facing mobile application will further enhance the company’s impact and help scale climate action, potentially benefiting millions of smallholder farmers.
Degas’ project is one of nearly 50 Grand Challenges Catalyzing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use grants announced by the Gates Foundation to support LMICs in harnessing AI’s power for good and to solve the urgent need for LMIC participation in the co-creation process of this technology as it rapidly evolves. The project’s findings will contribute to building an evidence base for testing AI large language models (LLMs) that can fill wide gaps in access and equitable use of these tools. Each of these grants represents an opportunity to solve or mitigate a real challenge experienced by communities, researchers and/or governments in low and middle-income countries.
To receive funding, Degas and other Grand Challenges winners submitted their concepts which outlined their bold idea in response to the Catalyzing Equitable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use request for proposals. More than 1,300 proposals were submitted from around the world.
About Grand Challenges:
Grand Challenges stem from the idea from over a century ago that crowdsourcing a defined set of unsolved problems can spark innovation and accelerate progress. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its Grand Challenges funding partners use Challenges – launched in 2003 as open requests for grant proposals – to focus attention and effort on solving pressing global health and development problems for those most in need. Together they have awarded over 3600 grants engaging a diverse pool of problem solvers in over 100 countries and fostering a global innovation ecosystem where it will have the most impact. The foundation and its Grand Challenges partners will continue to launch RFPs to support innovators from around the world in tackling the hardest, most urgent, Grand Challenges. To learn more, visit grandchallenges.org.
About Degas Ltd. / Degas Ghana Ltd.:
Degas, a leading tech startup with a vision of “Changing people’s lives, dramatically.” Focused on maximizing impact, Degas drives a core smallholder farmer financing business, leveraging data-driven operations and AI-based credit decisions. With 46,000 farmers financed, 20,000 hectares managed, and a remarkable 95% loan recovery rate, Degas is focusing on regenerative agriculture to promote soil regeneration and CO2 sequestration. As Degas manages one of Africa’s largest regenerative agricultural farms, spanning 400 hectares, they empower farmers while contributing to global decarbonization, despite Africa having the lowest contribution to climate change.
Media Inquiries:
Enrique Miguel Lozari
PR & Marketing Officer
Degas Ghana Ltd.
+233 (0) 202 707 756
enrique.l@degasafrica.com
www.degasafrica.com