ShambaPal – Farm Management App
- Client
- ShambaPal
- Category
- Custom SaaS
- Duration
- 3 months
- Team
- Solo Developer
- Status
- Live
ShambaPal is a mobile-first farm management application built for smallholder farmers in Kenya. It brings modern agricultural tools — crop tracking, expense logging, harvest records, and advisory alerts — to farmers' phones via a React Native app.
The Challenge
Smallholder farmers in Kenya operate almost entirely without digital tools. Planting records, input costs, and harvest data live in notebooks or nowhere at all. Without structured records, farmers can't access credit, can't track profitability, and can't make data-driven decisions.
- No digital record-keeping for planting cycles, inputs, or harvests
- Farmers unable to access credit without financial history
- Difficulty tracking farm profitability across seasons
- Low smartphone literacy requiring a very simple, Swahili-friendly UI
- Unreliable internet access in rural areas
The Solution
We built ShambaPal as a React Native mobile app optimized for low-bandwidth environments. The interface is built for simplicity — large touch targets, minimal text, and a flow that mirrors how farmers already think about their work.
- Crop planning and planting cycle tracker
- Input and expense logging (seeds, fertiliser, labour)
- Harvest recording with per-season profit calculation
- Weather alerts and crop advisory notifications
- Offline-first architecture — works without internet
- Swahili and English language support
Built with
React Native · Expo · Firebase · TypeScript
Measurable Impact
- 200+
- Farmers
- Active users across Kenya's farming regions
- 100%
- Offline Support
- Core features work without internet
- iOS + Android
- Platforms
- Single codebase deployed to both stores
“Before ShambaPal, I was writing everything in a notebook that I kept losing. Now I can see exactly what I spent and what I earned from each season, right on my phone.”
Project timeline
- 01
User Research
Visited farms in Nakuru and Kiambu to observe how farmers currently keep records
2 weeks - 02
UI/UX Design
Designed a simplified mobile UI tested with farmers who had never used an app before
2 weeks - 03
Core Development
Built crop, expense, and harvest tracking modules with offline-first Firebase sync
8 weeks - 04
Field Testing
Tested with 15 farmers, iterated on confusing flows, added Swahili translations
2 weeks - 05
Launch
Deployed to Expo and submitted to Play Store and App Store
1 week
Ready for similar results?
Let's discuss how we can build something like this for your business.