ShambaPal – Farm Management App
Client: ShambaPal
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
Tech Stack
Measurable Impact
"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
User Research
2 weeksVisited farms in Nakuru and Kiambu to observe how farmers currently keep records
UI/UX Design
2 weeksDesigned a simplified mobile UI tested with farmers who had never used an app before
Core Development
8 weeksBuilt crop, expense, and harvest tracking modules with offline-first Firebase sync
Field Testing
2 weeksTested with 15 farmers, iterated on confusing flows, added Swahili translations
Launch
1 weekDeployed to Expo and submitted to Play Store and App Store