Case Study: WeFarm achieves internet-free SMS knowledge sharing for smallholder farmers with Amazon Web Services

Sharing Vital Information to Improve Lives Around the World, Without Access to the Internet

WeFarm is a venture-backed social enterprise founded in 2016 to help the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers, many of whom live in remote areas without internet access and are highly vulnerable to climate change, market barriers, and lack of information. The core challenge was enabling these farmers to share low-cost, practical farming solutions and get timely advice despite limited connectivity and literacy differences across regions.

WeFarm solves this by offering a free peer-to-peer SMS knowledge-sharing service that combines crowd-sourced answers with machine learning to route questions to the best responders. Inbound SMS are processed via an aggregator and API, passed through AWS Lambda, queued, cleaned and filtered (by location, intent, language), then sent to selected community members; responders are rated for quality and timeliness. The platform handles 7,000–8,000 users per day, has generated over 24 million interactions, and is now turning that data into socially valuable insights like disease tracking and food‑crisis prediction.

Wefarm

Kenny Ewan

Chief Executive Officer