Over the past few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gradually become a part of everyday life in Kenya, as a means for research and even for economic opportunities.
As the country continues embracing AI, two young innovators have come together to leave their mark by developing an AI platform that can be accessed without internet connectivity.
The duo, Morgan Gicheha and Paul Theceri, has developed the AI platform known as Rurallink AI, which is an AI-driven solution to the lack of or poor internet connectivity, which can be accessed on all phones, whether they are smartphones or feature phones locally known as Kabambe, through the Short Messaging Services (SMS).
Speaking to KNA, Rurallink AI Founder, Gicheha said the platform enables users to access the power of AI through SMS as it runs without any internet connection.
“This service runs on all devices that can send an SMS message regardless of the type of device; it can run on both the latest smartphone and the oldest feature phone,” he said.
Gicheha divulged that he initially built the platform for personal use before realising it could be of help to thousands of people, especially those in rural areas.
“I initially built the platform for personal use during the Christmas holidays when I was travelling to our rural home and the thought of staying somewhere without Wi-Fi and without a stable internet connection troubled me a lot,” he said.
“I started thinking of scenarios where I might need the internet for instance, if I got lost or injured myself and needed to Google something, how would I do it?” he posed.
He explained how he decided to create a small personal AI bot that can be accessible through SMS, even in areas with poor network coverage.
“I wanted to be able to get some AI assistance from anywhere, so I started developing the platform slowly,” he said.
Gicheha narrated how after finishing the platform in January this year, he was the only user for a couple of days, using the platform as his personal assistant.
“I started telling friends and family about it, and they loved what I had built, especially my mom,” he said.
The Information Technology specialist said he later shared his invention on the internet platform Reddit, where the innovation was quickly embraced by other internet users.
“We had close to 100 people using the platform after an hour of posting it and that encouraged me to open it to the world,” he said.
The co-founder, Theceri, on his part, celebrated the achievements and milestones they have made so far, even as he acknowledged that, like other startups and innovations, they are facing some challenges.
“There are a couple of challenges we are facing: the major one is finances because at the moment we are meeting all the costs required to run the platform from our pockets,” he said.
Theceri further observed that as a new startup, publicity for their product is another challenge they are contending with and was optimistic they will eventually be able to reach more potential users.
“We have a platform that can help a lot of people, but we are having challenges informing the people about our platform,” he said.
He emphasized the importance of letting the people in rural areas know about the product, noting it has the potential to be helpful to different people, who need information, but cannot access the internet.
“Rurallink AI can help farmers for instance, when they want to research symptoms their plants or animals are exhibiting, or they want to know the weather predictions,” Theceri said.
“It can also be helpful to students because it can act as a research engine for students who are not privileged enough to access computers, the internet, or even a library,” he said.
The co-founder explained that at the moment, the platform charges Sh1 in airtime for every SMS and it runs on the mobile network provider Safaricom.
“Our dream at Rurallink is to make this free for all and make it accessible on all network providers,” he said.
“All a user has to do is to send a text with the words AI Hey to 40024. The start of every prompt/SMS should be the word AI for example, AI, who is the current president of Kenya?” he explained.
Theceri stated that Rurallink AI runs on the best and most capable AI models, which make it a reliable tool.
“We are constantly updating and making our solution better and smarter so that it can serve the users well,” he said.
He called upon more Kenyans to come up with innovations that address local challenges while competing on a global scale.
By Purity Mugo
