Can AI Help Eradicate Poverty? How AI is Helping African Farmers and Teachers, w/ Opportunity International's Ama Akuamoah & Paul Essene

Can AI actually help eradicate poverty for real people, right now—not in some vague future?

We talk with two leaders from Opportunity International who are trying to do exactly that, using AI to support smallholder farmers and low-cost private schools across Africa and beyond.

In this episode of AI-Curious, we sit down with Ama Akuamoah and Paul Essene from Opportunity International’s Digital Innovation Group. We explore how they’re deploying AI chatbots over WhatsApp to help farmers diagnose crop diseases, optimize planting decisions, and access localized agricultural advice, and how they’re building classroom tools that give overstretched teachers better lesson plans and more time for their students.

We hear the origin story of their farmer chatbot—from a mud-brick home in Malawi to pilots now running in five countries—and the 80-year-old farmer who saved her okra crop by using an AI tool through a trusted “farmer support agent.” We also dig into how they use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) grounded in local government content, why “human in the loop” is non-negotiable, and what it really takes to make AI work in communities with limited electricity, spotty connectivity, and low digital literacy.

Along the way, we talk about ethics and trust: data consent, privacy for highly vulnerable populations, and the risk of leaving people behind in this new wave of AI. And we zoom out to the bigger picture—why conversational AI in local languages could be a genuine game-changer for economic development if infrastructure, funding, and partnerships keep pace.

What we cover

• [01:00] Opportunity International’s mission and why they focus on farmers, teachers, and micro-entrepreneurs
• [08:00] The Malawi farm-floor moment that sparked their AI journey
• [09:00] How a WhatsApp-based chatbot helps thousands of farmers, and how “farmer support agents” multiply its impact
• [13:40] Using RAG and local government content to keep answers accurate and context-aware
• [15:30] Bringing AI into crowded, low-resource classrooms and supporting teachers with lesson plans and copilots
• [20:15] The hard parts: infrastructure gaps, low-cost devices, digital literacy, and why this work is heavy lifting
• [24:30] Human-centered design in action: co-creating with communities, iterating in the field, and learning from pilots
• [37:50] Guardrails, consent, and building trust around AI in vulnerable communities
• [41:00] What’s needed for real scale: infrastructure, funding, language support, and the right partners
• [43:00] Their hopeful vision for AI as a lever for economic development—if no one gets left behind

If you’re interested in AI for social impact, global development, or what it really takes to deploy AI outside Silicon Valley, this conversation is a grounded, hopeful look at what’s already working—and what still needs to change.