(12 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mulanje, Malawi – 28 July 2025
1. Wide of children playing in a shallow riverbank after cyclone
2. SOUNDBITE (Chichewa) Alex Maere, Small-scale farmer:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 1, 3 AND 4++
“When we joined the AI group, we rented our farming fields and cultivated various crops, including maize. We have been harvesting enough. Even though there have been challenges, we have registered success because we have been selling the maize. I also got some money and invested into the production of tomatoes, which give me hope for success.”
3. Various of farmer and AI agent looking at a mobile while chatting
4. Close up of a mobile while chatting whole two men chat
5. Man and woman handle plant
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Richard Chongo, Country Director for Opportunity International Malawi:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 5, 7++
"The good thing with this chatbot, it provides response. When you ask it by text. You can also ask it using voice, so it will retain a response using voice note. So this helps for people that are not able to read and write but it is also able to receive a question through pictures."
7. Various of a woman holding a cassava leaf while a man films it on a smartphone
8. Wide of cyclone survivor demonstrating the state of soil quality
9. SOUNDBITE (Chichewa) Faluze Makono, Cyclone survivor:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 8, 10, 11, 12 AND 13++
"When people arrived, they found that all the clothes were torn. That was the first tranche of water from the cyclone. The second tranche was around 9pm, because we had three. Sand covered the whole place, leading to a river diversion. The third tranche brought logs and the huge stones that you see? So we were affected Thrice. First it was water and mud, followed by water with sand, and thereafter water with stones.”
10. Destroyed walls of a building after the cyclone
11. Wide of exposed rocks on a riverbed
12. Women washing clothes by the river
13. Wide of women washing clothes by the river
STORYLINE:
Here in Mulanje, southern Malawi, the effects of 2023’s Cyclone Freddy are still being felt.
Local farmer Alex Maere survived the destruction when it tore through the area. Sadly, his farm didn’t.
The 59-year-old saw decades of work disappear with the precious soil that the floods stripped from his small-scale farm in the foothills of Mount Mulanje.
"Cyclone (Freddy) affected the maize crop that we first planted. We ended up with no yield. As a result, we turned to cassava. In a good year, I harvest at least 17 bags, but I only managed 8 kilograms (17 pounds) of cassava after the cyclone swept this area. The harvest only lasted two days for me and my family, and as we speak, we have no food,” he says.
Freddy jolted local farmers into action. To survive, they needed to change their age-old tactics.
Now, thousands of small-scale farmers in the south-east African country are using a generative AI chatbot designed by the non-profit Opportunity International for farming advice.
The AI chatbot suggested Maere grow potatoes last year alongside his staple corn and cassava to adjust to his changed soil. He followed the instructions to the letter, he said, and cultivated half a soccer field’s worth of potatoes and made more than $800 in sales, turning around his and his children’s fortunes.
The Malawi government is backing the project, having seen the agriculture-dependent nation hit recently by a series of cyclones and an El Niño-induced drought.
The AI chatbot could be lifesaving for small hold farmers like Filesi Topola.
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