An iConsultancy partnership with Roots Africa helps the organization maximize their data
Photo licensed by Adobe Stock via Chanelle Malambo/peopleimages.com.
The calloused hands of smallholder farmers tell a story—one of backbreaking labor, unpredictable harvests, and resilience against all odds. Cedric Nwafor, co-founder of Roots Africa and University of Maryland alum, knows this story intimately. Growing up in Bamenda, Cameroon, he spent his childhood planting beans and yams by hand, and carrying bags while his stomach grumbled from hunger. That experience of hardship would eventually blossom into Roots Africa, a nonprofit helping farmers like his family improve their techniques.
At the heart of Roots Africa are changemakers—locally trained agricultural leaders who bridge knowledge gaps in their communities. These aren’t outside experts, but farmers’ own children, university students, and community organizers equipped with modern techniques and a passion for sustainable growth. They are the human link between innovative solutions and age-old farming traditions.
Partnership with iConsultancy
Today, the organization is reaching over 11,349 farmers and is continuing to grow. Its latest leap forward comes through an unexpected ally: data science. In early 2025, Roots Africa partnered with UMD College of Information students through the iConsultancy program to turn their changemakers’ field reports into actionable intelligence. The collaboration addressed two critical gaps—disorganized farmer data and inconsistent donor communication—through two innovative solutions:
Impact Storytelling Framework.
Students developed evidence-based social media strategies, proving that posts blending changemaker stories with hard metrics outperform generic content by 5x.
“By blending data with real-life stories, we now have compelling evidence of impact. This strengthens our fundraising pitches and shows every stakeholder why the work matters,” says Dough Onah, communications lead.
A Living Data Ecosystem.
Students used survey data to capture real-time updates from changemakers, and used that information to create dynamic dashboards that map everything from soil health trends to storage shortages.
The visualizations on the new dashboards tell an urgent story—entire communities losing harvests to poor storage. Now, when the dashboard flags a village’s storage gap, action follows fast. This May, the dashboard guided micro-grants to five Liberian cooperatives who built mini-silos from local materials before the rainy season. Nearby, another visualization revealed ideal mushroom-growing conditions. By June, farmers there were harvesting their first gourmet mushrooms from a new community farm. What was once lost to rot now stays dry in silos or grows in shaded houses—turning data points into food security and doubled incomes.
“This collaboration has been a game-changer. The student team helped us reimagine how we measure, monitor, and communicate the ripple effects of our work in Liberia and Uganda,” says Nwafor.
In an era of climate uncertainty, this training model—and the tools INFO students built to optimize it—may prove to be agriculture’s most vital crop.