Student develops anti-stock theft App
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Loading... - Mary Wekesa
- 29 Jul 2022
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Farirai Masocha, a 21-year-old University of Zimbabwe Computer Science student has come up with a livestock tracking application that can work as a digital defence to help prevent stock theft and alert farmers to the condition of animals.
The young innovator said the livestock application takes the traditional animal ear tag commonly used by farmers for identification and adds specially designed capabilities, with direct satellite GPS among them, to monitor the animals’ every move and check on animal temperature for health.
Masocha was inspired to develop the App after seeing the pain and stress his father went through after his Brahman bull went missing at their farm in Chivhu district. Livestock means a lot to his father and losing a Brahman bull was quite troubling for his son.
“I developed the application after my dad’s Brahman bull went missing at our farm. The farm is huge and the lines of worry on my father’s face forced me to think deeply about the possibility of developing a livestock tracking application,” he said at the on-going UZ research innovation and industrialisation week.
“The farm is huge and I had no idea where I could find the bull. I feared that the loss of the bull could trigger depression on my father. He loves his cattle. So being a young computer science student, I thought of using what I learnt from a course on doing the internet of things.”
The Masochas have about 110 cattle that roam freely at their farm. Stock theft is a major problem in the country so developing livestock tracking applications was a priority. Read More…
