Development and implementation of a cost-effective automated irrigation system for resource-constrained environments: a case study of Mogadishu, Somalia

Water scarcity, poor irrigation practices, and access to low-cost agricultural technologies remain a challenge to crop production in resource-challenged areas like Somalia. The present research work focuses on design, implementation, and evaluation of an automatically controlled irrigation system using Internet of Things (IoT) in the context of small-scale farming applications, which is cost-effective. The system consists of an ESP8266 NodeMCU microcontroller, capacitive soil moisture sensor, DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, FC-37 rain sensor, and HC-SR04 water-level sensor, which can be used for real-time environmental monitoring and automated irrigation control. The decisions for irrigation are made based on the pre-defined soil moisture thresholds, and the data from the sensor are sent to the Ubidots cloud platform for remote monitoring and data logging. The system was tested in a 1 m2 tomato production field in the city of Mogadishu, Somalia, for 30 days and compared with the traditional manual irrigation method. Experimental results showed a reduction of 34.6% for water use and 41.7% for labour use with increased soil moisture stability. Overall system prototype cost was around USD 61.2, which is affordable to resource-limited farming areas. The results prove that low-cost IoT technologies are able to substantially boost the efficiency of irrigation, facilitate sustainable water management and improve the productivity of farmers in the developing world.