Offline Android Field-Mapping App for Agricultural Traceability

In eastern Congo, thousands of farmers working with the Virunga Foundation produce cacao, coffee, palm oil, and other products. These products are processed locally and sold in multiple countries. To support traceability, the production chain must document where primary goods were cultivated and how they move through production.

This project will develop an Android application for agronomists to collect data for each field, including field boundaries and, when needed, the route to reach the field. The application should provide a simpler operational tool for field work and support reliable production-chain records.

The project partner for this project is based in Europe and Africa (Congo). Meetings will need to take into account a ~9h time difference and communication may be delayed.

The current application, iCollect, is difficult for both project staff and agronomists to use and adapt. It was developed by a team in Ghana, and the engineer responsible for it is now in Ivory Coast, making changes difficult to obtain. The project team also has difficulty accessing the application’s data because it does not belong to them.

A replacement is needed that the team can manage more directly and that is practical for agronomists working in the field.

• Develop an Android application that agronomists can use to collect data for each agricultural field.
• Capture field perimeters and, when needed, the path to reach a field.
• Store collected data directly in the project’s PostGIS database on AWS.
• Support offline use for fieldwork without reliable connectivity, if feasible.
• Perform topology checks within the application, if feasible.
• Make application updates manageable by non-expert staff, if feasible.
• Demonstrate the main data-collection workflow and the transfer of collected data to the database.

• Experience developing Android applications.
• Ability to design and implement data-entry workflows for a mobile application.

• Familiarity with geospatial data, field boundaries, or mapping applications.
• Experience with offline-first mobile workflows or geographic data collection is helpful.

Due to the sensitive nature of some of the data being handled by the Virunga team and in order to protect rangers and staff, an NDA on the data might be required.