Bridges to Prosperity: AI Models Help Connect Disconnected Communities
When residents of rural Uganda’s Bundimulinga village wanted to walk to school, access healthcare, or provide for their family, they had to prepare for a trek through thick forests and deep valleys which isolates their small community.
Every morning, Karabiyo had to cross rivers of varying depths to access and work on her own cocoa farm, all the while worrying if her granddaughters made it to school safely. And during rainy season, it was not uncommon for high flooding to make school, work, and healthcare inaccessible for days on end.
Nonprofit Bridges to Prosperity considers this kind of rural isolation to be a root cause of poverty for villages like Bundimulinga. With a core belief that safe access is a basic human right, their goal is to build bridges that better the lives of those who live in disconnected communities.
Turning toward technology for more efficient bridge planning and development, Bridges to Prosperity created their own AI models with supporting funds from the Cisco Foundation, as part of the One Billion Lives campaign. In working with a robust set of publicly available data, AI can more strategically plan and map out future rural infrastructures, and Bridges to Prosperity can focus their energy on creating safer passages for villages in need.
Watch the BBC StoryWorks segment to hear from Karabiyo herself about how a single trail bridge changed her life.
For more information about Cisco and their successful mission to impact one billion people, visit One Billion Lives.
To learn the specifics about Bridge to Prosperity’s groundbreaking “Fika Map” AI tool, explore their website.
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