For many smallholder farmers around Rwanda, the struggle against crop pests has been an exhausting, ground-level battle. People carry heavy knapsack sprayers under a hot sun, walking through the crop rows, spending time and energy yet still losing yield to something that feels just… slow and irregular. And by the time they reach the far end of a plot, the insects can already have done most of the damage in the beginning.
Still, in places like Kamonyi and Huye, pest control is not only about soil and sweat anymore. It is floating a few meters above the crop canopy, like a kind of practical ceiling.
Muyombano Happy Axel, who co-founded Ampere Vision Rwanda in 2024, was pulled toward this work after seeing how agricultural loss hurts in real life. His agritech startup is pushing a shift in how spraying works, using precision drone technology to cut down pre-harvest crop losses and support smallholder livelihoods in a more consistent way.
The whole idea behind Ampere Vision feels tied to everyday farming. Axel grew up watching farmers invest huge amounts of effort into their fields, only to see a meaningful share of crops not make it to the market. A major moment landed in 2017, when an aggressive pest outbreak destroyed nearly all cereal crops in Huye District.
That event, plus an academic interest in robotics, turned into a question he kept returning to: what if technology could stay ahead of the pests, and not just react after it is too late?
“Farmers have traditionally endured a double burden ,” Axel says. “They have to pay heavily for chemical inputs and yet they still suffer massive yield losses because manual application is too slow, and too imprecise.”
Traditional knapsack spraying, besides being exhausting, also comes with safety and environmental problems. Chemical drift can reach nearby ecosystems, and the operators face direct exposure over long periods of time.
Ampere Vision tries to flip that reality. Their agricultural drones fly at measured heights and speeds, deploying a fine, targeted mist of pesticides or foliar fertilizers. In simple terms, the approach aims for less chemical use, steadier coverage, and fewer chances for human contact with those chemicals.
But bringing unmanned aerial vehicles into rural farmlands wasn’t instant acceptance. For lots of farmers, the buzzing drone looked unfamiliar, even a bit intimidating, like a new object with no clear rules.
“In terms of building trust with the technology, there was a lot of genuine concern about having an aircraft flying above your fields,” Axel recalls. “Farmers systematically asked if our technology actually worked.”
So Ampere Vision went out into the field and brought the machines to the dirt. They organized public live demonstration events, because seeing is believing. After local farmers watched how fast and accurate the drones were, skepticism started to turn into curiosity. The company also deepened its roots by partnering with local agricultural cooperatives, helping create trusted communication between farmers, not just between tech staff and customers.
What’s happening now is already visible. Members of the KOUBITE cooperative in Kamonyi District say they’re seeing lower input costs and a clear reduction in pre-harvest losses. As diseases are managed more efficiently, crop yields are rising too, which means more income potential even before harvest day arrives.
Right now, Ampere Vision runs with one 10-liter drone, supporting a membership of 107 smallholder farmers. Yet a bigger institutional boost is on the way.
As the second runner-up in the AYuTe Africa Challenge Rwanda 2026, the startup secured RWF 15 million in funding. The money is planned for expansion: moving from one unit to three drones, including two high-capacity 40-liter models. The purpose is to cover larger tracts of land and also support last-mile delivery for remote, underserved farming communities.
To keep pricing realistic, the startup built a bundled service model with partners like Heifer International Rwanda, fertilizer company YARA, and the mechanization platform Hello Tractor. With this alliance, smallholders can access drone spraying, specialized fertilizers, and tractor services under one cost-effective umbrella, instead of trying to source everything separately.
And Ampere Vision is not stopping at Rwanda. Over the next three to five years, the company says it intends to scale into the wider East African region. The roadmap also goes beyond spraying only: they’re looking at drone imagery, data collection, and analytics so farmers can get real-time diagnostic insights about crop health, rather than waiting and guessing.
For Axel, the journey from witnessing crop loss to becoming an agritech pioneer shows what can happen when young people don’t just wait for perfect conditions to innovate.
“Take action instead of striving for perfection ,” Axel urges the next generation of African innovators. “Create prototypes, test your concepts, receive feedback, and improve your solutions. That is how we address the issues faced in our communities.”