Stanford researchers create satellite imagery, AI tool to help fight poverty in Africa

A team of researchers from Stanford University are using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to map poverty in Africa.

The tool developed by the team harnesses free, publicly accessible satellite imagery with AI to provide poverty level estimates across the continent and how those development in targeted areas change over time, according to Stanford News Service. 

"Our big motivation is to better develop tools and technologies that allow us to make progress on really important economic issues. And progress is constrained by a lack of ability to measure outcomes," Earth System Science Associate Professor Marshall Burke told Stanford News Service. “Here’s a tool that we think can help.”

Burke, also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, co-led the team of researchers for about five years to create the tool that locates and tracks poverty in Africa. Burkes other co-leads are Earth System Science Associate Professor David Lobell and Assistant Computer Science Stefano Ermon.

The tool the team created is important because it can identify trends and other factors that, once identified, can he used to help move impoverished people out of poverty, according Stanford News Service.

"Amazingly, there hasn’t really been any good way to understand how poverty is changing at a local level in Africa," Lobell, director for the Center on Food Security and the Environment, told Stanford News Service. "Censuses aren’t frequent enough and door-to-door surveys rarely return to the same people. If satellites can help us reconstruct a history of poverty, it could open up a lot of room to better understand and alleviate poverty on the continent."