SokoAI is a machine learning-driven platform designed to track, analyze, and forecast wholesale prices for major food commodities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
# 🌽 SokoAI
### Tanzania's First AI-Powered Market Price Intelligence Platform
**Tracking real-time commodity prices across Tanzania's markets — powered by ML, WhatsApp scouts, and a community of madalali (market traders).**
Demo · API Docs · Architecture · Get Started
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## The Problem
Tanzania has 65M+ people who depend on markets for daily food — yet there is no reliable, real-time source of commodity prices across regions. Farmers, traders, banks, and logistics companies make decisions blind.
**SokoAI solves this.** We collect prices from market scouts every morning, clean and validate the data using a Consensus Engine, and forecast prices 8 weeks ahead using a custom ML model trained on Tanzania's agricultural patterns.
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## What Makes SokoAI Different
| Feature | Others | SokoAI |
|---------|--------|--------|
| Data source | Government reports (delayed weeks) | WhatsApp scouts + Wizara PDFs (daily) |
| Price validation | None — single source | Consensus Engine (madalali 3+ per market) |
| ML model | Generic time-series | Prophet + XGBoost trained on TZ seasonality |
| Coverage | Dar es Salaam only | DSM + Kariakoo + Tandale + Ilala + Temeke |
| Access | Spreadsheets | REST API with 8-week forecasts |
| Mobile | No | PWA — offline mode, push notifications |
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## Architecture
### How It Works — 6 Layers
```
[WhatsApp Scouts] [Wizara PDF] [External APIs]
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
[Consensus Engine ★] ──── [PostgreSQL Database] ──
│
▼
[ML Engine: Prophet + XGBoost] + [Redis Cache ★]
│
▼
[FastAPI Gateway: /prices · /forecast · /alerts · /webhook]
│
▼
[Smart Alert Engine ★] → Price Drop · Spike · Trend · Seasonal
│
▼
[B2B API] [Dashboard + PWA ★] [WhatsApp B2C]
```
**★ = Phase 1 additions (new)**
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## Features
### 📡 Real-Time Data Pipeline
- **WhatsApp Scouts** — Madalali send `#DATA_SOKO` messages every morning with …