AKILIMO Paper Based Dashboard NG

Agricultural decision support tool for cassava farmers in Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana. Developed by IITA (International Institute of Tropical Agriculture).

Use Cases

• Fertilizer Recommendation - Provides fertilizer application rates (Urea, NPK) by Local Government Area (LGA) and planting month, with expected yield responses
• Scheduled Planting - Provides expected yield for different planting and harvest schedules

Quick Start

# 1. Clone the repository
# git clone git@github.com:IITA-AKILIMO/PaperbasedDashboard_NG.git

# 2. Install R packages
source("install_packages.R")

# 3. Download data files
source("setup_data.R")

# 4. Run the app
shiny::runApp(".")

Prerequisites

• R 4.0 or higher

Linux / headless server — system libraries

Cairo is required for off-screen rendering (no X11 display). Install before running install_packages.R:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install -y libcairo2-dev libxt-dev

# RHEL / CentOS
sudo yum install -y cairo-devel libXt-devel

Install Packages

Option 1: Run the installation script (recommended)

source("install_packages.R")

Option 2: Manual installation

install.packages(c(
  "shiny", "shinydashboard", "shinyWidgets", "DT",
  "dplyr", "tidyr", "ggplot2", "plotly",
  "sf", "raster", "tmap", "leaflet", "ggspatial", "spData", "cartogram", "rasterVis",
  "viridis", "RColorBrewer", "gridExtra", "ggthemes", "ggrepel", "hexbin",
  "formattable", "shinyalert", "shinybusy", "shinycssloaders", "shinyjs",
  "plyr", "grid", "tools", "qpdf"
))

Data Setup

Data files (RDS, shapefiles, CSVs) are not tracked in git. Download them from the GitHub Release by running:

source("setup_data.R")

This downloads all required files into the correct data/ subfolders. It is safe to re-run — existing files are skipped.

What gets downloaded

Folder	Contents
data/fr/ng/	Nigeria fertilizer recommendation RDS files (levels 1–5)
data/fr/tz/	Tanzania fertilizer recommendation RDS files (levels 1–5)
data/fr/rw/	Rwanda fertilizer recommendation RDS and CSV
data/sp/ng/	Nigeria scheduled planting RDS and CSV files
data/gis/ng/	Nigeria boundary, towns, and rivers shapefiles
data/gis/world/	World borders shapefile
data/	User guide PDFs (Nigeria and Tanzania, acre and hectare)

GIS data for Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana (data/gis/tz/, data/gis/rw/, data/gis/gh/) and Ghana fertilizer data (data/fr/gh/) must be added manually — contact the project team for these files.

Running the Application

From R/RStudio

setwd("path/to/PaperbasedDashboard_NG")
shiny::runApp(".")

# Or specify port
shiny::runApp(".", port = 5050)

From Command Line

R -e "shiny::runApp('.')"

Country-Specific Fertilizer Types

• Nigeria: Urea, NPK 15:15:15
• Tanzania: Urea, NPK 17:17:17, DAP

Project Structure

PaperbasedDashboard_NG/
├── server.R                  # Main Shiny server
├── ui.R                      # Shiny UI definition
├── functions.R               # Utility functions
├── functionspp.R             # GIS processing functions
├── SP_functions.R            # Scheduled Planting functions
├── FR_paperBased_Annex.R     # Fertilizer recommendation annex
├── SP_PaperBased_Annex.R     # Scheduled planting annex
├── install_packages.R        # Package installation script
├── setup_data.R              # Data file download script
├── styles.css                # Custom styling
├── SP/                       # Scheduled Planting submodule
└── data/                     # Data files (gitignored — run setup_data.R)
    ├── fr/                   # Fertilizer recommendation data
    ├── sp/                   # Scheduled planting data
    └── gis/                  # GIS shapefiles

Development

Package Migration Note

This project was migrated from the deprecated rgdal, sp, rgeos, dismo, and maptools packages to sf. Migration was completed in March 2026.

License

IITA Internal Project