Download or read book How farmers are making the most of digital technologies in East Africa written by Pye-Smith, C. and published by CTA. This book was released on 2018-02-14 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer unprecedented opportunities to transform agriculture in Africa. ICT innovations are opening up exciting opportunities for young entrepreneurs to engage at various stages of the agricultural value chain, from developing solutions that make the agri-food sector more productive to setting up services that facilitate market access for smallholder producers. The stories told here show that ICTs are enabling farmers to access information about everything from the weather to market prices, from agricultural best practice to controlling pests and diseases. Mobile platforms are also helping farmers to gain access to credit and therefore the means to improve their productivity and incomes. In short, ICTs are helping to make agriculture more profitable and sustainable.

Download or read book Agricultural technology ecosystems in East Africa Taking stock in Kenya Rwanda and Uganda written by Paquette, D., Ontieri, E., Day, B., Schmidhuber, J., Tripoli, M. and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched an initiative to assess the existing impediments for scaling innovation and technology in food and agriculture (AgTech) and to identify options to improve the enabling environment for AgTech-focused businesses. The initiative offers a tool for decision makers to promote the uptake of AgTech, investment and entrepreneurship in Africa, ultimately to advance agricultural productivity and food security. The first cohort evaluates the AgTech ecosystems in three East African countries: Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Download or read book Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report aims to identify the different scenarios where the process of digital transformation is taking place in agriculture. This identifies those aspects of basic conditions, such as those of infrastructure and networks, affordability, education and institutional support. In addition, enablers are identified, which are the factors that allow adopting and integrating changes in the production and decision-making processes. Finally identify through cases, existing literature and reports how substantive changes are taking place in the adoption of digital technologies in agriculture.

Download or read book Scaling Up Disruptive Agricultural Technologies in Africa written by Jeehye Kim and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study—which includes a pilot intervention in Kenya—aims to further the state of knowledge about the emerging trend of disruptive agricultural technologies (DATs) in Africa, with a focus on supply-side dynamics. The first part of the study is a stocktaking analysis to assess the number, scope, trend, and characteristics of scalable disruptive technology innovators in agriculture in Africa. From a database of 434 existing DAT operations, the analysis identified 194 as scalable. The second part of the study is a comparative case study of Africa’s two most successful DAT ecosystems in Kenya and Nigeria, which together account for half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s active DATs. The objective of these two case studies is to understand the successes, challenges, and opportunities faced by each country in fostering a conducive innovation ecosystem for scaling up DATs. The case study analysis focuses on six dimensions of the innovation ecosystem in Kenya and Nigeria: finance, regulatory environment, culture, density, human capital, and infrastructure. The third part of the study is based on the interactions and learnings from a pilot event to boost the innovation ecosystem in Kenya. The Disruptive Agricultural Technology Innovation Knowledge and Challenge Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, brought together more than 300 key stakeholders from large technology companies, agribusiness companies, and public agencies; government representatives and experts from research and academic institutions; and representatives from financial institutions, foundations, donors, and venture capitalists. Scaling Up Disruptive Agricultural Technologies in Africa concludes by establishing that DATs are demonstrating early indications of a positive impact in addressing food system constraints. It offers potential entry points and policy recommendations to facilitate the broader adoption of DATs and improve the overall food system.

Download or read book Digital Technologies for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Global South written by Richard Duncombe and published by CABI. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shares research and practice on current trends in digital technology for agricultural and rural development in the Global South. Growth of research in this field has been slower than the pace of change for practitioners, particularly in bringing socio-technical views of information technology and agricultural development perspectives together. The contents are therefore structured around three main themes: sharing information and knowledge for agricultural development, information and knowledge intermediaries, and facilitating change in agricultural systems and settings. With contributions reaching beyond just a technological perspective, the book also provides a consideration of social and cultural factors and new forms of organization and institutional change in agricultural and rural settings. An invaluable read for researchers in international development, socio-economics and agriculture, it forms a useful resource for practitioners working in the area.

Download or read book The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018 2019 written by Tsan, Michael and published by CTA. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains.

Download or read book Documenting the Digital Transformation of African Agriculture written by Heike Baumüller and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural intermediaries perform important functions in the African food and agriculture sector. Digital solutions targeted at these intermediaries could improve their service delivery while helping digital agricultural (D4Ag) service providers cover the last mile to producers. To determine how to empower agricultural intermediaries with digital technologies, it is important first to understand how they are already making use of and are impacted by these technologies in their professional activities. To this end, data was collected through 1,571 in-person interviews with extension workers, output dealers and input dealers in Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Nigeria. The results show that intermediaries make extensive use of ICTs in their work, much more so than the low adoption rates of D4Ag solutions would suggest. Mobile phones clearly dominate the digital technologies, most commonly smartphones, which are often used daily. Three areas of impact can be identified. First, ICTs facilitate information sharing between intermediaries and other value chain actors which emerged as the main activity and benefit across the three groups. Second, ICTs facilitate networking among value chain actors. In the case of dealers, these networks are mainly used for two-way business transactions while extension agents take advantage of ICTs to interact and share information with a wide range of actors. Third, ICTs reduce transaction costs for input and output dealers through better access to information about buyers, sellers and prices, better timing of produce / input purchases, faster payments from customers and reduced travel times. Given the widespread use of ICTs among agricultural intermediaries, D4Ag service providers can capitalize on intermediaries' existing digital skills, technological capacities and digitally enabled networks to expand their reach, in particular to producers who are still not universally accessible via ICTs, but also to other actors in the African food and agriculture sector.

Download or read book Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization A Framework for Africa written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This framework presents ten interrelated principles/elements to guide Sustainable Agricultural Mechanization in Africa (SAMA). Further, it presents the technical issues to be considered under SAMA and the options to be analysed at the country and sub regional levels. The ten key elements required in a framework for SAMA are as follows: The analysis in the framework calls for a specific approach, involving learning from other parts of the world where significant transformation of the agricultural mechanization sector has already occurred within a three-to-four decade time frame, and developing policies and programmes to realize Africa’s aspirations of Zero Hunger by 2025. This approach entails the identification and prioritization of relevant and interrelated elements to help countries develop strategies and practical development plans that create synergies in line with their agricultural transformation plans. Given the unique characteristics of each country and the diverse needs of Africa due to the ecological heterogeneity and the wide range of farm sizes, the framework avoids being prescriptive.

Download or read book An evolving paradigm of agricultural mechanization development How much can Africa learn from Asia written by Diao, Xinshen, ed. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural mechanization in Africa south of the Sahara — especially for small farms and businesses — requires a new paradigm to meet the needs of the continent’s evolving farming systems. Can Asia, with its recent success in adopting mechanization, offer a model for Africa? An Evolving Paradigm of Agricultural Mechanization Development analyzes the experiences of eight Asian and five African countries. The authors explore crucial government roles in boosting and supporting mechanization, from import policies to promotion policies to public good policies. Potential approaches presented to facilitating mechanization in Africa include prioritizing market-led hiring services, eliminating distortions, and developing appropriate technologies for the African context. The role of agricultural mechanization within overall agricultural and rural transformation strategies in Africa is also discussed. The book’s recommendations and insights should be useful to national policymakers and the development community, who can adapt this knowledge to local contexts and use it as a foundation for further research.

Download or read book Digital Africa written by Tania Begazo and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, broader use can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of country populations averaged across Sub-Saharan Africa, but only 22 percent use such services. The average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers, as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: the affordability of these new technologies and the willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small and medium businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skill-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty across Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.

Download or read book ICT4Ag start ups Building a Better E Agribusiness written by CTA and published by CTA. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spore Magazine 189: ICT4Ag start-ups: Building a Better E-Agribusiness The recent boom in ag-tech start-ups has helped to further agricultural transformation and improve farmers’ access to valuable ICT-enabled services. But to continue this progress it is pertinent that entrepreneurs design sustainable business models. SPORE is the quarterly magazine of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), offering a global perspective on agribusiness and sustainable agriculture. CTA operates under the Cotonou Agreement between the countries of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group and the European Union and is financed by the EU.

Download or read book The gap between technology awareness and adoption in Sub Saharan Africa A literature review for the DeSIRA project written by Kazembe, Cynthia and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper reviews different studies on technology adoption in sub-Saharan Africa to understand the determinants of low adoption of improved technologies, with a special focus on Malawi. This will in turn help explain why there is a gap between awareness and adoption of agriculture technologies. As evidenced from the results of the FGDs conducted in Malawi in 2018, despite the visible benefits of the new technologies, farmers often do not adopt or take a long time to adopt them. This creates a gap between awareness of agriculture technologies and their adoption. The existing literature from sub-Saharan Saharan Africa, demonstrates that adoption, as a decision-making process, is affected by farmers’ access to information, their financial and human capital, incentives and external programs, plus farmers’ attitude to risk.

Download or read book The digitalisation of African agriculture report 2018 2019 Executive summary written by Tsan, Michael and published by CTA. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural transformation is a priority in the policy agenda of African governments in their quest to meet the challenges of food and nutrition insecurity, climate change, youth unemployment and overall economic growth. With the right policies, innovation and investment, the continent’s agriculture could be transformed into a powerhouse not only to feed a growing population but to create decent employment for millions of young people.

Download or read book Ready to go digital Assessing the digital readiness of young agripreneurs in East Africa written by Pafumi, M., Arimbi, V. and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2022-03-02 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food and Agricultural Organization’s Integrated Country Approach for boosting decent jobs for youth in agrifood systems carried out a digital readiness assessment of youth in agribusiness in partnership with the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation and youth-led organizations in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Over 360 young male and female entrepreneurs engaged through an online survey and virtual focus group discussions that generated insights on their interaction with digital technologies, either as entrepreneurs, service providers, or members of youth organizations. This summary note presents key findings on the following topics: agribusiness information flows, youth digital access and preferences, information technology use for business including e-commerce, e-learning, online mentoring, and online activities of rural youth networks.

Download or read book Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increased agricultural productivity is a major stepping stone on the path out of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but farmers there face tremendous challenges improving production. Poor soil, inefficient water use, and a lack of access to plant breeding resources, nutritious animal feed, high quality seed, and fuel and electricity-combined with some of the most extreme environmental conditions on Earth-have made yields in crop and animal production far lower in these regions than world averages. Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia identifies sixty emerging technologies with the potential to significantly improve agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Eighteen technologies are recommended for immediate development or further exploration. Scientists from all backgrounds have an opportunity to become involved in bringing these and other technologies to fruition. The opportunities suggested in this book offer new approaches that can synergize with each other and with many other activities to transform agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Download or read book Status of digital agriculture in 47 sub Saharan African countries written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sub-Saharan Africa is uniquely positioned significantly increase its current agricultural productivity to lift the region’s more than 400 million people out of extreme poverty and improve the livelihood of approximately 250 million smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the region. To achieve that, substantive digital transformation of the agriculture sector is required through improved infrastructure and increased access to and use of digital technologies for agriculture. To improve the current understanding of sub-Saharan Africa’s digital agriculture landscape, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) undertook this study in 47 countries. The report is composed of 47 desk-based country case studies against six thematic focal areas, the aim of which is to present a snapshot of the status of digital agriculture in each country. This is followed by highlights of the main findings of the analysis of the country profiles with suggested steps for future action. The findings of the study are presented to FAO and ITU Member States, as well as all relevant stakeholders with the purpose of advancing and supporting investment in digital transformation of the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Download or read book Mechanization and Maize written by Constance G. Anthony and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: