CTA president, Michel Hailu (first right) Dr. Owusu Afriyei Akoto (second left) Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President AGRA and AGRF secretariate and other dignitaries at the event.
The use of digital tools and solutions for agriculture is fast gaining grounds in Sub-Saharan Africa, a new report by the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has revealed.
The Digitalization of African Agriculture Report (2018-2019) released ahead of the 2019 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Accra showed that 33 million smallholder farmers and pastoralists have registered with over 390 distinct, active Digitization for Agriculture (D4Ag) solutions.
The report which serves as a barometer for the current state of D4Ag in Africa showed the sector has been growing at about 44 per cent per annum over the last three years in terms of the number of farmers reached.
It however showed that D4Ag uptake among women is low especially considering the disproportionate burden they bear on the farm.
“In Sub-Saharan Africa, where 40 to 50 per cent of smallholder farmers are women, only 25 per cent are registered users of D4Ag solutions,” it stated.
“Overall the data suggests that companies are not prioritizing gender as part of their product design, marketing and user engagement efforts.”
The findings of the report were based on the triangulation of an extensive set of primary and secondary sources.
CTA President, Michel Hailu, addressing the press at the launch of the report, said 26 per cent of the survey participants were breaking even.
“While robust baseline data are not available for comparison, we believe that these results are significantly higher than even a few years ago,” he said.
He, however, noted that despite the growth, progress towards D4Ag has been somewhat slow to serve the smallholders that produce 80 per cent of Africa’s agriculture output.
“Nevertheless, the opportunity is there. Agriculture is expected to be trillion-dollar efficiency, sustainable increase in productivity, yield and income,” Mr Hailu noted.
Dr. Abebe Haile Gabriel, Assistant Director and Regional Representative for Africa, FAO, in his statement highlighted the need for what he calls the ‘usability of the technology’.
He said although the technology may be availability if it is not utilized because of challenges like poor connectivity, it becomes redundant.
“We should be talking about connectivity problem in Africa and how we can resolve it.
We should also look at the affordability as it determines whether a user can adopt a particular technology,” he added.
Dr. Owusu Afriyei Akoto, Minister for Food and Agriculture, said Ghana has created an environment that was well suited for rapid D4Ag scale up.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri