Digital technologies can improve agriculture
in Africa as they have potential
to significantly raise productivity of
smallholder farmers, Fabian Lange, associate
research officer at the Kofi Annan Foundation,
tells Jarle Hetland. As part of the organization’s
Combatting Hunger Programme, which advocates
for the transformation of African agriculture
to ensure food and nutrition security, he
has seen first-hand how going digital is transforming
the continent.
Hetland: How can digital technologies
help to combat hunger in Africa?
Lange: Digital technologies such as mobile
phones, satellites and big data provide
unprecedented opportunities to integrate
smallholders into food systems. Through
mobile phones, for example, smallholders
can receive rural advisory services tailored
to their needs, access weather information
in real time to adjust their planting and get
market prices to negotiate efficiently with
potential buyers. Digital technologies clearly
have the potential to improve smallholders’
productivity and increase food security.
H: Can digital technology be made
realistic, cost efficient and sustainable
in rural and inaccessible parts of Africa?
L: Digital technology is becoming increasingly
available and affordable in rural areas
of Africa. Today, 75% of Africans own mobile
phones and mobile networks are growing
dramatically in rural areas, enabling a twoway
communication between previously
isolated smallholders and the other actors
involved in the food system. As well as providing
benefits to rural communities, many
digital solutions are commercially viable and
therefore sustainable in the long term. For
example, M-Farm, a mobile phone-based
market information and trading system, has
been successful in giving Kenyan farmers
access to market prices and connecting them
directly with buyers.
H: What are some of the main challenges?
L: There are numerous digital projects
throughout Africa in support of smallholder
agriculture. One key challenge is scaling
them up, which requires policy changes,
investments and sustained effort from governments,
private enterprises and NGOs.
On the technical level, farmers need to be
assigned ‘unique user identifiers’ so that
they can actually receive services tailored
to their specific needs. This has been done
quite successfully in Nigeria, where the government
has assigned identifiers to about 15
million farmers to provide input subsidies
directly to farmers through its e-Wallet programme.
We also have to ensure that digital
applications are run on neutral platforms to
which any farmer can connect, including the
poorest and most vulnerable. For example, the Agricultural Transformation Agency of
Ethiopia developed a digital soil map which
is public and can be used by anybody.
H: What is the foundation doing to
address the situation?
L: The Kofi Annan Foundation mobilizes
political will to overcome threats to peace,
development and human rights. Like with
so many of the world’s issues, the knowhow
to combat hunger effectively is already
there. We therefore convene the big players
from the private sector, government, the UN
and civil society to pool their resources and
make it happen.
With our partners we look to building the
digital infrastructure in support of these
African smallholders. We named our efforts
here the African Food Systems Initiative,
which aims to enable smallholders to turn
their subsistence farms into profitable businesses
while improving food and nutrition
security across Africa.