What Makes Effective ‘AgriTech’ for Africa?
Building for success in a highly untapped market.
Most people only think of agri-tech or ‘technology in agriculture’ as huge tractors, harvesters and heavy duty farm equipment. However, agritech or agtech is used more recently refering to emerging agricultural innovations of the 4th revolution: digital technology based on the Internet of Things (IOT), robotics, artificial intelligence and inter-connected ‘automated’ systems.
While mechanization refers to humans using machines to ease laborious work, automation means leaving the work mostly up to the machines, like this harvesting robot for example….
There-in lies the difference. In this sense, agri-tech is a relatively new field in all parts of the world. A growing number of startups, hubs and ‘maker-communities’ are now dedicated to discovering the next big thing that will transform agriculture and make global food production even more efficient.
Putting it in the African context
One of the most prominent challenges to African agriculture is financing for the small-holders farmers who make up 60% of agricultural production. So it makes sense that majority of digital innovations in the agricultural space are trying to solve this problem. A popular model is agricultural crowd-funding platforms, where people simply ‘invest’ in specific small-holder farm ventures and share in the profits after harvest. A number of these exist across several African countries. Other startups are also using innovative models to address the critical issue of finance for smallholder farmers.
On the other hand, Aerobotics in South Africa and the Nigerian company Beat Drone are among those offering drone technology to monitor crops and livestock health aerially and provide geospatial information for better and more precise farm management. An interesting Zambian startup called AgriPredict uses AI to diagnose crop diseases in real time via photographs taken on farmers’ phone cameras.
In a report, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) and advisors, found nearly 400 different digital agriculture solutions with 33 million registered farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. Just take a look at the CTA’s website category for digitalisation and one would be impressed by the sheer activity in this space. Still, according to the organisation, 90% of this market still remains untapped.
Trends shows that these technologies indeed have potential to improve yields, enhance trade and transform agricultural systems. But how can this be most effective?
Technology adoption by Africa’s farmers is a huge problem simply because majority of them have little or no education, live and work in remote areas. In an insightful evaluation of Nigeria’s Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS); a government-run program established to allocate fertiliser subsidies to targeted subsistence farmers through ‘e-vouchers’ issued on mobile phones, a primary implementation problem was that many eligible farmers lacked basic access to mobile phones and/or mobile network coverage. Some farmers who had phones and coverage lacked access to electricity to power their phones. The same is the case in many remote parts of Africa where farmers often live.
Although digital solutions are cheaper and easier to ‘distribute’ than huge machines, some of the hurdles with adoption in African farms are similar. For example, lack of access (due to remote locations) and technical usability barriers also frustrated attempts to promote adoption of mechanised farm equipment in the past. Africa’s agricultural productivity is the lowest compared to other continents of the world. Despite immense potential, the yield gap remains due to archaic farming processes and 40% post-harvest losses. 70% of African farmers cultivate parcels of less than two hectares by hoe despite the increased use of automated tillage systems and seeders in other parts of the world.
According to the Country Program Director of Nigeria’s Cassava Mechanization and Agro-processing Project (CAMAP), Ayodele David:
It takes a farmer reliant on hand tool technologies 22 days to plant one hectare of cassava, while it takes a farmer using the two-row cassava planting machine on the same size of land 45 minutes.
It’s not all about machinery though. Farmer education and input distribution are also severely lagging behind; inputs needed to increase crop yields include nutrients (fertilizer), herbicides and improved seed varieties.
Full mechanization along the value chain includes enhancing access to mechanization services, improving access to quality and affordable inputs, such as seed and fertilizer, delivering efficient water resources management systems including irrigation, and reducing harvest and post-harvest losses through threshing, drying, and storing, adding value through milling, processing and packaging, and improving market access through transportation.
Even with input subsidy programs across the continent, fertilizer use in sub-saharan Africa lies at an average of 14kg/ha, well below the world average of nearly 200kg/hectare.
So while digitising African agriculture makes interesting media coverage, reality shows that only a combination of foresightful government policies and in-depth market understanding is crucial to actually winning in this market.
So What does successful AgriTech for Africa need to look like?
- Bare minimum for usability: Considering that majority of the farmers have no formal or technical education, ‘tech’ targeted for this user group be as bare minimum and intuitive as possible. For example, some of the most impressive services currently on the market involve USSD codes or interactive SMS. It should be best-practice to design solutions primarily for offline use.
- Similar to the first, an effective B2C solution for individual farmers should cater only to the basic needs, offered preferably as affordable bundle services. It is likely to be more effective to target cooperatives in a B2C model for mechanisation services offerings e.g HelloTractor; the tractor-hailing startup .
- Focus on the major problems. Looking at farmer education, access to finance, input and markets as critical needs, attempts at plugging any other gaps will only be as successful as the extent to which the aforementioned are improved. (Think about the principle of Leibig’s minum). An effective agritech solution for the African market should therefore incorporate innovative advisory, knowledge sharing or extension services e.g Kenyan based Arifu, finance and trade linkage like Ghanaian AgroCenta, Nigeria’s Kitovu.
- Collect important data — Big data is needed to inform private and public investment in African agriculture by Financial institutions, agri businesses, processors, distributors. Agritech startups are a good way to mine, research and democratise useful data about farmers and how they work, opening them up to more opportunities. One example is Nigerian company; Verdant agritech which supplies real-time data to major players throughout the value chain. Kenyan FarmDive is also using alternative data analysis to develop credit scores which helped unbanked farmers to access loans.
- Include all potential/likely users in the solution design – no brainer!
- Be ridiculously affordable — for small holder and cooperative adoption.
- Be adaptable and ready for scale – A solution that works should be adaptable to farm sizes and production systems with individual flexibility. Long term impact & retention & can be achieved by encouraging farmer to farmer sharing via groups and cooperatives.
Reoccurring themes in successfully innovating for African agriculture involve farmer education and support. Technology infrastructure will most likely need to be strongly supplemented with regularly scheduled field support. As more youth become involved in agriculture, opportunities for more automation and other technically demanding innovations will begin to expand.
