USAID FinGAP Investment Mapping System
An interactive geospatial and forecasting tool that provides investors with information on potential agriculture investments in Ghana.
Summary
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is an initiative that builds upon previous commitments to abate hunger in Africa including, Feed the Future, Grow Africa, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program. New Alliance partners include the G8, private companies and several African countries, namely Ghana, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. Since New Alliance’s inception in 2012, over 160 companies have committed to planned investments exceeding $7 billion.
As part of New Alliance’s 2013 Progress Report Summary, private company partners reported that they faced some key challenges to deploying capital and/or increasing investments “…where the conditions are right.” Infrastructure constraints are chief among these factors.
Ghana’s population growth is advancing at a much faster rate than the rate of current crop production, which is exacerbating the country’s food deficit.
“…Ghana has doubled and doubled again from around 4 million people to more than 25 million. It is projected to keep growing to around 50 or even 60 million people by 2050.”
— The Guardian, 10/21/11; Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
While the immediate response to combating a shortage in food supply is to increase agricultural production, it has become obvious that the necessary physical infrastructure required to support that growth is either non-existent or incapable of handling the additional volume. This places a real limitation on private companies’ ability to pursue their investment goals.
Investment Mapping System
The USAID Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project (FinGAP) Investment Mapping System (IMS) accessible in low-bandwidth regions, is an interactive geospatial tool that provides investors with information on potential agriculture investments (including their geographic location) and enables them to manipulate scenarios (e.g., productivity projections) to identify opportunities with high potential return on investment. Its flexibility and real-time, crowd-sourced data also drives down their due-diligence costs, which helps them make informed investment decisions. The tool was built by members of the Graphicacy team in partnership with Palladium (formerly CARANA Corporation) who managed and ran the project.
Advanced analytics for predicting future infrastructure need
The IMS Forecast Module projects future growth in production volume. If the volume exceeds a mathematically significant level, it will trigger the immediate appearance of forecasted infrastructure markers on the map in proportion to the quantity that are required to meet the new level of future production. For example, in the case of the Yendi District in Northern Ghana, forecasting an increase in maize production of approximately 10,000 tons by 2018 would require the construction of one new warehouse.
Individual users encouraged to provide local level insight
In order to keep the IMS up-to-date, the IMS Crowdsourcing/Upload Module was included to give users closest to the data an opportunity to amend and/or validate the veracity of the data to ensure continued accuracy. Users could add/modify infrastructure directly into the web application or via SMS. Each new infrastructure addition would be added to an administration portal, where it could be verified and approved before adding to the production application.
Determine proximity to key points of interest
An increase in forecasted production volume will, in turn, drive the addition of various types of new physical infrastructure such as warehouses and processing facilities. The custom heat map ranks the importance of proximity to electrical grids, roads and water sources. By first isolating the most optimal location for new construction, the question of where to break ground on new physical plant is answered before determining how much and what type of new infrastructure is needed.
Create unique areas/zones of interest for investment analysis
Farmers are frequently unconstrained by official boundaries and districts, so the IMS provides the ability for users to draw/create their own custom areas — polygons or circles — to more accurately capture forecasted infrastructure needs. Once the custom area is drawn and saved to the database, the district information panel will update to capture specific farm level details in the user-defined region.
Soil fertility layer
In the design and user experience research for the tool our team interviewed many end-users and a common theme was that the location of the infrastructure and farms was important, but having more agricultural information was critical. With this feedback, we equipped the IMS with a detailed soil fertility layer that included 20 color-coded soil types.
Outcomes
Current methods to assist investors with first determining which new infrastructure is necessary to support rising crop production is crude. Furthermore, site selection is time-consuming and inaccurate. The IMS solves both critical investor demands simultaneously.
- Investors previously hired consultants to manually identify or posit a guess for the most optimal locations, but that is no longer necessary with the dynamic tools provided in the IMS.
- All relevant information and forecast assumptions alike benefit from being updated with the latest available data, so results are always current.
- Intuitive, flexible and portable, the application aids in the precision agriculture decision-making process in the field as well as in investors’ home offices.
Hand Off
At the conclusion of the project, it was important to identify a Ghanian company to host the tool and update the data. With the use of common open-source technologies throughout the application, finding a partner that could maintain the Node.js and Leaflet.js site was without many hurdles. Along with our partners at Palladium, we interviewed multiple companies for the opportunity and eventually identified Farmerline as the best suited organization for the maintenance of the tool going forward. Our focus, throughout the project, on documenting the design process and the underlying codebase made it a seamless hand-off and a model for future collaborations.
Data Sources
The IMS relies on public and/or proprietary data and client directed metrics
- Centre for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERSGIS) at the University of Ghana
- USAID ADVANCE Project
- Ministry of Food and Agriculture
- International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) Ghana
- Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) Ghana
DISCLAIMER
The Investment Mapping System is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Christopher Lanoue is a Data Visualization Engineer and Director of Engineering and Innovation at Graphicacy with a focus on designing and building innovative and creative solutions for clients all over the world.
