Acceleration of digital inclusion in African agriculture

Africa, agriculture

31 Mar 2017

The Food and Agriculture Organization has launched the pilot phase of its program “Agriculture Services and Digital Inclusion in Africa” in March 2017 in Dakar.

This project aims to provide farmers with supportive information, thus facilitating day-to-day farm management and improving productivity.

This first deployment concerns Senegal and Rwanda and is expected to reach more than 40.000 small producers before being implemented in other countries.

This new service is going to provide daily updated data about weather and crop calendar (climate changes), animal feed & health, nutrition, crop market and prices. Applications have been deepened during workshops, to meet local needs and technological constraints (restricted access to the Internet and well developed mobile network). Data will therefore be available by SMS text messaging or voice.

ICT are considered as a major driver for African rural development and food security, assessing new farming practices and impacting the entire value chain (production, transport, trading …).