ICT Update 90 focuses on Women and Digitalization in Agriculture

In sub-Saharan Africa and indeed in most of the developing world, women form a greater part of the agricultural labour force. There is potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to include women fully in the agricultural systems.

The recent ICT Update 90 focuses on Women and Digitization in Agriculture and chronicles the work that The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has done within the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP). The interventions deal with CTA’s contribution to rural economies, the growing advancements in digitization and lessening the gender gap through supporting women farmers.

Some notable projects on highlight are the 2018 VALUEHER – which aimed to establish an agribusiness intelligent network by harnessing the power of ICTs to foster better links with markets, supply chains and service providers, including financing partners.

In this update, the following are featured

Women leading in ICT-driven business

• Two women are featured, Naledi Magowe (Co-Founder and CMO) Branstorne Enterprises and the former CTA AGriHack winner and Rose Funga (Managing Director of Agrinfo Social Enterprose) who runs a field drone piloting and data science. Branstorne is a youth-owned, female-led enterprise and it focuses on developing valuable solutions that are relevant in the African market.
• The enterprise is known for the renowned application mAgri – a USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) service that gives farmers access to helpful information and agronomic advice, access to markets and to low cost communication. Meanwhile, Rose project is a successfully upscaled project of women access to digital tools and Science technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and she participated in the 2013 Agrihack competition.

Three examples of users who benefit from technological tools and applications in their farming initiatives

• The first user shows the contribution of how agro-ecology and tech are combined and explain the benefits to women farmers in Nigeria. The second example shows how linking the tourism and agriculture sectors through the innovative tech tools benefits female farmers and lastly, a feature shows the ‘enablers’ who use the power of their networks to empower women farmer’s use of ICTs and its linkage to policy.

This a brief summary of the stories in the ICTUpdate 90. Why not download and browse these and other stories .