Impacts of digitisation for agriculture

ICT Update No. 93 published

Over the last 20 years, the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has followed and reported on the changing landscape in ICTs for agriculture through the ICT Update. 

Last year, CTA published the Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report, 2018-2019 which advocated for the digital agricultural transformation that can feed the developing world, including Africa.

ICT Update Issue 93 highlights

This issue catalogues some projects and programmes CTA has done and how these are tackling the impacts of digitisation in agriculture. Some selected articles;

• Data4Ag impacts for farmers and for policy - CTA’s Data4Ag project has introduced digital solutions in Africa to assist farmers’ organisations in registering their members to offer targeted agricultural services. Whilst impacts from the field have been impressive, questions have been raised around the collection and use of farmer data, and the need for policy development.
• GODAN Action: Digital capacity building - Increased availability of agricultural data could help overcome key challenges for the sector, however many stakeholders still struggle to access and interpret agri-data. GODAN’s Action project aims to tackle this issue.
• Drone-based services taking off to transform Africa’s agriculture - Africa’s agriculture sector is being progressively transformed into a high-tech industry through digital services. Decisions are being based on real-time gathering and processing of data, feeding into increasingly effective decision support systems. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are an integral part of this digital revolution.
• The impact of data collection for farmer organisations - In Uganda, CTA has been working with the Igara Tea Factory to digitally profile their farmer members and enhance their data management practices. In this piece, the impact of these activities for the individual farmers, and the cooperative as a whole, is assessed.
• Weather-based index insurance: a climate-smart agricultural solution for smallholder farmers - Dr Oluyede Ajayi and Mariam Kadzamira, explain how CTA has been bundling weather-based index insurance with other services to increase the resilience of 140,000 smallholder households in Southern Africa to climatic changes.

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