Digital Tools And Agricultural Market Transformation In Africa Why Are They Not At Scale Yet And What Will It Take To Get There
Digital Tools And Agricultural Market Transformation In Africa Why Are They Not At Scale Yet And What Will It Take To Get There Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Digital Tools And Agricultural Market Transformation In Africa Why Are They Not At Scale Yet And What Will It Take To Get There book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there? by Abay, Kibrom A.,Abate, Gashaw Tadesse,Chamberlin, Jordan,Kassim, Yumna,Spielman, David J. Pdf
This paper presents results from a framed field experiment in which participants make decisions about extraction of a common-pool resource, a community forest. The experiment was designed and piloted as both a research activity and an experiential learning intervention during 2017-2018 with 120 groups of resource users (split by gender) from 60 habitations in two Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. We examine whether local beliefs and norms about community forest, gender of participants, within-experiment treatments (non-communication, communication, and optional election of institutional arrangements (rules)) and remuneration methods affect harvest behaviour and groups’ tendency to cooperate. Furthermore, we explore whether the experiment and subsequent community debriefing had learning effects. Results reveal a “weak” Nash Equilibrium in which participants harvested substantially less than the Nash prediction even in the absence of communication, a phenomenon stronger for male than female participants in both states. For male groups in both states, both communication and optional rule election are associated with lower group harvest per round, as compared to the reference non-communication game. For female groups in both states, however, communication itself did not significantly slow down resource depletion; but the introduction of optional rule election did reduce harvest amounts. For both men and women in Andhra Pradesh and men in Rajasthan, incentivized payments to individual participants significantly lowered group harvest, relative to community flat payment, suggesting a possible “crowding-in” effect on pro-social norms. Despite the generally positive memory of the activity, reported actual changes are limited. This may be due to the lack of follow-up with the communities between the experiment and the revisit. The fact that many of the communities already have a good understanding of the importance of the relationships between (not) cutting trees and the ecosystem services from forests, with rules and strong internal norms against cutting that go beyond the felling of trees in the game, may have also meant that the game did not have as much to add. Findings have methodological and practical implications for designing behavioral intervention programs to improve common-pool resource governance.
Transforming African agricultural markets through digital innovations: What we (do not) know by Abay, Kibrom A.,Abate, Gashaw Tadesse,Chamberlin, Jordan,Kassim, Yumna,Spielman, David J.,Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul, Jr. Pdf
This policy note synthesizes the key messages and lessons from existing evidence and trends in the development, deployment and scale up of ICT-enabled marketing tools. It is based on the recently published discussion paper titled “Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there”. Key messages • Many digital innovations have been developed and deployed in recent years in Africa, many of which have only been implemented at pilot stages, with limited evidence of successful scaling. • There remains significant marketing and institutional constraints hindering the development of some of these digital innovations, which may further explain disparate progress in countries. • Differential access to digital innovations across genders and different typologies of households may trigger alternative variants of digital divide. • Although the landscape of digital innovations in Africa offers several reasons to remain optimistic, the prevailing disconnect between pilots and scale-ups merits further evaluation.
Digital Tools and Agricultural Market Transformation in Africa by Kibrom A. Abay,Gashaw Tadesse Abate,Jordan Chamberlin,Yumna Kassim,David J. Spielman Pdf
Food systems transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the past and policy options for the future Loading... Files Full Book (7.78 MB, pdf) Chapters List (73 KB, pdf) Authors Breisinger, Clemens Keenan, Michael Mbuthia, Juneweenex Njuki, Jemimah Date Issued 2023-12-20 Language en Type Book Review Status Peer Review Access Rights Open Access Open Access Usage Rights CC-BY-4.0 Metadata Sha by Breisinger, Clemens,Keenan, Michael,Mbuthia, Juneweenex,Njuki, Jemimah Pdf
The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment, and it is widely expected to address key food and agricultural challenges with a new set of policies and programs. This policy brief presents key recommendations from a forthcoming book, Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, which provides research-based “food for thought and action” to support the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve food security.
Agricultural service delivery during turmoil: The state of agricultural extension and crop advisory services in Myanmar by International Food Policy Research Institute Pdf
Access to agricultural extension and crop advisory services can play a crucial role in ensuring widespread and appropriate use of new and improved agricultural technologies, but the delivery and use of such services is not well understood in Myanmar. We assess their use based on repeated large-scale and nationally representative farm surveys from 2020 onwards, as well as on insights from key informant interviews and secondary data. The major findings are the following: Agricultural extension use is low and declining. Before the crisis years – due to COVID-19 and a military coup – agricultural extension provision and use in Myanmar was at much lower levels than in neighboring countries. There has been a further decline in use since. Forty-one percent of farmers reported to have received crop advice during the monsoon of 2020, but this share declined by 9 percentage points to 32 percent of farmers in the monsoon of 2022. In-person agricultural extension is more widely used than digital extension. In the last dry season, 26 and 20 percent of the farmers relied on in-person and digital extension respectively. The private sector is the main provider of in-person agricultural extension. During the last dry season, the main provider of in-person agricultural extension was the private sector (used by 18 percent of the farmers), followed by the public sector (13 percent of the farmers), and NGOs (6 percent). Previous seasons show similar shares. In-person agricultural extension has been declining since 2020. In the last three years, there has been a significant decline in the provision of in-person extension services by all providers. In the case of the public sector in particular, the number of agricultural extension events in 2021/22 dropped by more than 50 percent compared to before the crisis years. Digital agricultural extension service provision increased rapidly before 2020. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis, the provision of digital extension services grew rapidly, linked to the rapid expansion of mobile cellphone networks and the spread of cheap smart phones. The total number of posts on Facebook by agricultural companies and organizations from July 2015 until November 2019 more than tripled. The biggest growth in posts was seen in 2018 and 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital agricultural extension provision decreased immediately after the coup, but then expanded again in the years after. It was used by 20 percent of the farmers during the last dry season. Most users started using digital agricultural extension since the COVID-19 pandemic and the political crisis. After the initial drop in 2021 - as the use of Facebook was banned and as there were severe communication blockages - there has been an increase in activity since, and this has occurred despite the persistent communication and internet problems and reduced mobile network access in the country. Digital agricultural extension is mostly provided through Facebook by agricultural input companies and social enterprises. The most widely used services are provided through Facebook pages, that for a number of organizations and companies have millions of followers. An analysis of the posts on these Facebook pages shows they contain more technical information than product advertisements, even so for (almost) all commercial input retail companies. We also recently note the establishment of farmer extension groups – a more interactive model – and specific commodity focused groups on Facebook. There are also groups on other online platforms, including specialized agricultural apps and call centers. However, these platforms are less used. Digital extension services are almost exclusively provided by the private sector, including social businesses. Use of agricultural extension is non-inclusive, with less educated, more remote, female, and smaller farmers accessing them less, for digital as well as for in-person extension. We also note an important difference by age, with older farmers relying more on in-person services and younger ones more on digital extension. Conflict-affected areas access agricultural extension services significantly less frequently. Farmers residing in townships under martial law – 13 percent of the townships – use any extension (in-person or digital) service less (8 percent compared to townships not under martial law, often because they lack access to the internet in these townships). While farmers residing in the most insecure areas use in-person extension less (11 percent less), they are however able to rely on digital services to a similar extent as farmers in the more secure townships. The findings of the study have a number of important implications. Scaling of digital extension. Given the widespread insecurity and mobility constraints in the country, limiting in-person travel, alternative digital opportunities have recently emerged that can provide crop advisory services at scale, and especially in some – but not all – of the conflict-affected areas. The scaling-up of such services would be very much welcomed, given that currently only one out of five farmers in Myanmar are relying on such services. Leverage the experience of the private sector. The private sector is most active in agricultural extension, in-person and digital. It has been leading the pivot from in-person to the provision of digital services – not only focusing on sales of their products, but very much being involved in crop advice overall – providing important opportunities to work with these initiatives to finetune and extend the reach of agronomic and other advice for farmers, especially as a large share of farmers is not yet reached by current agricultural extension models. Embrace innovations. Innovations in digital agriculture are quickly emerging - such as chatbots and A.I. - but are not yet being used to their fullest extent in Myanmar. Further piloting, testing, and evaluating the impact of such innovations should be encouraged. Ensure internet access. Access to the internet is problematic in Myanmar – more than 40 percent of all households in Myanmar reported in a recent national survey that they never or only occasionally use the internet - and further efforts to ensure access, especially in conflict affected areas, as well as improve digital literacy should be encouraged. Assess impact of agricultural extension. Despite the interest in the country, few rigorous assessments have been done on the impact of different modalities of extension on adoption of improved technologies and agricultural performance. This would be useful evidence to stimulate the scale-up of the most promising models.
Mobile Phones and Development in Africa by Jenny C. Aker,Joël Cariolle Pdf
This book focuses on the impact of information technology on the lives and livelihoods of rural households in sub-Saharan Africa, where simple mobile phones have leapfrogged traditional communication and financial technologies, and thus, arguably, offer some of the greatest potential for development. Drawing on primary and secondary research from a variety of disciplines, the authors examine the evolution of mobile phone coverage and adoption in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades, before exploring the main channels through which mobile phones can affect development. They then review initiatives on “digitizing development” and evaluate empirical evidence on their impact. The book argues that digital has yet to live up to the hype, ending with a set of questions that stakeholders should ask (and answer) when using digital technology for promoting development.
The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018–2019 by Tsan, Michael,Totapally, Swetha,Hailu, Michael,Addom, Benjamin K. Pdf
An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains.
Africa–Europe Cooperation and Digital Transformation by Chux Daniels,Benedikt Erforth,Chloe Teevan Pdf
Africa–Europe Cooperation and Digital Transformation explores the opportunities and challenges for cooperation between Africa and Europe in the digital sphere. Digitalisation and digital technologies are not only essential for building competitive and dynamic economies; they transform societies, pose immense challenges for policymakers, and increasingly play a pivotal role in global power relations. Digital transformations have had catalytic effects on African and European governance, economies, and societies, and will continue to do so. The COVID-19 pandemic has already accelerated the penetration of digital tools all over the globe and is likely to be perceived as a critical juncture in how and to what purpose the world accepts and uses new and emerging technologies. This book offers a holistic analysis of how Africa and Europe can manage and harness digital transformation as partners in a globalised world. The authors shed light on issues ranging from economic growth, youth employment, and gender, to regulatory frameworks, business environments, entrepreneurship, and interest-driven power politics. They add much-needed perspectives to the debates that shape the two continents’ digital transformation and innovation environments. This book will interest practitioners working in the areas of innovation, digital technologies, and digital entrepreneurship, as well as students and scholars of international relations. It will also be relevant for policymakers, regulators, decision-makers, and leaders in Africa and Europe.
The State of Food and Agriculture 2022 by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Pdf
Automation has been shaping world agriculture since the early twentieth century. Motorized mechanization has brought significant benefits in terms of improved productivity, reduced drudgery and more efficient allocation of labour, but also some negative environmental impacts. More recently, a new generation of digital agricultural automation technologies has appeared, with the potential to further enhance productivity, as well as resilience, while also addressing the environmental sustainability challenges driven by past mechanization. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022 looks into the drivers of agricultural automation, including the more recent digital technologies. Based on 27 case studies, the report analyses the business case for adoption of digital automation technologies in different agricultural production systems across the world. It identifies several barriers preventing inclusive adoption of these technologies, particularly by small-scale producers. Key barriers are low digital literacy and lack of an enabling infrastructure, such as connectivity and access to electricity, in addition to financial constraints. Based on the analysis, the publication suggests policies to ensure that disadvantaged groups in developing regions can benefit from agricultural automation and that automation contributes to sustainable and resilient agrifood systems.
The digitalisation of African agriculture report 2018-2019: Executive summary by Tsan, Michael,Totapally, Swetha,Hailu, Michael,Addom, Benjamin K. Pdf
Agricultural transformation is a priority in the policy agenda of African governments in their quest to meet the challenges of food and nutrition insecurity, climate change, youth unemployment and overall economic growth. With the right policies, innovation and investment, the continent’s agriculture could be transformed into a powerhouse not only to feed a growing population but to create decent employment for millions of young people.
Opportunities in Agriculture: Stemming youth migration by CTA Pdf
Africa’s growing youth workforce presents enormous potential for agricultural transformation, but to capitalise on this promising resource the sector must become a more attractive employment option for the continent’s young people. SPORE is the quarterly magazine of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), offering a global perspective on agribusiness and sustainable agriculture. CTA operates under the Cotonou Agreement between the countries of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group and the European Union and is financed by the EU.
In ICT Update and on websites such as ICT4Ag, CTA has covered the explosive growth and proliferation of digital and mobile phone technologies for agriculture. Now CTA takes the next step with developing the Apps4Ag database, a comprehensive, up-to-date and responsive database of ICTs including mobile, web, animation, audio, and video applications involved in the food value chains.
Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Pdf
This report aims to identify the different scenarios where the process of digital transformation is taking place in agriculture. This identifies those aspects of basic conditions, such as those of infrastructure and networks, affordability, education and institutional support. In addition, enablers are identified, which are the factors that allow adopting and integrating changes in the production and decision-making processes. Finally identify through cases, existing literature and reports how substantive changes are taking place in the adoption of digital technologies in agriculture.
What's Cooking by Kateryna Schroeder,Julian Lampietti,Ghada Elabed Pdf
The digital agriculture revolution holds a promise to build an agriculture and food system that is efficient, environmentally sustainable, and equitable, one that can help deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. Unlike past technological revolutions in agriculture, which began on farms, the current revolution is being sparked at multiple points along the agrifood value chain. The change is driven by the ability to collect, use, and analyze massive amounts of machine-readable data about practically every aspect of the value chain, and by the emergence of digital platforms disrupting existing business models. All this allows for drastically reduced transaction costs and pervasive information asymmetries that plague the agrifood system. The success of the digital transformation, however, is not guaranteed as the risks it brings are numerous, including those related to data governance and inadequate competition within and between digital platforms. What’s Cooking: Digital Transformation of the Agrifood System investigates how digital technologies can accelerate the transformation of the agrifood system by increasing efficiency on the farm; improving farmers’ access to output, input, and financial markets; strengthening quality control and traceability; and improving the design and delivery of agriculture policies. It also identifies a key role for the public sector in maximizing the benefits of this process while minimizing its risks, through enabling an innovation ecosystem featuring open datasets, digital platforms, digital entrepreneurship, digital payment systems, and digital skills and encouraging equitable technology adoption.
