Browsing: Agriculture and agri-business in Sub-Saharan Africa

• Agritech Analytics has received global and local recognition by onboarding at least 3,880 farmers.
• Maryanne Gichanga participated in the COP27 Youth Adaptation Challenge in Egypt and won by a landslide.
• In 2022, many investors backed up startups developing biological fertilizers, vertical farms and robots.

A young African woman is changing the pace of agriculture by implementing agritech to sustain her new livelihood. This Kenyan agripreneuer has discovered her green thumb by applying data analysis to detect pests and account for the resources a farm requires depending on size.

This innovative ex-banker is proving that Agritech is the next phase of Africa’s oldest and long-lasting economic activity. Africa’s digital transformation might encompass more than our manufacturing and financial industries.

Kenya’s queen of agritech

It is common knowledge that agriculture in Africa is a significant economic activity. Small-scale farmers from all over the continent bank their lives and their next meals to …

• The future of agriculture is digital not the hand-hoe
• The more efficient a farm is, the more productive it becomes without necessarily increasing land size.
• AfDB awards US$140,000 in grants to AgriPitch competition winners

Agriculture development for food security and poverty reduction cannot be realized without the adaptation of digital solutions.

Digital solutions offer more effective traceability, compliance and farm management systems which make the commercial, large or small, much more effective. In these modern times of food scarcity in the face of ever-increasing demand, efficiency is the name of the game.

The more efficient a farm is, the more productive it becomes without necessarily increasing land size or the amount of crops or animals.

“When it comes to subsistence agriculture, digital transformation is no longer a choice – it’s a need. You can either go digital or disappear,” warns Simon Winter, Executive Director at Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture …

• The kit has all the basics for adaptation in rural settings; affordability, accessibility, and ease of use and maintenance.
• This micro-irrigation kit brings much needed watering solution in arid and semi-arid regions as well as in the highlands where access to water can be limited.
• The project has already reached some 4,275 micro-investors operating across 115 savings and loan groups

A low-tech micro-irrigation solution is providing high impact results for thousands of farmers in Tanzania.

The tech is a small irrigation gear referred to as a micro-irrigation kit that has been introduced to farmers in Tanzania’s Southern regions like in the Kigoma Region.

The kit has all the basics for adaptation in rural settings; affordability, accessibility, and ease of use and maintenance.

This micro-irrigation kit brings much needed watering solution in arid and semi-arid regions as well as in the highlands where access to water can be limited.

The irrigation …

To combat climate change and to mitigate its effects, Africa must adopt modern agriculture technologies, machine innovations and engineering for resilient crop varieties. Modern agriculture technologies help to manage farmers’ risks and even improve product quality which in turn brings about better prices.

Also, when it comes to modern agriculture technologies, there is renewed attention towards value addition, agro-processing and post-harvest management. These factors add to the need for increased investment in agriculture because they all translate to increased income and creation of employment opportunities.

This brings us to the question of funding. Where are countries supposed to get the money to invest in agriculture? To answer this question, African countries, almost all 55 of them, signed the 2003 Maputo Declaration, pledging to dedicate 10% of their annual budget to agriculture, but to date, few have done so.…