CGIAR 6-12-2023

Enthusiasm for the potential of ICTs to transform agricultural markets in Africa has motivated considerable investment in market-oriented digital tool development. However, new research shows that progress made thus far has been limited to small-scale experiments that often fail to scale up. The paper provides an inventory of the main ICT solutions and recommendations for scaling.

In sub-Saharan Africa, most food is produced by smallholder farmers far from urban consumers. They participate in weak and fragmented market chains, where farmers don’t have enough information to secure a fair price from traders or make the best use of their resources to meet consumer demand.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as mobile apps, interactive voice response (IVR) systems or satellite images can directly address the information gap and transform agricultural markets, building on positive trends in the region: by 2025 it is predicted that 90% of people in sub-Saharan Africa will be using SIM cards and 64% using smartphones.

As a result, a new wave of digital innovations has spread across Africa that promise to target the fractures in agricultural markets, with some notable successes that have been established at a large scale and shown to have a positive impact on farmers’ livelihoods. Yet most initiatives are limited to pilot programs and there is generally little evidence of the impact of digital innovations.

New research carried out by researchers from IFPRI and CIMMYT under the CGIAR Digital Innovation Initiative has gathered an inventory of digital innovations targeting agricultural markets in sub-Saharan Africa, analyzing how they work and the available evidence for their success. Drawing on a literature review and expert interviews, the authors explain what it will take for digital innovations to reach scale and impact.

Read the paper: ‌‘Digital tools and agricultural market transformation in Africa: Why are they not at scale yet, and what will it take to get there?‘ published in Food Policy Research by Gashaw T. Abate, Kibrom A. Abay, Jordan Chamberlin, Yumna Kassim, David J. Spielman and Martin Paul Jr Tabe-Ojong.

See more: https://www.cgiar.org/news-events/news/digital-innovations-transform-agricultural-markets-africa/