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The Flawed Assumptions Behind AI for Agriculture: What Artificial Intelligence Can — And Can’t — Do for African Farmers
There is a dominant mental model of AI for agriculture. According to Sheena Raikundalia at Kuza, the pitch goes something like this: “What if every farmer had a personal AI advisor telling them what to grow, when to plant and how much fertilizer or other inputs to apply?” That model is sleek, frictionless, and built on the assumption that farmers are operating alone with the algorithm, receiving personalized recommendations and optimizing their decisions accordingly. But as she argues, optimizing agriculture in Africa is not primarily an information problem: It is a trust problem, a market access problem, a collective action problem and a financing problem — and addressing those challenges requires a human connection. She explores Kuza's experiences offering an AI chatbot to Kenyan farmers, and shares lessons on how best to leverage both human and digital resources to support smallholders in Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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The Three Ingredients of Impact AI: Research from India Offers Guidance for AI for Social Good in Emerging Markets
The conversation around “AI for social good” has moved beyond hype and potential and into a high-stakes implementation phase, as a growing number of real-world use cases have emerged. Kalpa Impact conducted analysis of 97 startups and 13 non-profits deploying AI for social good at population-scale in India, seeking to understand who is building these tools, where they are being deployed and whether there is evidence of impact. Sushant Kumar and Ananya Mukherjee at Kalpa Impact share insights from this analysis, highlighting three key ingredients that can enable the successful deployment of impact AI in India and other emerging markets.
- Categories
- Technology
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Courageous Capital: How Africa Built its Own Tech Ecosystem
Africa’s tech sector has been thriving for almost three decades, during which its entrepreneurs have quietly built a self-sustaining ecosystem. And as Marsha Wulff at LoftyInc Capital explains, instead of government and charitable institutions taking the lead, it has been Africa’s own innovators who have developed its tech infrastructure and driven its commercial success. She explores how African entrepreneurs and investors have built a vibrant and resilient tech ecosystem that addresses the continent's unique needs — and taps its massive growth potential.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
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‘Deep Pockets’ vs. ‘Long Pockets’ in DPI: What Instant Payments and Open Finance Tell Us About Sustainable Funding for Digital Public Infrastructure
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) is gaining traction in emerging markets around the world. But as David Porteous at Integral: Governance Solutions and Rafe Mazer at Fair Finance Consulting explain, while the financial cost of building DPI may be modest, operating it at scale requires ongoing costs to be allocated across the ecosystem over time, making DPI sustainability fundamentally a governance issue centered on pricing policies. They explore how two of the three broadly accepted categories of DPI, instant payment systems and open finance, can develop credible mechanisms to finance long-term costs — while maintaining incentives for participants and trust among users.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Addressing the Communications Breakdown in Global Development: How AI-Enabled Assessment Tools Can Reach Excluded Communities
Development work can only be effective if it’s based on the actual needs and lived experiences of the communities it aims to serve. But as Talía Jiménez Romero at Fortell Impact explains, in many of the remote, under-resourced areas where this work is most needed, the voices of local people are often the hardest to hear, due to barriers related to language, education, and lack of access to the internet and other technologies. She explores how AI can be leveraged to facilitate data collection and needs assessments in these multilingual and low-connectivity contexts, while complementing the work of local teams on the ground.
- Categories
- Technology
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Creating a Local Means of Exchange for African Entrepreneurs: How a Blockchain-Based Community Currency Gained Traction in Tanzania
In African communities, the lack of disposable income often hinders economic growth, and many local entrepreneurs are excluded from centralized, formal finance. Malik El Bay at the Encointer Association and Alinagwe Mwaselela at Jukumu NGO explore how their organizations are addressing this issue by leveraging blockchain technology to enable community members in Dar es Salaam to independently create and manage their own local cryptocurrency. They explain how this community currency model can be leveraged to support economic growth and entrepreneurship across Africa and other emerging markets.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Productive Use Has Challenges: What’s Holding the Sector Back — And How Companies and Investors Should Respond
Productive use of renewable energy (PURE) technologies such as solar irrigation, cold storage and agro-processing can have a transformative impact in Africa and other emerging markets. But though the potential of these technologies is undeniable, the scale isn’t. As Daniel Waldron, Chris Emmott and Kristi Chon at Acumen, and Duda Slawek at Open Capital explain, few agricultural companies are delivering PURE solutions, and fewer still are growing fast enough to meet the scope of the problems they are trying to solve. They share new research and analysis that illuminate the challenges that are holding the sector back, and propose three ways forward.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Investing, Technology
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Interoperability is the Answer to Scaling Up E-mobility in Africa: What the Continent Can Learn from the EU and India’s Divergent Approaches
Electric mobility in Africa is an emerging but highly fragmented market, defined by uneven policies, diverse vehicle types and limited scale. As a result, according to Ashay Abbhi at Intellecap and Nyaga Kebuchi at Sustainable Transport Africa, interoperability has become a critical enabler for the sector. They explore how interoperability — the ability of battery or charging systems to work seamlessly with multiple fleets of vehicles — can turn distributed hardware systems into a usable network, and discuss how the EU and India’s different routes toward interoperability can inform Africa's e-mobility transition.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Transportation
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