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Mercy Corps unveils $5 million AgriFin Digital Farmer initiative in Kenya
The program will result in increased smallholder farmer inclusion, productivity and income, as well as a range of digitally enabled models and institutional partners to drive inclusive agricultural transformation with direct benefit to smallholders throughout Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Quick Wins for Digital Agriculture: Why Digitizing Aggregation Centers is a Fast Path to Long-Term Impact for Smallholders
Discussion of digital agriculture innovation often focuses on buzzworthy technologies like the internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain. But though these technologies will eventually define the future of the sector, Ananth R Gudipati at the World Food Programme and Paul Kweheria at Mercy Corps say we should start with the basics – getting farmer organizations and SMEs to use digital tech to streamline their operations. They share insights from a digital platform developed by the Farm to Market Alliance that’s doing just that.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Nigeria’s Hello Tractor in AI, blockchain partnership with IBM Research
Nigerian agri-tech startup Hello Tractor has partnered IBM Research to pilot an agriculture digital wallet and decision-making tool that provides demand and supply visibility for farmers, tractor fleet providers and banks.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Roadmap to Food Security: Linking Geodata with Financial Inclusion to Support Smallholders
Smallholder farmers produce a staggering 70 percent of the world’s food, making them essential to food security. Geodata applications have been shown to improve these farmers’ yields and even boost their financial access – one of the main obstacles to increasing production. To help tap into these benefits, NpM’s Innovator’s Challenge brought together 17 tech companies with geodata-based solutions for smallholder financial inclusion. NpM director Josien Sluijs discusses the winning companies, and the broader potential of geodata-based innovation.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance, Social Enterprise, Technology
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Aerospace technology could enable farmers to produce more with less
The researchers say the central challenge for the highly fragmented African agriculture is, therefore, one of farmer access to the satellite data and analysis. “The question … is less about whether space-based and aerial technologies can help the agriculture. The question is, how exactly can these tools be put in the hands of most farmers?”
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- agtech, global development
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For Agritech, Digital Health Startups, Enormous Opportunities In Africa and India
Startups around the world should begin looking more seriously at emerging markets for their growth plans. This isn’t just about impact and making the world a better place, this makes really good business sense.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Tags
- agtech, manufacturing, startups
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Press release: UK aid helps farmers across Africa grow their businesses and protect livestock
UK aid will transform the agricultural sector in African countries, including research and technology projects to tackle killer cattle diseases and create better paid jobs for farmers. A profitable agricultural sector is essential to African countries, contributing half of the continent’s total export value. The World Bank estimates the sector accounts for 20% of the continent’s entire GDP.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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