Joe Brock
WIDER smartphone and internet access has allowed technology firms to reach remote African farmers with apps providing veterinary diagnoses, crop planting guidance and virtual marketplaces.
Human food production would need to increase 70 percent by 2050 to meet rising demand and Africa was home to more than half of the world’s unused arable land, according to UN research.
Africa’s farms have failed to cash in because of a lack of access to infrastructure, training, capital and technology. Areas being farmed by African smallholders are only producing around one ton per hectare, compared with seven tons in developed markets.
The growth of Africa’s middle class combined with a fall in the prices of technology has opened up opportunities for investment in farms on the world’s poorest continent.
“Africa is key to global food supply and we need to unlock its potential,” said Mark Davies, a dotcom veteran who runs Esoko, which provides advice to farmers and links them with traders in a virtual marketplace.
Esoko charges farmers $1 (R12.467) a month to use the service and businesses pay between $3 000 to $20 000 annually. Other apps recently launched include a Kenyan cattle-monitoring app called iCow and online marketplace M-Farm.
By 2025, half of Africa’s 1 billion population would have internet access and there would be 360 million smartphones on the continent, according to McKinsey consultants. Internet technology could increase annual agricultural productivity in Africa by $3 billion-a-year, McKinsey said.
“People who don’t have access to running water or electricity have access to a phone that is more powerful than computers we had a few years ago,” said Sami Ibrahim, the lead developer at Glasgow-based technology start-up Cojengo.
“That creates a huge opportunity,” said Ibrahim, who along with his IT graduate colleagues developed VetAfrica, an app which provides veterinary advice.
Cojengo has been backed by Microsoft and, like most technology firms targeting African agriculture, it is also working with foreign aid donors.
Growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as other sectors, aid agencies say, but tech firms are also hoping to turn a healthy profit. Cojengo wants VetAfrica to build a database it can sell to African governments, non-governmental organisations and pharmaceutical companies.
To spur growth in African agriculture, however, governments need to improve transport and power infrastructure, and banks need to lend to farmers. “The number one challenge for smallholder farmers in Africa is access to credit,” said Kola Masha, the founder of Nigerian firm Doreo Partners.
“As smartphone technology becomes cheaper we’ll see an increasingly positive impact,” said Masha, who has linked-up with Swiss RE to insure farmers against drought.
Last frontier
Masha hopes to reach 1 million smallholders by 2025 by providing technology, fertiliser and seeds to farmers.
Agriculture giants like Syngenta and Monsanto are also investing in technology in Africa. The growth in the use of technology in Africa could bring hundreds of millions of poorly organised and isolated people in rural communities into global markets.
“I think of this as the last frontier on Earth for the internet,” said Esoko’s Davies. – Reuters