A new report has recommended actions to consider to build digital skills for African rural communities and farmers to improve their livelihoods.
The report, titled “Byte by byte: Policy innovation for transforming Africa’s food system with digital technologies, 2019,” sates that the digital divide between Africa’s urban and rural areas is particularly striking.
This, it says, is driven by limited or no access to electricity, weak networks, poor basic connectivity and low digital literacy.
While digital technologies can play an important role in supporting the transformation of African agriculture, the introduction of new technologies also entails challenges, particularly with respect to smallholder agriculture and women value chain actors.
An estimated 236 million Africans – about 23.2 per cent or almost one in four people in Africa – are hungry, according to the 2018 State Of Food Security And Nutrition in the World report by Food and Agriculture Organization.
And, while Africa’s agribusiness sector is predicted to reach US$1 trillion by 2030 from $313 billion in 2013 according the latest estimates from the World Bank, farmers in rural areas are not equipped with required skills to tap into such a growing market through improving their produce and e-commerce.
The report summarizes findings of a systematic analysis of the experiences of seven African countries that have been at the forefront of the application of digital innovations in the agriculture sector through institutional innovation and innovative policymaking…Read more>>
