This African Union (AU) Digital Agriculture Strategy (DAS) and Implementation Plan is a multilateral document establishing a framework for the digital transformation of African agriculture aiming to empower farmers with digital tools, streamline information dissemination, and enhance agricultural resilience through innovative technologies and strategic partnerships. The DAS promotes digital agriculture to achieve accelerated agricultural growth and transformation for shared prosperity and improved livelihoods. The 2021 DAS-led analysis of digital agriculture across all 55 AU member states concluded that due to diverse environmental, technological, and skill-related factors, a uniform approach to digitalizing agriculture is unfeasible, thus advocating for the prioritization of national digital agriculture strategies aligned with respective national development plans, emphasizing collaborative efforts among Ministries of Agriculture, Infrastructure or ICT, and key stakeholder ministries for optimal implementation. The digital agriculture transformation vision aims to utilize digital tools to achieve agricultural transformation by addressing various goals such as food security, improved nutrition, enhanced product quality, increased yields, reduced food losses, improved market access, and access to finance. Incentives for farmers include improved access to inputs, markets, regulated prices, and finance to enhance yields and incomes. Digital agriculture and smart technology contribute through e-advisory and e-learning, cooperative and farm management technologies, and advanced tools for storage, processing, transport, and traceability solutions. Additionally, protecting the environment involves surveillance, data collection, analysis, and informed decision-making facilitated by satellite-based remote sensing, drone-based crop assessments, sensor networks, and precision agriculture techniques. Digital solutions also contribute to climate resilience through weather forecasts, flood warnings, index-based insurance, and integrated pest and disease management. Furthermore, digital agriculture promotes job creation and youth employment by unlocking the potential of the agri-food market and providing opportunities for innovation and skills development. The vision aligns with the AU Malabo Declaration's goals for accelerated agricultural growth and transformation, emphasizing partnerships, hunger eradication, youth employment, multi-sectoral efforts, and climate resilience. Digital agriculture initiatives are crucial for enhancing African agriculture's resilience, innovation, and attractiveness to investors and youth, ultimately contributing to sustainable development. The core framework for digital agriculture encompasses access to essential resources like electricity, internet, technology, skills, finance, reliable networks, and tools such as traceability systems, remote sensing, AI, within a supportive business environment, alongside robust policy measures ensuring data privacy, security, climate governance, and compliance monitoring. The DAS recommends actions on three levels (1) continental, leveraging multi-lingual digital platforms and forums; (2) regional, focusing on capacity building within African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to aid member countries in crafting national digital agriculture strategies; (3) national, providing guidance on core elements and resources tailored to align with each country's agricultural development plans, facilitating prioritization of digital transformation efforts based on specific needs and challenges. These actions are further defined to include building accessible knowledge platforms, promoting smart technologies, conducting situational analysis studies, consolidating stakeholder achievements, defining explicit roles for relevant bodies, ensuring data privacy and security standards, fostering inclusivity, resilience, and specific initiatives, and mitigating digital divides. The Annexes highlight key areas, including (i) the imperative of digital inclusion for smallholder farmers in African agriculture to boost productivity and efficiency across the value chain. Digitalization offers avenues for smallholders to access vital resources and information, enhancing food security and livelihoods; (ii) addressing the gender gap in agriculture, which has the potential to increase yields and economic output, but women encounter hurdles in accessing digital tools due to societal norms and connectivity gaps. Ensuring gender equality in digital agriculture initiatives is vital, requiring efforts to tackle sociocultural barriers and allocate resources for women's empowerment; (iii) recognizing the crucial role of Africa's youth, who comprise 70% of the population, in shaping the continent's future. Engaging youth in agriculture through digital technologies is essential, despite challenges such as limited capital and skills. Their involvement in entrepreneurship, education, and advocacy is key, necessitating collaboration with stakeholders to implement strategies like the Digital Agriculture Strategy (DAS) effectively.
2023-10-01