"Technology innovation for smallholders include the off-grid energy and agriculture nexus, field mechanization and remote surveillance solutions, field sensors, and a wide range of often related digital agriculture and ag data innovations"

Agriculture technology (AgTech) innovation tailored to smallholder agriculture settings covers a broad range of emerging technologies and business models which hold the potential to significantly boost agricultural productivity, improve farmer incomes, reduce loss and waste, facilitate market integration and trade, enhance climate resilience, and improve agribusiness and financial institution profitability by opening new markets and reducing transaction costs. Major pockets of technology innovation for smallholders include the off-grid energy and agriculture nexus (e.g., solar water pumps and cold-chain technologies), field mechanization solutions (e.g., “uberized” tractors), agronomic diagnostics innovations (e.g., soil, plant, and pest testing), remote surveillance solutions and field sensors for agriculture, and a wide range of often related digital agriculture and ag data innovations. On the digital agriculture front, a fast-growing universe of digital solutions – some very early stage but many starting to reach meaningful scale – straddle a range of use cases such as agricultural advisory, input, and off-take market linkages, supply chain management, agricultural finance, and macro-intelligence tools for decision-makers.

Dalberg is a global social impact group that brings together strategy consulting, design thinking, big data analytics, and research to address complex social, economic, and environmental challenges with a particular focus and depth of on-the-ground footprint in developing Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Agriculture technology is a major priority for Dalberg's team globally and has been the focus of a good deal of recent collaboration with the World Bank Group. Dalberg's work in the AgTech space includes strategy and investment diligence support for tech innovators, agribusinesses, and funders/investors, primary research on AgTech business models and end-users, data science engagements to set up agriculture data platforms and conduct related big data agriculture analytics, and human-centered design programs to design and improve digital agriculture products and platforms.

In the webinar, the speaker provides a quick overview of what Dalberg does in the AgTech space, and then quickly zeroes in on digital agriculture and agriculture data platform opportunity.  After an overview of digital smallholder agriculture sector trends drawing on CTA-Dalberg 2019 Digitalization of African Agriculture Report, he talks about a few specific examples of public and private agriculture data platforms, using the examples of Dalberg's work on Digifarm in Kenya and national agriculture data hubs in Ethiopia and Uganda. The discussion includes forward-looking opportunities and challenges for digital agriculture platforms arising out of the COVID-19 crisis.