Contribution received through the e-Agriculture platform
Q1
Life in rural areas is characterised with lack of electricity and bad roads. Yet some of these areas have very high crop yield. The result is low school enrolment and high poverty levels.
Internet connectivity tend to be high where road network is established and there is electricity. People need power to charge smartphones…Fibre optic cable is laid along public roads or follows electricity line….Unfortunately, these services are not avaiable in rural areas where agriculture is the main aconomic activity.
Roads and electricity, these are amenities the government should prioritise. Then private companies such as telecoms will see need to establish infrastructure due to perceived low risk. After that digital agriculture will then pick up.
I have documented this urgument before in a LinkedIn post before; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/internet-enabled-agriculture-chris-ndung…
Q2
Digital needs of players in food and agriculture value chain vary depending on the farm activity and geography. Optimizing agriculture digitalization at last mile level will yeild the most smallholder uplift.
For instance, how can a corn farmer holding smartphone differentiate between a caterpillar and a fall armyworm? And what preventive action can they take immediately? All this is possible digitally.
Q3
Under the "tools for nation and local governments" it would be great to eventually develop a 'global e-agriculture index'. This would entail an annual index showing country improvement and gaps. Examples are World Bank 'ease of doing business' or GSMA 'mobile connectivity' indexes.
This would be a great benchmarking instrument for goverments to reflect on their performance and for digital creators to identify market potential.
_my two cents_
Chris Ndungu