The establishment of an International Digital Council for Food and Agriculture is a move in the right direction.
Developed as a Contributory note are inputs for the Concept note. The note commences with a review of the discussion guide. Recommendations are made based on the questions raised and points highlighted as responses to each question. The note goes further to make recommendations for the Council’s positioning, knowledge hub, regulatory role, and required structure in member states.
Also attached is a presentation delivered on digital innovations across the value chain that may be helpful.
Responses to the Discussion Guides are featured here:
Q1. What are the potential entry points for the government to address challenges and foster the development of digital agriculture? The entry points identified in the Q1 discussion guide are exhaustive. However, the Council should not overstretch itself by trying to provide solutions in all the areas highlighted. Instead, the Council should start with a focus on the low hanging fruits, work towards the widening of existing solutions, and support the development and adoption of new digital technologies.
Recommended entry points of priority are:
- Improving access to information, digital literacy, and digital solutions for Agriculture.
- Support for innovation systems through capacity building for the development and adoption of digital solutions.
- Advocacy for infrastructure development and investments towards Agtech
- A flexible regulatory framework for data acquisition, ownership and management, with the establishment of Trust mechanisms for data and information sharing.
More on these in the note attached.
Q2. How can the establishment of the Digital Council address the numerous barriers to adoption of these technologies? Highlighted in the discussion guide are principles to guide the operation of the Council. These do not necessarily address the HOW of addressing the numerous barriers to the adoption of these technologies. However, required as an addition to these principles are:
- Accountability: how and to whom the Council is to be accountable should be included
- Apolitical: farmers form a major political bloc in most nations - developing and developed. As the key stakeholder, Nations need to be reassured that the Council would not be a platform for the promotion of political agendas or foreign interests in their countries.
How the establishment of the Council can address the numerous barriers to adoption of technologies are addressed in later pages of attached note.
Q3. Do you think that the roles identified for the Digital Council are suitable for facing the food systems challenges outlined above? Currently identified are building a knowledge hub and regulatory framework as roles 1 and 2. For the knowledge hub, the “Investor Gap” is missing. From our observations at OpenFarm, digitization of African agriculture does not necessarily suffer from a lack of innovation, but scaling and adoption that is retained by sustainable business models. Many innovations end as pilots and PoCs without mass adoption. We have also noticed that many innovators are enthusiastic but lack the business edge required to succeed as entrepreneurs. Though the innovator or informer can also be an investor, the “Investor Gap” needs a separate thinking cap. History has repeatedly proven only exceptional minds are both. Therefore, resources with the sole purpose of driving investments into digital solutions for Agriculture should be provided in the knowledge hub to fill that gap.
The council can be strategically positioned to do beyond roles 1 and 2. It can extend to a role 3 of making available Shared Platforms as building blocks to aid the digitization of agriculture in member Nations. Examples of these platforms are:
- A National directory of digital solutions for agriculture and solution providers. The input of each member state can form a global directory of digital solutions for agriculture.
- A National Data Portal on digitization in general with key stats such as internet connectivity, mobile penetration and more.
- Information platform with modules for news, production data, weather, GAPs, and market information which are responsive for mobile accessibility to Farmers and innovators can utilize as building blocks for other innovations.
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An Orchestration platform for request & feedback management, evaluation, matching, partnerships, communication and more.
These platforms can be developed from ground-up or aggregated from existing platforms. They can be available to member Nations as a SaaS or solutions to download and host independently.
Q4. What governance structure should be in place in order for the Council to serve its purpose? According to you, do you think the proposed governance scenario is politically feasible? For the Advisory Committee, it can also double as an Advocacy committee since it “…guarantees the involvement of International Organizations”. This would help to extend its deliverables of the Advisory council beyond only moments of consultation. The A&A committee can also suggest feedback from advocacy.
M & E Organism needs to be defined. Is it to be in the secretariat, a working group or outsourced?
As seen with the development of open source technologies, Working Groups (WGs) can be opened up to interested parties. Once problems are identified, independent groups of innovators, researchers and professionals should be able to provide solutions competitively. When the council is required to provide resources to working groups, evaluations of track records and submitted proposals can be made. These working groups can be based on campuses, innovation hubs, R & D labs, or solo operations.
The early deliverables of the executive council or a working group should include the required working groups based on the identified problems and needs, and the modalities for working groups.
Recommendations for the Council’s positioning, knowledge hub, regulatory role, and required structure in member states are provided in the attached note.
M. Segun Ogunwale