Article extracted from : CORDIS
Bringing digital solutions to African farmers
The EU-funded NADiRA project contributes to develop agriculture in Africa using sustainable digital farming solutions. This means industrialising the incorporation of Earth observation products from Copernicus sensors’ data as Internet of Things and mobile devices giving stakeholders the key information to invest in smallholder farming.
“Digital technologies offer a unique opportunity to transform and secure agriculture in Africa. Through new ecosystems development inside the smallholder value chains, transparency, inclusiveness and efficiency are improved,” explains Daniel Annerose, CEO of Manobi Africa, a key project partner. This digital innovation will reduce investment risk for agro-industrial stakeholders, notably bankers, insurers, input suppliers and food processors, and at the same time help increase the availability of credit and improve smallholder productivity.
“Imagine that we can reduce interest rates on smallholder loans, which today are very high in Africa — anywhere between 20 and 30 %. Then we’d do a fantastic service to smallholder farmers. Because what they really need, first and foremost, is money,” says Pierre Sibiry Traoré, project partner.
[…] agCelerant is a comprehensive solution combining digital tools with an innovative business model that provides concurrent detection of field-level agricultural events, monitoring of crop response, and production forecasts based on combined field and Earth observation data streams. Both data streams are essential for operational exploitation and scalability, particularly in varied smallholder agriculture.