Digital agriculture moves towards connected systems across Africa

Africa’s digital agriculture agenda shifted from standalone tools towards shared infrastructure during Q3. The African Union advanced implementation of its Digital Agriculture Strategy by working to harmonise national and regional systems, strengthen platform interoperability and data governance, and connect farmers to climate information, finance, markets and advisory services. The open sourcing of SoilHive, a global soil data platform, complemented this direction by linking fragmented soil datasets without requiring countries to surrender control of their information. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Smart Africa also pushed AI solutions beyond pilot projects towards deployment. In Nigeria, calls for a national digital farmer register and motivation from the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) for interoperable, AI-enabled extension services added a practical dimension to this continental agenda, while the agritech platform CropVault combined sensors and image analysis for use in low-connectivity environments. El Niño increased the value of timely agricultural intelligence across diverse climate conditions. The opportunity increasingly lies in systems that transform trusted, connected data into locally relevant decisions rather than simply offering another farm-level application.

Source: African Union, Digital Agriculture Strategy and Implementation Plan 2024–2030, 2023