Artificial Intelligence-Powered Precision Agriculture in Africa

New technologies and digital infrastructures are enabling smart farming with high productivity levels across countries. Yet, there is dearth of evidence on how they are enabling smallholder farmers in Africa to increase their farm produce. By focussing on smallholder maize crop producers in South Africa and relying on a panel data for the period 2011–2021, this study applied a stochastic production frontier framework and Cobb–Douglas production function to estimate the relationship between variance of yield increase in relation to aggregate modern technologies adopted. The stochastic production frontier model was estimated using simple ordinary least square, maximum likelihood estimation and probit regressions. The analysis adopted a three-stage procedure which began with the specification of regression model, the calculation of least residuals squares of the explanatory variables and finally the estimation of the variances in the functional forms of output levels. The results revealed a positive relation between the application of digital agriculture technologies and increased crop performance for rural maize cultivators in South Africa. The policy inference from this study is that accelerating investment in digital agriculture infrastructure offers the promise of a quadruple return for South Africa’s agriculture sector.

Precision agriculture has a massive potential for growth in Africa, but it faces a number of social-economic and technological challenges. This paper synthesises research on adoption of technology for precision agriculture, investigating the fear versus love for technology in general and the current level of technology usage in the continent of Africa. The precision agriculture domain uses technology such as the Internet of Things, which can help the farmers to mitigate the impact of climate change on their agricultural productivity. This paper utilises the primary and subsidiary keywords related to technology adoption in precision agriculture to query the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus database. After screening for relevance and exclusion of duplicate documents, 470 research papers from 2018-2023 related to the keywords inputted were analysed using R-Studio Bibliometrix tools. Firstly, the study analysed the foundational data acquisition and secondly, the study analysed four contextual areas that both the emerging and established researchers in the field of precision agriculture are exploring and which can be explored further, especially in Africa continent. Based on the analysis results presented in this study, it can be argued that despite the urgent need of technology adoption in agriculture to guarantee food security, the participation of Africa continent researchers in this domain is still very low. The findings also reveal that some of the major factors contributing to the low level of participation by the Africa continent are research funds and collaboration strategy. The author recommends that some dedicated research funds should be allocated specifically for precision agriculture research by both the government and the private sectors in the continent of Africa. Also, more research collaborations between the Africa continent and the North America continent, which is the leading continent in this research field should be encouraged.

Mapping vulnerability of smallholder agriculture in Africa: Vulnerability assessment of food crop farming and climate change adaptation in Ghana

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) has gained prominence in global agriculture and climate agendas for its perceived “triple win” contributions to food productivity, adaptation, and mitigation to climate change. This paper highlights three important challenges for CSA activities in Africa which provide insights into contested debates surrounding CSA’s ability to respond holistically to the complex realities facing resource-constrained farmers in the global South. These are (1) prevailing neoliberal market policies that emphasize private-sector driven agricultural development in the face of rising input costs and falling commodity prices; (2) an expansion in diversified livelihood strategies amongst smallholder households as a response to the highly unpredictable biophysical environment and economic climate under which they live; and (3) a growing competition for land and other productive resources. A deeper dive into political economy processes surrounding these three issues aims to bring critical attention to factors relevant to African agricultural development that highly impact farm-level practices and carry important implications for rural livelihood outcomes.

Tenure, Agricultural Investment, and Productivity in the Customary Tenure Sector of Malawi

Currently, climate change has emerged as the greatest challenge to humanity and pertains to possibility of events that have led to the previous mass extinctions on Earth. It is having a greater impact on agriculture through a multitude of challenges. In the emerging scenario of digital interconnectedness as well as complex interlinkages of climate change leading and increasing population stresses, there have arisen the need to find solutions. These solutions should not only deal with the pertinent issues, but also provide innovative and technological solutions as well. This is critical in the field of agriculture, on which populations of countries are dependent upon, both for production as well as for consumption. This paper analyses the possibilities of collaboration across agriculture and allied activities that can benefit both Indian and African economies by integrating big data into climate-smart agriculture, which thereby increases agricultural productivity as well as efficiency in the utilisation of resources. It takes exploratory and descriptive research, with the intention of filling the void of lack of literature in social sciences.