African digital platform developers have been urged to adopt a user-centred approach in designing agricultural technologies, which will improve the experiences and needs of smallholder farmers.
This call was made on Monday, June 9, as the African Conference on Agricultural Technologies began in Kigali, under the theme “NextGen Ag-tech Solutions for Africa’s Farmers”
In one panel discussion that focused on understanding and prioritising the specific challenges faced by smallholder farmers to ensure digital solutions are not only innovative but also practical, impactful, and sustainable.
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Panelists pointed to a persistent disconnect between researchers and tech designers on one side and the farmers on the other. This gap, they said, often results in well-intended technologies that fail to reach or resonate with their target users.
Dr Jessica Agnew, Associate Director of the College of Agriculture and Life Science (CALS), said the gap results on what is oftern referred to as “the valley of death.”
“On one side we have brilliant research institutions developing drought-resistant varieties, precision agriculture tools, and digital advisory services,” said Agnew. “On the other side of the valley, we have 500 million smallholder farmers who need these innovations.”
Between the two lies a “treacherous valley” where about 90% of innovations fail to reach the market or have a lasting impact,” she said. The reasons for this a numerous, ranging from funding gaps between research and commercialisation and regulatory struggles to the technologies themselves, which are often designed in controlled environments that don’t reflect real-world farming systems.
Dr Milindi Sibomana, Chief Agriculture Officer at One Acre Fund, emphasised the importance of contextual flexibility in the way technologies are introduced.
“We need more nuanced methods of technology transfer,” Sibomana said. “We’re doing a lot of human-centred design work with our farmers to challenge even the content we were sending out. This has been eye-opening; it helped us realise that the principle is what matters. The actual practice can be modified to fit the farmer’s specific context, as long as the principle is clear,” he said.
Building on this, Margaret Awinja, coordinator of the Western Region Farmers Network, stressed that understanding farmers’ needs also requires a sensitivity to cultural norms and social structures within different communities.
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“Unless you know the needs of the farmers, you cannot introduce anything to them and expect them to adapt to it,” Awinja noted.
“In our African setup, we have our cultural norms; in some communities or tribes, there are things that children are not supposed to do and women are not supposed to.”
For Anthony Kioko, CEO of the Cereal Growers Association (CGA), the unrealistic assumptions resting on digital transformation efforts in agriculture is another issue.
“We have seen over the last decade a lot of efforts by different partners who come, and they are talking about the digitalisation of transactions such as market and financial access platforms,” said Kioko.
“One thing that we see across the board is that there’s very little regard sometimes to what it will take for such digitalisation efforts to succeed because most of the time it’s built on the assumption that smallholder farmers are going to have access to smartphones and then there are overpromises associated with the digitalisation process.”
Running from June 9-12, the African Conference on Agricultural Technologies is regarded as the continent’s leading agriculture technology transfer platform. It facilitates dialogue and consensus-building around transformative technologies, innovative ideas, and progressive policies to accelerate agricultural development.
Participants will explore various topics, including investment and partnerships for agri-tech solutions, commercialisation and scaling of technologies, and building a sustainable future through innovation in agriculture.
