Democratising access to information and services to farmer

With agriculture sustaining 70 percent of Africa’s livelihoods, Microsoft is committed to developing agritech solutions to enable data-driven, precise and connected farming that will help farmers across Africa optimises yields, boost farm productivity and increase their profitability.

Current research estimates that smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of the farming community, with an estimated 33 million smallholder farms, but they are often hard to reach, residing in remote areas, and lack access to skills, knowledge and agricultural support services. The global pandemic has further highlighted the need for more robust and sustainable agricultural practices, which require innovative technology solutions for the development of big data platforms as a means of informing farmers about agricultural best practices.

Agritech extension services can help farmers access information on everything from weather alerts, crop advisories and pest diagnosis, to market prices, information on local seed suppliers and irrigation technology.

A platform for relevant local information

Over the past five years, funding in agritech start-ups across the African continent has been rising consistently, according to data from Disrupt Africa, Microsoft has developed an agritech chatbot known as the AgBot, which provides extension and advisory services to smallholder farmers using either feature phones or smartphones, via SMS, WhatsApp and Telegram.

The AgBot provides a key platform that farmers can use to access all the relevant information from the stakeholders in the agriculture ecosystem like government, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), as well as services from the private sector. The AgBot has created one-stop-shop for farmers through an ecosystem approach where they can access services and information to enable these farmers to increase their productivity. To date, the Agbot has reached and impacted 500 000 farmers.

Smallholder farmers using the AgBot receive personalised input supply information, agricultural news, pest diagnoses, access to farmer messaging groups, and updates on local weather and market prices, as well as soil testing. Using the AgBot, farmers can make the best planting decisions, control pests and disease, and boost their production, which in turn helps them to be more profitable.

Using the SMS chat feature and smartphone messaging apps, farmers can ask questions about which crops to choose for a particular soil, receive planting advice for crops, or find out which pests are affecting their crops, and using WhatsApp, the farmers can send pictures of their pest concerns to get an accurate diagnosis. These services are invaluable to farmers who would otherwise not have access to this kind of information and advice.

The AgBot is helping develop data-driven precision farming

Microsoft’s Africa Transformation Office, , has big plans for AgBot. Farmers will also soon be able to access mechanisation, receive assistance with financing, connection to credit and insurance providers and gain access to subsidies. The intention is to further develop the AgBot to provide smallholder farmers with additional information on local seed suppliers, connections to agronomists, and personalised crop rotation suggestions, alerts about pest outbreaks, and the availability of inputs at local agri-dealers.

The ATO team will also work with Ministry of Agriculture officials across the country to build digital capacity with Excel and Power BI training to ensure informed decision-making incorporating data analysis and other digital tools.

With relevant, up-to-date information available via their phone, the AgBot is helping farmers embrace data-driven precision farming that will increase their productivity, and their profitability.