CROPIN-AGRA Partnership Taps Into Digital Technologies To Boost Africa’s Extension Service Coverage

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CropIn and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) have partnered in a new program that seeks to increase the access to extension services by farmers in Africa. AGRA works with governments, private sector companies and other organizations to bring knowledge and extension services to farmers through the use of self-employed Village-Based Advisors (VBAs). 

In the new partnership, CropIn and AGRA will select and train 10,626 entrepreneurial VBAs to reach three million farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Tanzania and Mozambique. The VBAs will facilitate the training of farmers through ‘mother and baby’ demonstrations - where ‘mother’ is a demonstration site and ‘baby’ is the farmer’s own plot. Regular performance comparisons of the ‘mother and baby’ plots will be made to assess the quality of training received by farmers. 

Digital Tech Will Help Boost CropIn-AGRA Partnership
CropIn, an artificial intelligence (AI) led Software as a Service (SaaS) based agri-tech organization, will also offer a centralized digitalization platform that will be accessed by AGRA, its implementation partners and VBAs for a comprehensive review of farmer engagements. SaaS is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. 

The platform will generate farmer scores based on the historical performance of their plots and other socio-economic factors, enabling CropIn and AGRA to make appropriate adjustments in their support. Additionally, the digitalization of VBA activity will enhance their linkages with other service providers to increase their capacity for the last-mile delivery of agricultural inputs and services. 

CropIn’s Chief Revenue Officer Jitesh Shah said: “In these unprecedented times, VBAs have restricted movement, and are unable to train farmers in gatherings of more than 2-10 persons. There is, therefore, a critical need to improve on a digital extension to ensure that farmers continue to gain access to information, and the inputs they need to sustainably increase productivity and income. Knowledge dissemination and advisory services to farmers via VBAs will be provided through the digital platform by the remotely-placed agronomists. Advisories provided will be on sustainable farming practices, pest and disease outbreak, weather forecast, 

Comments

  1. Anonymous2 June 2021 at 10:23

    Tech initiatives will help achieve the common goal of increasing agricultural output that is needed to feed the global population.

    ReplyDelete

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