At the Digital Disruption in Agriculture Forum held at Addis Ababa, the World Bank Group has brought technology and services companies in the agriculture technology area to showcase their products and solutions at the Innovations Market place. On the two days forum hosted this week, different international and national technology developers have introduced their digital tools which are helpful for agriculture.
Ruth Yohannes, head of human resource at the Digital Green Technology said that the company is content provider for agricultural system. The technology is on disseminating information for the farmers through video. The video is also prepared by the fellow farmers. Hence this will help farmers to easily adopt and take the experience. As to her this technology helps farmers to increase their productivity and profit. According to her, the previous Conventional Agricultural Extension System was time taking and difficult data collection system.
Yet, this system enables farmers to easily adopt new agricultural mechanisms from their fellow farmers than development agents. She also remarked that they are working in partnership with Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and other concerned government bodies for a better result. Documents from the World Bank Group revealed that Digital Green is a global development organization that empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by harnessing the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships.
This digital platform is used for community engagement to improve livelihoods in rural communities. Digital Green partners with and trains agricultural extension service providers to produce, disseminate, and monitor the impact of short, locally-relevant videos that share knowledge and prompt adoption of improved and high-productivity agricultural technologies and practi ces.
Laura Johnson Blair Chief Strategy Officer for Farm force digital platform said that the plat form is helpful for traceability on the product of small holder farmers and increase export. Additionally, she noted that there are some Ethiopian farmer clients who are working with them on Avocado product and that are benefited well. Besides this they are on conversation with the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture to implement the platform on coffee exporting sector.
Documents from the developer site indicate that Farm force builds trust and transparency through delivering digital solutions to secure sustainable sourcing, improve farmer quality of life and protect the environment. Their cloud-hosted web and mobile platform enables digital management and datadriven decisions in the first mile of agricultural value chains. They support organizations to understand where their products originate and how they were grown.
Their clients can manage the strategic sourcing partnerships with smallholder farmers to alleviate pain points and drive supply chain sustainability. The robust, mature solution has demonstrated measurable benefits for five years and is available in 14 languages (including Amharic). On the other hand Yafet Abera, Business development Officer at MOSS says using such digital technology alternatives will help the farmer for a better productivity and profit. M-birr which is under the MOSS is the first mobile banking service in Ethiopia.
Therefore, as it has high linkage with micro finances farmers can take money from their woreda and village even at rural areas through the M-birr. Documents from World Bank group reveal that Moss ICT Consultancy set up its operations in Ethiopia in 2009. It is the Technology Service Provider powering the M-BIRR Mobile Money Service.
The MOSS Mobile Wallet platform is feature rich, interoperable and scalable technology provided to Ethiopian Financial institutions to enable Ethiopian financial institution meet their digital finance strategic goals. One of the experts from Xarvio Digital Farming Solution also told The Ethiopian Herald that the technology only needs to have a smart phone for farmers. As to him, they can identify at least the weeds and the diseases of each crops by taking pictures. But first farmers are supposed to download the application on their smart phones.
He also revealed that the aim of this digital technology is enabling farmers to become self-agronomist. XarvioTM – Digital Farming Solutions is a pioneer in the digitization of agriculture. Xarvio develops smart solutions that enable farmers to manage their fields more efficiently and sustainably. According to Daniel Ayalew, ICT officer at Farm Radio International, the company produces radio resources that help thousands of broadcasters across sub Saharan Africa to improve their programs for farmers.
As to him this technology enables farmers to easily access agricultural information from the radio and even they can ask question through it and the experts from the group will give them appropriate feedback for them. He also suggest farmers to use this smart and easy tool for their productivity and improve their lives.
On the conclusion remark of the forum, Ms. Tania Lozansky -Senior Manager of Advisory for Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services sectors at International Financial Corporation (IFC) remarked that implementing and adopting of these digital technologies enable farmers to increase their profit and productivity. In parallel with these market linkage will create an opportunities for different business sectors to invest on such technologies she noted.
And also she stressed that the forum will help market developers to share their experience and create market linkage among them. Similarly Elias Nuri, Team Leader of the ICT for Agriculture Services team at the Ethiopian Agriculture Transformation Agency (ATA) said that the agency is collaborating with the ministry of agriculture and the stakeholders in order to digitalize the agricultural sector.
For the most part he avowed that the agency will support farmers in order to adopt these smart technologies for their profitability and economic growth of the country. To sum up, Ethiopian farmers are supposed to use such digital technologies for better agricultural result experts of the technology founders agreed.
The Ethiopian Herald May 18/2019
BY HIZKEL HAILU
