Director of CTA, Michael Hailu
A recent report conducted by the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) on the digitalization of agriculture in Africa has recommend that the existing solutions in Ghana’s digital agriculture space should be revised to ensure full potential for all users in the sector.
Though Ghana has been ranked third among African countries making concerted efforts towards progress and investment in agriculture digitization solutions, the Centre is entreating government and all stakeholders to ensure inclusiveness in the process.
Speaking during the official launch of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) held in Accra yesterday, the Director of CTA, Mr. Michael Hailu told the Goldstreet Business that tweaking existing solutions in the country’s agriculture digitalization process is based on the need to ensure inclusion – most especially of women and other users in remote areas – to ensure optimal benefits to users.
“A lot of the interventions taken in the sector are not as inclusive of women who represent 25 percent of users whereas young people constitute 71 percent of users. You could see that young people are likely to use the innovation in Ghana’s agriculture digitalization process”, he stressed.
According to the Centre, there has been significant growth in Digitalization for Agriculture (D4Ag) in Africa in the past decade. However, growth and progress towards D4Ag “has been somewhat slow to serve the smallholders that produce 80 percent of Africa’s agricultural input”, the report states.
Other speakers who spoke during the pre-launch of the Forum on Monday asserted that digitalization of agriculture has the potential to revolutionize smallholder farming in Africa to enable farmers leverage on the opportunities created in the sector to significantly improve productivity. They stressed the need for all stakeholders to encourage favourable investment in the sector.
The use of effective digital technology in the agriculture space is expected to stimulate innovation for sustainable agri-food systems and produce better and safer food while preserving natural resources and biodiversity, the CTA reports states.
This year’s AGRF forum – which started on Tuesday and ends on Friday, is organized under the theme: Grow Digital – Leveraging Digital Transformation for Sustainable Food Systems in Africa.
