Digital
technology has been accelerating and improving communications in Africa for over
20 years. In that time Africans have been able to leapfrog the costly landline
phase, resulting in 500 million Africans currently having access to mobile
phones. Mobile technologies generated 6.7% of Africa’s GDP and 3.8 million jobs
in 2015. There will be 750 million African users in 2025, and falling device
prices will mean that at least 350 million of these will be smart phone users.
Africa’s
“iGDP” (which measures the internet’s contribution to overall GDP) is low, at
1.1%, around half the levels in other emerging economies. But this should rise
to at least 5% by 2025, matching that of leading economies such as Sweden and
the United Kingdom. However, if the internet achieves the same kind of scale
and impact as the spread of mobile phones, iGDP in Africa could account for as
much as $300 billion of total GDP, with internet access leaping to 600 million
by 2025.
This is
impressive growth, but the impact of digital technology on agriculture has been
spectacular, and the mobile phone has also become a highly versatile agricultural
implement with a large number of uses: in weather prediction and insurance
systems, agricultural extension services, and providing access to information
about optimal and timely applications of crop protection or fertilizer. It has also
been welcomed and valued by farmers as enhancing better and quicker access to
crop and commodity prices, new products, services, and market conditions.
More
generally, digital technology, with its gender neutral applications, has significant
professional benefits for the entire production value chain—by improving accountability
and transparency, and for empowering women and young people for whom barriers
to adoption have in the past often impeded their potential and contribution.
I took
advantage of the benefits of well-applied digital technology during my
experience as Agriculture Minister in Nigeria when we developed and used electronic wallet systems to
deliver farm input support to farmers through electronic vouchers on mobile
phones. Nigeria became the first country globally to do so.
The impact
was massive. Over four years, about 15 million farmers were reached. Food
production expanded by more than 21 million tonnes over the period. I was
particularly pleased that 2.5 million women farmers benefitted. This all
occurred by putting a digital technology--enhancing simple but vital
communications--at the service of the requirement to reduce the risk of making
loans to farmers.
And agriculture
as a business is poised to become a much more attractive proposition for young
people and entrepreneurs, thanks to the communications revolution that digital
technology has produced. The African Development Bank is ready with a slew of
programmes and projects to assist them.
In
particular, the African Development Bank and the World Bank plan to invest $700
million through the programme “Technologies
for African Agricultural Transformation,” part of the Feed Africa strategy
for the scaling up of agricultural technologies to reach millions of farmers in
Africa in the next ten years.
Communications
are critical features in the way some of the bank’s key programmes will
operate, including the Affirmative
Finance Action for Women in Africa that will seek out women’s enterprises
in order to address the financing gap and access challenges faced by women
operating in agricultural value chains in Africa.
Jobs for Youth in Africa 2016–2025 aims to harness Africa’s demographic dividend to
drive robust and inclusive economic growth and will help generate some 25 million
jobs and positively affect 50 million young people over the next decade. It will
do this by creating better-tailored opportunities for self-employment and
entrepreneurship, strengthening human capital, and creating durable labour
market linkages.
The ENABLE Youth programme will provide
access to capital and capacity to young “Agripreneurs” to create 300,000
agribusinesses and 1.5 million jobs in 30 countries across Africa, with an
estimated investment of $15 billion over the next five years.
The Bank’s Boost Africa initiative, supported by
the European Investment Bank and the European Commission, will support business
incubation facilities and create a new class of young business leaders who will
become job creators and not job seekers. It will support 3,000 new SMEs; create
25,000 direct jobs and 100,000 indirect jobs; and improve environmental, social,
and governance practices in African SMEs.
"Agriculture is becoming very cool."
"Agriculture is becoming very cool."
Digital
communications will be vital for the success of these four key policies, but
the image of agriculture itself needs wholesale revision. Agriculture is seen
as old and traditional, as a hard and difficult labour that leads nowhere but
subsistence.
But the
potential of agriculture for economic revival and job creation is largely
untapped. With population growth and rapid urbanization, the food and
agribusiness industry in Africa is projected to grow to a demand of $1 trillion
by 2030 from $330 billion. By 2050, Africa will have the combined population of
China and India today. Consumer spending is projected to double to $1.4
trillion by 2020 and triple to $2.1 trillion by 2025, with business-to-business
spending to rise to $3.5 trillion by 2025.
The African
Development Bank knows that there will be jobs galore in the African
agricultural sector in coming years. Innovation and new investments will create
a snowball effect as agriculture modernises and aligns with industrial
infrastructure and processes to conserve added value and new jobs for the
continent.
These are
just some of the reasons why agriculture is starting to be seen as a business
for innovation, new technology, and investment. Communications will play a
significant role in all stages of this growth in potential and in the bank’s
efforts to find and apply the funds that will realise Africa’s economic future.
The sector is going to create the next wave of African business successes even
as investments chase the profits that will be made by the early entrepreneurs
and “agripreneurs.”
Let’s face
it. With potential outcomes like that, agriculture is about to lose its dusty,
dowdy image. Agriculture is becoming very cool.
top pic from dw.com; bottom design from sfdb.org
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