President advocates digitisation of agriculture in Africa

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called for the digitisation of agriculture in Africa to ensure that players in the agricultural value chain derive maximum benefit from their toils to propel the continent into prosperity.

He said with the increasing spread of mobile technology on the continent, coupled with the savviness of the youth in technology, the resort to mobile applications to agricultural practices such as planting, harvesting, marketing and processing was the surest way to maximise benefits.

Presidential Forum

President Akufo-Addo made the call at the 2019 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Presidential Summit in Accra last Wednesday.
Participants included African Heads of State, former Presidents, African ministers of Agriculture and experts from across the globe.

The AGRF, which is part of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), was established by the late Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Kofi Annan, to ensure high productivity and enhance the incomes of farmers on the continent.
It also works to ensure food security and nutrition, reduce poverty and ultimately guarantee the future of Africa.

Digitisation

President Akufo-Addo described digitalisation as a revolution that had come to stay, adding: “Africa has no excuse but to make the most of it. Our responsibility, whether as leaders of our families, institutions, companies or countries, is to tap into this new resource and opportunity at our disposal to make this our time for agricultural transformation across the continent.”

He said digitisation provided innovations for challenges in land and soil mapping, water management, pest and disease management, extension delivery, finance, among others.

He added that there also existed mobile phone applications that could be deployed to improve targeting, distribution and tracking of agricultural inputs and post-harvest management.

Ghana

In Ghana, President Akufo-Addo said, the government was applying digital technology in many sectors of the economy to great effect and that its dividends had exceeded expectations and given impetus to the government to further expand the application of digital technology to more areas of national development.

He gave an assurance that the government would continue to work to increase agribusiness investment, boost regional trade and strengthen adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change.

“The evidence in Ghana, in terms of success in the application of digital technology in new areas, gives the assurance that the digital agenda for agriculture will surely succeed,” he added.

He also said Ghana had a fully operational commodity exchange that traded through an electronic trading platform to promote productivity, price stability, increased exports and reduced imports of commodities.

Investment plan

The President said to address the challenges facing the agricultural sector, the government had formulated a four-year national investment plan — Planting for food and jobs — which had rolled out a comprehensive, ambitious and innovative set of policies and programmes tailored at addressing long-standing problems in the sector.

He said the government had also prioritised actions that directly supported farmers to improve their lot.

Results

President Akufo-Addo said those interventions were yielding positive results, leading to the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate in agriculture increasing from 2.9 per cent in 2016 to 6.1 per cent in 2017, with a projected growth to 6.9 per cent this year.

He said because of a bumper harvest of crops in the country last year, Ghana did not import a single grain of maize but rather exported food items to neighbouring countries.

Kofi Annan’s vision

The wife of the late Kofi Annan, Mrs Nane Maria Annan, said the vision of her husband for Africa was a prosperous continent that would feed and sustain itself and even contribute to global food supplies.

She said improving food and nutrition security was not only his goal but also an essential element in building peaceful and prosperous societies because of his belief that “a hungry man is not a free man”.

The President of AGRA, Dr Agnes Kalibata, said her tour of some farms in Ghana indicated that the country was on the right path to ensuring growth and prosperity in the agricultural sector.

She commended Ghana for its reclamation of degraded forests through tree planting.