Smart Tech the new tool for African farmers

How do you manage the trick of better feeding school children and at a lower cost?

How do you count the number of mangoes on your farm to get a fair price?

And what is the clever but cheap way for a farmer to reduce his irrigation bill?

Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa can give the image of hard work and low productivity, but experts say that new technologies are changing the game.

Farmers, crop buyers and other professionals in the sector have started exploiting smart gadgets and critical numbers to improve productivity, reduce costs and smooth market wrinkles, they said.

& # 39; Digital Revolution & # 39;

"A digital revolution is happening in Africa," said Pascal Bonnet, Deputy Director of CIRAD, French Center for Agricultural Research for International Development.

"On the continent, there are excellent researchers in information technology.The digital agriculture is a real opportunity for qualified young Africans."

The idea of ​​directly connecting farmers to consumers, removing wholesalers and stores is a familiar story in Europe and North America.

Awa Thiam, a 28-year-old telecommunications engineer, follows her example in her native Senegal.

The company that she founded, Lifantou, connects school canteens to agricultural cooperatives with the help of Big Data.

"There is a huge need for this," said Thiam, presenting his work at a conference on agro-technology in Dakar last month.

"Today, between 25% and 50% of the cost of school meals goes to intermediaries, but schools have limited budgets.If you shorten the supply chain, canteens can reduce the cost of meals and to offer children more varied menus. "

Its unique platform relies on a database of agricultural production and schools to match potential demand with supply.

He buys as a group to reduce costs for schools and finally organizes the transport of goods, with real-time monitoring of operations.

Mobile counting

The Pix Fruit project, meanwhile, aims to help farmers who have so far estimated their mango harvest by counting fruit on a group of trees and then extrapolating the entire plantation.

This rudimentary method has a considerable margin of error.

Emile Faye, a French researcher in digital agro-ecology who works for Pix Fruit, says that the margin of error can be multiplied by 10.

A buyer, for example, could pay the price of two tons of mangoes while taking delivery of 20 tons from the farmer, although mistakes can go both ways.

The Pix Fruit alternative uses advanced modeling software to produce a more accurate count of the crop.

With the help of a smartphone, the farmer takes pictures of a selection of trees in his fields.

Fruit recognition technology then calculates the likely overall harvest using a drone database, which also includes information on climate, soil and administrative constraints.

In this way, farmers learn the true value of their harvest, while wholesalers and price traders have a better perception of the risk of oversupply or under-supply.

The system, developed jointly by CIRAD and the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research, could be extended to coffee, lychees and citrus fruits.

Market Information

That the smart phone plays such a central role is not surprising.

The advent of mobile has helped Africa to exceed the cost of installing fixed lines, stimulating innovative use, from carpool to money transfer.

Pioneering work is now spreading in the rural world.

According to Africa.com, the third most downloaded application of the continent is Esoko, which collects and shares crop prices, provides weather information and advice for agriculture, and organizes payment via a system. mobile payment.

It operates in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

The Widim pump, manufactured by a Dakar firm called Nano Air, is an SMS-controlled box that sends a farmer to manage his irrigation system.

The savings are substantial, even for poor farming families, says Oumar Bbade, a 27-year-old engineer and co-founder of the company.

"The farmer no longer needs to walk several miles a day, consume gasoline or hire someone to monitor the pumps.

"He can open the water or turn off the power using his mobile phone."

Nanoair, which has 12 employees after two years of operation, sold 250 Widim systems and received orders from Morocco and Zambia.

Bbade has also founded another company that deals with delivery and after-sales service.

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© 2019 AFP