Agriculture: a project to close the digital divide in West Africa - FRACTURE NUMÉRIQUE

Issues

The agricultural world is increasingly using social networks and digital applications. In West Africa, these technologies are a tool for economic and social development with great potential. Digital technologies are beginning to benefit family farming, reducing isolation, building capacities to develop and market products, and making agriculture more attractive to young people. But this also comes with a set of risks: data grabbing, a gap between development and needs, inequality of access, growing disparities between rural and urban areas, between industrial agriculture and family farming, etc. Thus, West Africa is now experiencing disparities of access and use of technologies and services enabled by digital solutions, which is known as the “digital divide”.

Description

The Fracture Numérique project was launched in November 2021 in three agricultural sectors that face different challenges: market gardening in Benin, the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire, and milk collection in Senegal. Its goal is to characterise the digital divide: the different uses of digital technologies in West Africa and the factors that foster or hinder their progress in agriculture. Using field surveys and individual or collective interviews, the project also looks at the causes and consequences of these disparities of use for the actors in these sectors. Financed by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, this project is coordinated by CIRAD with the support of #DigitAg, through the international network established in the context of the Digital Agriculture Convergence Laboratory.

Expected results

The range of cases examined will provide a comprehensive view of the issues linked to digital technologies, in order to draw crosscutting lessons from them. These will then be shared during collective workshops in order to build the capacity of the digital actors concerned to produce relevant digital tools and services that are tailored to farmers’ capacities and to local constraints.
In the market gardening sector for urban centres in Benin, producers do not use specific digital tools, although many of them use social networks to sell their products or share advice. The goal will be to determine whether the advanced use of digital technologies could improve producers’ capacity to access the market, to acquire knowledge or to develop their network.
The cocoa value chain in Côte d’Ivoire is very vertical, with a market characterised by several hundred thousand producers for just a few large buyers. In particular, the study will seek to determine whether digital technologies increase the power of the multinationals that buy cocoa beans, or whether they can benefit the small planters who derive most of their income from this cash crop.
In the milk sector in Sahelian Senegal, the livestock farmers associated with the Laiterie du Berger dairy have begun to use several digital tools for milk collection, payments, and sales of cattle feed. The study will strive to compare the situations of farmers associated with this dairy and those who are not affiliated. Ultimately, the goal is to contribute to the inclusive and sustainable development of these technologies for the greater benefit of farmers.