AGRICULTURE CONTRIBUTES HEAVILY TO THE GDP OF MANY AFRICAN COUNTRIES AND IT EMPLOYS MORE THAN HALF OF THE RURAL POPULATION ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

Despite the positive effect of agriculture across the continent, the sector remains unattractive to young people. Many young Africans move to the urban areas and have no interest in taking up agriculture as a source of livelihood. The rural population comprising mostly smallholder farmers practices subsistence farming. Many of these farmers are faced with the problem of low productivity caused by a combination of adverse climatic conditions and harmful farm practices.

Innovators have begun to rely on technology such as artificial intelligence, remote sensing, geographic information softwares, virtual reality, drone technology, application programming interface technology and precision technology to provide an accurate measure of rainfall, pest control, soil information, soil productivity, and farm size and productivity potential.

Despite this potential of technology to change Africa’s agriculture sector, smallholder farmers are faced with the challenge of incorporating technology in their agricultural practices. To fully understand the perception of stakeholders towards these problems, a research study was carried out to survey youths, smallholder farmers and agriculture technology organisations in 11 countries. The goal was to understand the lack of interest in agriculture among the youth, the reasons behind low productivity and low technology adoption among smallholder farmers, the barriers to technology adoption and the innovation in agriculture on the continent.

The research suggests that efforts geared towards providing financial capital, capacity building and access to land will spur the youths’ interest in agriculture. Smallholder farmers will embrace technology if their capacity is developed and there is affordability in the cost to adopting technology.