Digitize Rural-Urban Agriculture
Faced with climate change and major food shortages, agriculture in African countries must increase their economic, environmental and social performance. Team up with the major IT-company Atos and collaborate with African farmers boosting their productivity to contribute to a sustainable development of African cities. Come up with new digital platform solutions that innovate farming in Africa!
#agritech #africanfarming #sustainableagriculture
✅ Completed 🏁 Winner Congrats to CABI for winning the Challenge!
🏆 Prize EUR 3,000 per Challenge + funding programs with Atos, BMZ digilab and Make-IT Alliance + joint publication | For more see Tab “Rewards”
🌎 Scope Open to participants from all over the world
Submission Template
For the participation within the Innovate 2030 program, a common submission template is available. This template will help you to structure your ideas and approaches and to find answers to all relevant questions.
The Submission Template is mandatory to submit.
In addition to this submission template, you will find specific requirements and guiding questions for your use case in the "Guiding Questions" section down below.
You can also complement your submission with prototypes, pitch decks, image and video materials, higher-level concepts, or specific use case-related instruments – simply submit these documents along with the submission template via our platform.
Guiding Questions
This Challenge is calling for the most innovative digital solutions or use cases of existing digital solutions that help African small farmers to boost their productivity. One possible and promising approach you can follow is to identify relevant problems of farmers and to develop concrete use cases or holistic approaches for digital platform solutions on this basis.
The following guiding questions are for your inspiration, and it is not mandatory to answer all of them.
General – Platform
- What problems/challenges for small farmers are known and, in your view, particularly relevant that could be tackled via a digital platforms/ digital solutions?
- How should such a platform be structured in general to map the whole ecosystem around farming? Which information, structure and possibilities are particularly relevant?
- How can a platform help to foster resilience, efficiency and emission reduction under challenging circumstances?
- How exactly can the platform be scaled? What data can be systematically collected?
- How can the platform be used to ensure the planning possibilities for the different users - e.g. when it comes to ordering new fertilizers? What criteria, specifications and structure can be used to implement such a planning system?
- How can improvements provided by a platform bring cities and communities together?
Designing smart farming applications
- What are the main challenges facing the agricultural sector? Which specific applications can address the current challenges? (e.g. crop protection, precise farming, water management and resource efficiency etc.)
- How can the resource efficiency be optimized regarding the scarce water resources?
- Which sensor technologies combined with a digital platform can be used to promote precision agroecology and which problems are to be addressed in the process?
- What solutions help to better control and manage the harvest?
Enabling business opportunities
- What new sales channels can be opened up through platforms?
- What other business opportunities are possible, such as access to employees, suppliers, etc.?
- How can the supply chain from farmer to customer be incorporated in the platform?
- How can the data obtained on the platform be monetized and what business models can arise from it? Customers and sales channels; Suppliers and partners; Employers etc.
- How can the platform or the data gathered with the platform be used to improve logistics for food?
- How can young people be incentivized to become more involved in the agricultural sector?
- Who is the best fit to administer the platforms?
Financial and transactional opportunities
- What technology, for example blockchain, can be used to secure payment interactions via platform solutions?
- What formats should be used to ensure the exchange of different actors and how should the interaction between buyers and sellers be organized?
- How could the platform serve as a gateway to investment opportunities?
Access to Knowledge and Know-How
- What knowledge in which form should be collected on the platform?
- How can traditional and cultural methods of production be preserved and used?
- How can farmers be incentivized to share their knowledge?
- What education programs are needed to successfully implement the new platform and introduce it to farmers?
- Which sharing practices between farmers can be enabled by such platform?