Digital solutions to transform agriculture: lessons and experiences in Ethiopia

The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) – hereafter the Alliance and its various partners supported by GIZ-Ethiopia is supporting the transformation plan of Ethiopia through developing structured soils/agronomy database and promoting improved analytical approaches. Through organizing a coalition of experts (soil scientists, agronomists, geospatial analysis experts and data scientists), it was possible to materialize collation/collection of tenths of thousands of soil/agronomy datasets, developing standard data management portal, developing standard data collection guidelines and exploring various machine learning techniques to analyze dataset.
With the above accomplishments, the coalition has now moved to the next challenge: mine data, understand patterns and develop solutions that can enable transforming the agricultural system. The team explored different data mining techniques, exchanged experiences and developed frameworks that can facilitate further data analysis endeavors. This included building capacity of national partners in advanced data analytics techniques. Taking advantage of advances in data acquisition, storage, management and analysis, the coalition will soon develop site-specific agroadvisory services. This will involve/integrate climate (onset of rains and planting data), fertilizer recommendation, disease surveillance and early warning complemented with good agronomic practices. The packaged advisories will then be made available for the extension system to communicate to farmers using appropriate means. The coalition will team-up with ‘digital extension’ developers to properly marry ‘content and dissemination mechanisms’. Expected results in the coming few years will involve taking data and data use to the next level, whereby data are “translated” into information and farmer-relevant, gender-specific extension content and disseminated digitally and via analog agricultural advisory services. At the same time, a concerted effort will be made to facilitate the co-creation of an improved Farmer-Data-Research-Extension linkage mechanism for improving the flow and exchange of information between male and female farmers, rural youth, researchers, and extension providers. In the end, enhanced information feedback and linkages will enable extension providers to iteratively and continually improve the quality and efficiency of agricultural advisory services, thereby contributing to transformative agricultural development in Ethiopia.