In my first blog in this series “It’s Time to Phase Out ICT4D (ICT4Ag) and Embrace D4D (D4Ag)!”, I argued that the concept of ICTs for development, both in literal sense and its delivery has focussed on promoting “technologies” to support communication of information for development (information communication technologies (ICTs). I concluded that, technology is just one of the tools to realise the benefits of information for development.

In this second blog, I give a generic overview of the other components to complement the technologies for a more efficient approach to information-driven development. This is what I think should be digitalisation for development (D4D) and Digitalisation for Agriculture (D4Ag) in the case of the agricultural sector. Note that the “D” in D4D/D4Ag is “digitalisation” not “digitisation”.

In the State of Digital Agriculture in the Commonwealth – 2022, the Commonwealth Secretariat used a novel framework to define what digital agriculture should be. The report used a graphic that depicts an ancient Greek Temple with a “roof”, “3 pillars”, and “a base”. The roof represents the development challenges within the agricultural sector that the world is trying to address. (If you operate in other sectors, try and replace the development challenges in your sector such as health, education, etc. and see if the framework makes sense to you). The pillars and the base represent “digitalisation” for the development of “the roof”. The framework also positions countries as unit of deployment/analysis.

What is “digitalisation” according to this Framework?

Pillar 1 argues that digital innovations should be sub-divided into digital technologies and digital services/solutions. The digital technologies may represent the hardware and the backend while the digital solutions and services interface with the users. For example, smallholder farmers might access tailored precision advisory services (digital service/solution) through mobile phone (digital technology) backed by AI (digital technology).

Pillar 2 argues that for an impactful development of the agricultural sector, it will take more than just data. It argues for a coordinated data management through data infrastructure. Hence, multiple investments by different stakeholders in data such as farmer registries, field IDs or polygons, satellite data, soil data, agronomic data without coordination will not solve the development challenges they are aiming at.

Pillar 3 is about taking the development approach beyond aid to business (seeing agriculture through the lens of agribusiness). Business development services including financing and investment in digital innovations and data (infrastructure) should be done through phased approach with no gap in between. The current approach is uncoordinated where public sector financing is done in isolation with the private sector investments, thereby making it difficult for the startups and young businesses to survive.

The Base includes all other activities at country level that enable the digital innovations, data infrastructure and the business development. This includes the policies and strategies, capacity building, knowledge products, business ecosystems, other physical infrastructures, etc. Linking a smallholder farmer to market through SMS without a means to transport the produce to the market does not solve the problem.

From the above framework, digitalisation is broader than digital technologies. Digital technology is about a 10^th of the digitalisation. If international development organisations and non-governmental organisations will take a holistic approach to D4Ag instead of promoting information communication technologies, I believe we will see more impact of digitalisation on rural development.

Let’s ask ourselves why the United States of America passed a bill recently to ban TikTok. Why have Meta, WhatsApp, Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, Google, etc., been fined billions of dollars by some developed countries? It’s because of “data” (citizens data) not the “digital technology”! A better approach to data management will lead to trusted use of the digital technologies for communicating “information” for development.

The big question is whether the business sector is hiding behind “data” and projecting digital technologies such as AI, ML, Blockchains, etc. as the panacea to development challenges? I believe if we really want to “develop” the “developing countries”, we will need to empower them to manage their own data instead of gathering data from them to label them. The era of D4D/D4Ag should be seen as opportunity for “business” for these countries instead of “aid”.

Check back to read my next blog on “coordinated data management!