Innovations Session N°28

Digitalisation & AI in Agrifood: Tools for Efficiency and Market Access

Across Africa, farmers, agrifood small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs face a familiar set of challenges: low productivity, high losses, limited access to timely information, and the difficulty of running an efficient business while also reaching the right markets and buyers. These challenges are not new, but the tools available to address them are changing fast. Digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) are opening new ways to address some of these gaps.

Digital solutions are increasingly being applied across the agrifood value chain, from digital advisory services (weather and production information, and AI-supported pest and disease identification etc.), to inventory and logistics tools, digital marketplaces and platforms connecting producers with buyers.  The potential is significant, the African Development Bank estimates that AI could add up to $1 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2035, with agriculture as the sector expected to gain the most.^[1] At the same time, the digital agriculture ecosystem is expanding rapidly, with nearly 1,400 digital agriculture solutions identified across low- and middle-income countries and an estimated 50 million active users across the focus regions.[2] Yet reach and potential are not the same as proven impact: many of the solutions counted here remain small-scale or donor-funded pilots, and rigorous evidence of sustained, farm-level economic benefit is still limited.

As the range of digital and AI solutions continues to expand, another important dimension is how these tools are reaching and being used by agrifood businesses, and under what conditions they can create meaningful value in practice.

This session focuses on two areas where digitalisation and AI can create practical value: improving the efficiency and performance of agrifood businesses and strengthening their access to markets and buyers.

[1]African Development Bank, 2025, Africa’s AI Productivity Gain: Pathways to Labour Efficiency, Economic Growth and Inclusive Transformation

[2] Beanstalk AgTech, 2023, State of the Digital Agriculture Sector: Harnessing the Potential of Digital for Impact Across Agricultural Value Chains in Low- and Middle-Income Countries