Public-Private Partnership Sows the Seeds of Digital Agriculture

Sep 2 , 2023

Nearly one million smallholder farmers across 150 woredas in six regional states foresee digital profiling and capacity-building services as the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) and Lersha, a digital agricultural platform signed a three-year agreement last week. Registration, agro-climate advisory and fertiliser recommendations will be given to farmers while enhancement of value chains in several grains including wheat and barley will be the main purpose of the agreement aside from augmenting ATI's farmer hotline service. ATI was established 13 years ago to transform the agricultural sector by working with the private sector and NGOs with funding from USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Mandefro Nigussie (PhD), head of the Institute disclosed the willingness to engage with the private sector to improve service delivery and expand services while the founder of Lersha, Abraham Endrias indicated that there is a low adoption rate of technology in the country albeit expecting improvement after the agreement. Lersha joined the sector three years ago to provide aggregated farming information for both financial institutions and farmers by facilitating easy-to-handle technology. It has provided its services to over 100,000 farmers through 1,007 agents.