YAP proposal #145: ICT and Agriculture: Gateway to the Future (Adesida Adegboyega, Nigeria)

I am Adesida Adegboyega, 34, from Nigeria, I grow specialty vegetables using greenhouse technology and contract farming system. I have extensive experience and a master’s degree in agricultural extension and rural development.

I represent Charm Horizon Intl. Farms (CHIF). At CHIF, we embark on innovative projects to increase the production, sales, and consumption of our local agricultural products.

I desire a better Nigeria. Creativity and innovation drives and motivates me; incorporating information and communications technology (ICT) into agricultural production is the gateway to the future for Africans.

Our vision is to raise agricultural production for business development, and cultivate prospects in agribusiness through improved farming systems and contract farming.

In Nigeria today, our biggest challenge in crop production is 60% post-harvest loss (PHL).

PHL is caused by a variety of factors that occur between harvest and human consumption. The application of ICT in agriculture is increasingly important.

E-agriculture is an emerging field focused on the enhancement of agricultural and rural development through improved information and communication processes. This could be powered by partnering with developmental agencies, institutions, research institutes, telecoms, and farmers.

Our aim is to create an online platform, via a mobile app, where farmers can showcase their products and retailers can connect directly with these suppliers (e-commerce); making their products visible and easily accessed within Nigerian states.

I have done my background research on this: collating database of all farms functioning in Nigeria. Presently, we are talking to some telecommunications company in Nigeria to fund us. We are also partnering with a software developer and online website consultancy service, who is currently working on the app development. We want him to own a share in the company, so as to reduce cost of apps development.

The platform will be user-friendly for illiterate farmers, although we will introduce the use of USSD codes. This will allow the farmer to input information without having to use the Internet.

Finally, it will be an interactive site whereby, we have webinars, farmers’ forum, and a calendar-based app to show the crop for the season and other added information.

This ICT solution directly attacks the logistics involved in conveying the goods from the producers to the consumers; increasing market sale of both agricultural inputs and outputs.

The success of this idea depends largely on funds available, so much need to be done: ecommerce website development fee charges, interswitch ePayment gateway, website domain name (charges per year), and website hosting (charges per year). 

Blogpost and picture submitted by Adesida Adegboyega (Nigeria): adesida007.aa[at]gmail.com

The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.

 

This post is published as proposal #145 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.

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“YAP” is part of the #GCARD3 process, the third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development.