October 11th, 2023

Smallholder farmers in Africa are affected by multiple stressors and shocks that negatively disrupt farming systems and consequently threaten farmers’ livelihoods. These stressors are caused by environmental and economic shocks. Economic shocks include those caused by conflicts that lead to failing agricultural markets.

Environmental shocks include the effects of climate change that lead to the proliferation of disease incidences and pest infestation, such as the 2019 – 2021 desert locust invasion, droughts, and floods. In addition, smallholder farmers are heavily affected by pandemics such as Covid-19. The booming digital technology era provides a viable way to build farmers’ resilience to cope with the shocks.

FSD Kenya joins Mercy Corps and its partners in hosting the 7th AgriFin Learning Event (ALE) with the aim of bringing together stakeholders in the agricultural sector who are focused on leveraging digital technology, to drive the sector’s growth, and improve the lives of smallholder farmers.

For more information about the event and details about registration, click here.

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Select sessions 

Leaders Dialogue | Tuesday, 7th November 2023, 8:30 am – 9:30 am

Session Overview:
During this session, speakers will be setting the stage for the 7th Annual Learning Event, exploring how food systems and associated initiatives towards improving them, can be enhanced by greater collaboration, forming the right partnerships, to be able to take advantage of emerging technologies.

This session will be moderated by FSD Kenya’s Tamara Cook

Click here to watch the session recording

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Session 1: Financial Services

Theme: Finding Effective Partnerships, making it work for Smallholder Farmers 

Tuesday, 7th November 2023, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm.

Session Overview:

The objective of the session is to discuss Partnerships and their role in the success of access to financial services by smallholder farmers, which would include: – Showcasing how partnerships leverage strengths of ecosystem players to develop platforms that have better active use and access outcomes – Assessing the competitive landscape to unpack where collaboration would work best e.g. agent level and data sharing level – Reviewing success stories and also challenges faced in fostering partnerships for financial services. – How do we attract the right partners for a platform?

FSD Kenya’s Jared Ochieng will speak during this session.

Click here to watch the session recording. 

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Session 2: Gender and marginalised groups

Theme: Growing Inclusive and Equitable Food Systems through Collective Action.

Tuesday, 7th November 2023, 10:00 am – 12:30 pm.

Session Overview:

This session aspires to be a dynamic platform that sets the stage for transformative change within food systems. Through this session, we aim to facilitate a collaborative dialogue that transcends boundaries, bringing together a diverse array of stakeholders from philanthropic capital to agribusinesses, financial institutions, and technology innovators to chart a course towards a future where food systems are not only more equitable but also more capable of withstanding the impacts of a changing climate.

Join us in shaping the future of food systems, where collective action is the linchpin upon which resilience, inclusivity, and sustainability depend. Together, we will navigate the complex terrain of modern agriculture, forging partnerships that will drive meaningful change and ensure a nourished and resilient world for all.

FSD Kenya’s Duncan Oyaro will speak during this session.

 

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Session 6: Data sharing:

Theme: Collaborative Data Synergies for Food System Transformation

Wednesday, 8th November 2023, 10:00am – 12:30pm

Session Overview:
There is a growing recognition of the role of data in agriculture and food systems including in the context of smallholder farmers from low- and middle-income countries. By transitioning to data driven agriculture, smallholder farmers can reduce the cost of cultivation, increase productivity, increase sales realisation, and reduce vulnerabilities. For service providers, shifting to data driven service delivery can enable better customer segmentation, improved product design, reduced cost of service delivery, and improved adoption of services. For stakeholders such as development funders, data can enable evidence based funding and also ease monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Consequently, today, there are multiple efforts to integrate data into agriculture and food systems.

However, in practice, when it comes to data in agriculture, most of the efforts are in silos with each organization working on their own data collection, management, and analysis journey. This is resulting in duplication of efforts and resources, a fragmented data ecosystem, and farmer fatigue, all of which are detrimental to the data-driven agriculture movement. As a response, there has been a niche movement towards promoting collaboration in the data ecosystem through various models: co–investment in data collection, data sharing, development of digital public infrastructure, and others. These collaborations are new but hold several promises. For instance, it can be hypothesised that data sharing can reduce costs of service delivery and also provide access to larger pools of data for training algorithms and predictive models. Similarly, open data can enable better product design. Collaboration can also amplify evidence-based decision making and reduce costs of MEL of development programs.

With this background, in this session we plan to understand what Collaborative Data Synergies for Food System Transformation means in the context of smallholder farmers from low- and middle-income countries, and how such collaboration can be seeded, supported, and scaled.

 

For the full event programme and details about all the sessions visit the event website here.

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