Paper short abstract

Ethnographic research on Kenyan agri-tech startups examines how “sustainability” is defined in digital agriculture. Early findings show it is framed as commercial viability, reinforced by input-company partnerships, shaping who digital tools are built for and whose farming futures are prioritized.

Paper long abstract

Kenya is frequently positioned as a continental leader in digital agriculture, celebrated for its ecosystem of agri-tech startups and innovation hubs. Within ICT4Ag discourse these technologies are framed as pathways toward sustainability, productivity, and inclusive rural development. Yet the social worlds in which these digital futures are designed remain underexamined.

Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork among Kenyan agri-tech startups, developers, and intermediary actors, this paper examines how “sustainability” is conceptualized and enacted by those building digital agriculture systems. Based on semi-structured and informal interviews, participant observation inside startup offices, as well as on farms and with the startups' field agents, the analysis combines insights from anthropology and STS.

The paper asks how agri-tech actors understand sustainability, and how these understandings shape the design and targeting of digital tools. Early findings suggest that sustainability is frequently framed in entrepreneurial terms as commercial viability. This framing is materially reinforced through through partnerships with agricultural input purveyors that embed input marketing within digital advisory platforms. Environmental and social concerns enter the design process primarily when they can be aligned with these commercial imperatives.

Rather than presuming either success or failure, the paper traces how market-oriented definitions of sustainability become infrastructural, shaping who digital agriculture is built for and what forms of farming are made legible and valuable. In doing so, it situates Kenyan agri-tech within broader AR4D investments and asks whether digital agriculture is opening pathways toward inclusive rural development - or consolidating a narrower, market-centric vision of agricultural futures.

Paper short abstract

The transformative capacity of African agricultural platforms and data is simultaneously seen as an emancipator and an oppressor. Findings from Ghana and an analysis of apps show a more nuanced reality. Limited scale and market volatility confine any impact of platformization today.

Paper long abstract

Data generating technologies have increasingly been present in African. Agricultural platforms bundle advisory, finance, market, and due diligence services and gradually penetrate every aspect of the agricultural sector. Platforms can profoundly affect agricultural (pre-)production, value addition, and marketing, but demand vast, real-time, accurate data from many farmers and farms for this.

Our paper presents a mixed-method investigation of qualitative data from interviews with diverse stakeholder in Ghana’s agricultural and start-up sectors, and structural analysis of (web)apps targeting African agriculture. We assess the essential and non-essential data that is actively and passively collected. The start-up ecosystem and its influence on developers’ decisions about platform design and data practices are also analysed. As such, the paper interrogates two distinct discourses and their practical embedding: The techno-positivistic one (promising transformative positive impacts) and the data-critical one (warning about loss of agency, privacy, and data capitalism).

Research findings indicate that data generation is a central and defining feature of an agricultural platform’s business model. Yet, the agricultural sector’s complexity and increasing levels of uncertainty and volatility, combined with (smallholder) farmers’ incapacity or unwillingness to participate in the platform economy, provide a challenging and high-risk business environment for start-ups and investors. The current scale of operation of most start-ups and platforms limits actual capacity for big data collection and (transboundary) data flows and therefore either positive or negative impact. Arguably, neither the positivist nor the critical discourse thus matches with first-mile reality today, demanding policymakers, developers, and investors to revise their expectations and strategies.

Paper short abstract

We study the case of an inclusive agribusiness model in the dairy sector that adopted digital technologies throughout the value chain. Following a mixed methods study, we seek to answer 'how' and 'how much' is the value created in the process and the value captured by the smallholder dairy farmers.

Paper long abstract

Institutional arrangements promoted for value-chain integration of smallholder farmers have produced mixed results. More recently, inclusive agribusiness models anchored by private sector investments have gained traction. The burgeoning literature shows that they enhance farmers’ income, enable smallholder compliance with standards, and raises productivity. On the contrary, critical agrarian studies suggests that such models can exacerbate social differentiation and vulnerability within the farming class, and favours better endowed farmers. Therefore, the implications of these models are inconclusive at best.

There are a few major gaps in the literature on inclusive agribusiness models. Value creation – gains in productivity and expansion of value adding opportunities – is well examined; value capture by smallholders and their ability to do so are understudied. Further, dairy sector is underrepresented in the literature despite the acknowledgement of the potential of digital technology to transform smallholder dairy farming.

In this paper, we study the case of an inclusive agribusiness model in the dairy sector that connects rural Indian dairy farmers with urban market for organic milk. The anchoring enterprise has adopted digital technologies throughout the value chain. Following a mixed methods study, we seek to answer how and how much is the value created, examine the role of digital infrastructure in value creation at various points in the value chain and unpack the market-mediated mechanisms that affect value capture by the smallholder producers. By comparing the value created and value captured, we offer useful insights to the design of inclusive agribusiness models for improving smallholders’ livelihoods conditions.

Paper short abstract

Based on fieldwork conducted in the mandis of central India, the paper examines the interaction of social inequalities, power relations and market exchange and brings out insights on how technological advances reproduce the inequalities of caste, class and gender.

Paper long abstract

Indian agriculture mostly falls in the informal sector and is characterised by small land holdings, increasing marginalisation of land, highly unequal growth across crops and regions, heavy monsoon-dependence, low infrastructural investment, and a very small class of accumulating large landowners. Given this, agricultural marketing has been a contentious issue in India. State-run primary agricultural market yards or mandis were set up in the 1960s to facilitate the sale of agricultural produce and facilitate better price discovery. Mandis have been sites of major technological interventions over the years. The day-to-day working of mandis has now been completely digitalised, with payments and orders being recorded on the portals managed by the state governments. Empirically rooted in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, this paper maps the exchange in the mandis through the lens of political economy and highlights that instead of breaking the stranglehold of information asymmetries and social hierarchies, new technologies often work to the advantage of the relatively stronger players and translate into unequal outcomes. Based on fieldwork conducted in the mandis of central India, the paper examines the interaction of social inequalities, power relations and market exchange and brings out insights on how technological advances reproduce the inequalities of caste, class and gender.

Paper short abstract

This study uses Malawi IHS panel data (2016–2019) to examine digital agriculture adoption, willingness to pay, and welfare impacts. Results show unequal gains, with larger benefits for better-resourced farmers, raising concerns about power, inequality, and inclusive rural transformation.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture is increasingly promoted as a transformative pathway for agri-food systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, with expanding investments in digital extension, market information, and financial services in Malawi. While these technologies are often framed as tools for smallholder empowerment, less is known about their distributional consequences and implications for power and inequality within rural communities. Using panel data from the Malawi Integrated Household Survey (IHS) for the period 2016–2019, this paper examines the adoption of digital agricultural technologies, farmers’ willingness to pay for digital services, and the resulting welfare effects on farm production and household incomes. The analysis explicitly distinguishes between smallholder and commercial farmers to assess heterogeneous impacts and potential inequality-enhancing effects of digital agriculture. Employing fixed effects and endogenous switching regression models to address selection bias, the study finds that welfare gains from digital agriculture adoption are uneven, with significantly larger benefits accruing to better-resourced and larger-scale farmers. These findings raise important questions about the scalability and inclusiveness of prevailing digital agriculture business models. The paper contributes to debates on justice, agency, and inclusive rural transformation by highlighting the conditions under which digital agriculture may either reduce or reinforce rural inequalities in Malawi.

Paper short abstract

This action research examines extension-led digital climate adaptation support for smallholder farmers in Zambia. Empowerment pathways relied on institutional arrangements for device access and sharing, social learning, and the role of extension workers in bridging technology and motivational gaps.

Paper long abstract

Numerous digital services in agricultural extension have increasingly targeted smallholder farmers in the Global South. However, empirical evidence on whether and how these tools are empowering farmers and their scalability remains limited.

This action research was conducted in Eastern Zambia between 2024 and 2025 in order to examine different delivery methods, involving 157 members of six farmer groups, most of whom lacked access to digital devices, as well as 24 individual smartphone users. Extension workers (EWs) provided smartphones to farmer groups for shared use and introduced an app designed to support climate change adaptation through step-by-step, video-led participatory tools translated into the local language.

The results were mixed, especially for group members, while positive results were found for smartphone users. Many groups engaged their members in the training and most participants in these groups developed and implemented adaptation ideas or plans, however, this depended largely on the quality of group leadership and the group dynamics. The app and videos enabled some farmers to learn and carry out activities at their own pace and facilitated knowledge sharing with family and community members. Nonetheless, the study highlighted the challenges of empowering certain types of farmers who may require more in-person support, suggesting the importance of intermediaries to bridge socio-technological gaps.

This study underscores the need to critically assess whom digital technologies include and exclude in rapidly digitalising agricultural extension systems. This provides implications for the challenges and opportunities for future scaling.

Paper short abstract

There are AI/ML projects that aim to improve efficiency and inclusivity for small farmers but raise questions about governance and equality. This paper explores Zimbabwe agric apps of AI, algorithmic bias and data colonialism. It use interviews with farmers and developers to evaluate training data.

Paper long abstract

AI and ML are becoming integral to digital agriculture projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Zimbabwe has seen the deployment of AI-based crop management advisory systems, Remote Sensing Systems, and Credit Scoring Systems by donor agencies and the corporate sector, aimed at improving “efficiency” and “inclusion” for small farmers. However, critical questions about power, knowledge, and inequalities remain. It examines the political economy of agricultural AI in the Zimbabwean context through the lens of algorithmic bias and data colonialism. Two Agri Tech projects—a non-governmental organisation-led and a private venture—that employ agricultural AI are used to assess how agrarian data is harvested and constructed by agricultural AI platforms, and their eventual impact on those who benefit and those who are left out of agricultural productivity data systems, especially in Zimbabwe. Typically, data about small farmers, women farmers, communal landowners, and mixed crop and Indigenous farming systems in Zimbabwe remains invisible to such data systems.

Interviews with farmers, developers, and government representatives, discourse analysis of technical and policy texts, and a critique of existing training datasets are used. It contends that AI systems are not objective. Still, reflections and reproductions of agrarian hierarchies highlight emerging criticisms, such as small farmers’ resistance to credit rating applications and the demand for transparency regarding the outputs of artificial intelligence. It argues that emphasis should be placed on local knowledge systems in digital agriculture. It addresses concerns related to the coexisting visions of digital agriculture, exemplifying how AI can exacerbate inequalities unless transformed from the bottom up.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines a participatory data tool used by smallholder farmers in rural India to support equitable natural resource planning and distribution. It provides evidence for the resources, capacities, relational and institutional shifts that underpin equitable participation and outcomes.

Paper long abstract

While the promise of data and digital technologies as tools for agricultural productivity and poverty reduction is attractive, they are often disconnected from the needs of communities which are most vulnerable to their impacts. Against this backdrop, this paper presents evidence from a participatory data tool called Commons Connect that is being used by small holder farming communities in rural India. Commons Connect uses participatory methods to integrate geo-spatial data, local landscape knowledge and decision support systems in order to enable equitable planning and distribution of critical water assets such as ponds, wells and check dams at the local village councils. It centres the voices of the most marginalised farming communities and aims to strengthen their agency to participate in and improve accountability and equity in village planning processes.

Through the lens of Commons Connect, this paper will propose a vision for critical data infrastructures as spaces for democratic participation and engagement where local socio-ecological realities can be centred, data or algorithmic outputs can be contested, localised, and reframed, and communities retain can autonomy and control over decision making. By showing how these approaches de-centre tech and address structural inequalities, it will provide empirical evidence for the resources, capacities, relational and institutional shifts that underpin equitable participation and outcomes. Ultimately, it aims to show how community participation and co-creation offers one way to reclaim data and AI tools from narratives of control, data extraction and surveillance, grounding them instead in principles of equity, solidarity and justice.

Paper short abstract

Digital agriculture is promoted as inclusive, yet evidence from Uttarakhand shows that platform-based reforms privilege well-connected markets while marginalising hill-region smallholders. Rather than redistributing power, digital platforms risk reproducing spatial and institutional inequalities.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture is increasingly promoted as a transformative pathway for inclusive rural development, promising improved price discovery, market integration, and smallholder empowerment. In India, digital market platforms such as the National Agriculture Market (eNAM) have been positioned as flagship interventions to modernize agricultural marketing and enhance farmer incomes. However, emerging evidence suggests that these digital reforms may be reconfiguring — rather than dismantling — entrenched hierarchies of scale, geography, and institutional power. Drawing on primary price data from regulated markets in Uttarakhand and interviews with market intermediaries, traders, and farmers, this paper examines how platform-mediated agricultural reforms produce uneven development outcomes across spatially and infrastructurally differentiated regions. Using time-series market integration analysis and qualitative evidence, the study shows that digitally connected plain-region mandis experience improved price discovery and integration, while hill-region markets — characterized by weaker infrastructure, fragmented supply chains, and limited digital capacity — remain poorly integrated and structurally disadvantaged. Rather than enabling smallholder inclusion, digital platforms increasingly privilege high-volume traders and better-connected markets, reinforcing scale advantages and shifting bargaining power away from peripheral producers. The platformization of agricultural markets thus generates new forms of data visibility and algorithmic governance that selectively amplify some actors while rendering others digitally invisible. The paper situates these findings within broader debates on digital agriculture and development, arguing that current ICT4Ag models risk reproducing existing inequalities under the guise of technological inclusion. It concludes by exploring the conditions under which alternative, community-anchored digital and energy infrastructures could enable more just agrarian futures.

Paper short abstract

Digital agriculture shifts power over data, services and rural futures. Designed well, it builds inclusion, jobs and agency for youth/women; designed poorly, it deepens divides. Participatory models can rebalance trust and promote digital democracy.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture is often framed as a neutral accelerator of productivity, yet it actively reorders power over data, services, and rural futures. This paper draws on different strands of work at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI); starting with efforts in Africa to institutionalize agriculture data hubs, as climate-services digital public infrastructure (DPI) where it maps how governance, data ownership, and revenue incentives, decide who is included, who pays, and whose knowledge counts locally. The DPI is positioned not only to improve climate-informed advisories, but also to expand agency through new roles and livelihoods for youth and women (village-based micro-entrepreneurs, distribution and support networks, and allied businesses), while explicitly confronting exclusion risks tied to network, phone access/use and digital literacy. Pathways, that derive from a citizen-science crowdsourcing model, show that pastoralists and livestock keepers in remote and fragile contexts, can become contributors and interpreters of near-real-time market, rangeland, and food-security signals; strengthening trust and feedback while generating measurable improvements in information access, practice change, and livestock income. However, evidence from India’s livestock digitization landscape cautions that, without deliberate inclusion, digitization can deepen inequality, perpetuate the digital divide through high costs, limited localization, technological complexity, fragmented applications, weak gender-disaggregated monitoring, and uneven trust. We therefore conclude by asking what governance and participation principles are required for digital democracy so that digital agriculture expands agency, decent work, and resilience rather than extractive growth in the current uncertain world.

Paper short abstract

This study examines how smallholder farmers in An Giang adopt digital technologies, revealing key internal and external drivers. Findings show that digital skills, cooperative membership, and perceived benefits strongly shape adoption, offering insights for more inclusive digital futures.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture is widely promoted as a pathway to enhance productivity, sustainability, and market integration for smallholder farmers. Yet, despite 91% of Vietnamese households owning smartphones and growing access to digital advisory services, meaningful adoption in farming remains limited. This study examines the extent and determinants of digital technology use among smallholder farmers in An Giang Province, a key agricultural hub of the Mekong Delta, and situates these trends within wider debates on digital inclusion and rural inequality.

Drawing on the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI), Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF), and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), we developed an integrated model distinguishing internal and external drivers of adoption. A mixed-methods design was used, including a survey of 272 farmers across three agro-ecological zones and nine focus group discussions held in July 2024. Poisson regression analysis identified factors shaping the frequency of digital technology use.

Findings show that smartphone literacy, perceived benefits, cooperative membership, and the use of platforms such as Google and ChatGPT significantly increase adoption. Agricultural income and migrant household members also correlate positively. Conversely, owning more smartphones reduces adoption, underscoring that access alone does not ensure meaningful use.

The study calls for strengthened digital skills training, improved institutional support, and user-centered design to enable more inclusive digital transformation in rural Vietnam.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how digital agriculture tools must themselves be scaled responsibly to support inclusive agricultural innovation. Using M-Shamba in Kenya, it shows how bundled digital strategies enacted scaling mis/ dis-intelligence over time, shaping success and failure.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture initiatives are widely promoted as scalable solutions for addressing persistent challenges facing smallholder farmers, including limited market access, information asymmetries, and poverty. Yet growing evidence suggests that many digital tools struggle to achieve sustained, inclusive scaling. This paper applies a responsible scaling perspective to digital agriculture, arguing that digital tools should be understood not only as vehicles for scaling agricultural practices, but as innovations whose own scaling trajectories require careful, context-sensitive alignment.

Drawing on the science of scaling literature, we conceptualise digital agriculture initiatives as bundled scaling strategies that combine core innovations (e.g. mobile apps, USSD platforms, AI-enabled systems) with complementary innovations such as human intermediaries, organisational arrangements, and communication practices. We introduce the concept of scaling intelligence to capture the capacity of actors to align these innovation bundles with socio-ecological contexts in ways that promote equitable outcomes, while avoiding unintended consequences. Conversely, we identify scaling mis-intelligence and scaling dis-intelligence as processes through which misalignment, exclusion, or loss of relevance emerge.

Empirically, the paper examines M-Shamba, a digital agriculture start-up deployed in Machakos County, Kenya, where it operated for six months through farmer groups and field officers. The case demonstrates how digital agriculture initiatives can simultaneously enact scaling intelligence, mis-intelligence, and dis-intelligence over time. By analysing this temporal unfolding, the paper advances responsible scaling as a novel and productive lens for understanding success, failure, and responsibility in digital agriculture.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how digital agro-climate advisories can be scaled equitably. Applying AICCRA’s framework of technical excellence, investment and demand, and sustained use, it shows that inclusive scaling depends on institutional embedding and farmer agency, not technology alone.

Paper long abstract

Digital agro-climate advisories are increasingly promoted as scalable instruments for enhancing climate resilience among smallholder farmers. However, scaling such services without explicit attention to equity and farmer agency risks reproducing structural inequalities and dependency on externally driven digital systems. This paper examines how digital agro-climate advisories can be scaled equitably using the CGIAR Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) program as a case study, drawing on AICCRA’s scaling framework of technical excellence, investment and demand, and sustained use.

The paper argues that technical excellence—defined by the accuracy, timeliness, and local relevance of climate and agronomic information—is a necessary but insufficient condition for equitable scaling. In AICCRA, technical quality is complemented by investment in institutional partnerships with national meteorological agencies, extension systems, and research organizations, enhancing legitimacy and long-term viability. Demand generation is pursued through participatory design processes that engage farmers, address gendered and socioeconomic barriers to access, and deploy multiple delivery channels, including digital platforms, radio, and intermediary-mediated services.

Sustained use is supported through integration of digital advisories into existing advisory ecosystems, capacity strengthening of local intermediaries, and attention to data governance to protect farmer autonomy and trust. Together, these dimensions illustrate that equitable scaling is not achieved through rapid technological replication alone, but through adaptive alignment of technology, institutions, and user needs. The AICCRA case demonstrates that digital agro-climate advisories are more likely to deliver inclusive and durable climate adaptation outcomes when scaling strategies recognize farmers as active decision-makers and knowledge partners, rather than passive recipients.

Paper long abstract

Uruguayan agriculture is experiencing a transformation that involves the expansion of digital technologies. Public agricultural institutions have developed programs to promote an agtech knowledge base and generate technological solutions invoking productive efficiency and environmental sustainability. For the most part, the social sciences have been absent from the analysis and critical reflection of this phenomenon despite the social, economic, and cultural, possible implications of the digital transformation.

The objective of this presentation is to contribute to the critical understanding of agricultural digitalization based on the analysis of technoscientific narratives built around technologies. It reports an empirically based study analyzing the positions regarding digitalization in two different socio-productive contexts: family farming and large scale agriculture in Uruguay.

The research involved analysis of newspaper articles and empirical case studies. Fieldwork was carried out with actors involved in the development, use, and mediation of agricultural digital technologies.

Results reveal that most actors have positive representations regarding the utility of digital technologies with implications on both economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. Some actors were reluctant to share their productive and economic data in digital applications because of insecurity assumptions and lack of trust in the entities involved. However, no real critical visions were identified regarding the implications of digital technologies. Overall, a general optimistic view seems to nurture the narrative that digital transformation can alleviate workload, improve input use, and in general save time and money. Further, digital transformation appears as inevitable and thus we all need to catch up with it.

Paper short abstract

Digital agriculture in Ghana aims to modernize farming and tackle youth unemployment, but current models favor commercial scalability over rural youth inclusion. This study reviews policies and evidence, highlighting gaps and proposing inclusive, youth-centered strategies.

Paper long abstract

Digital agriculture is widely promoted in Ghana as a means to modernize farming and reduce youth unemployment. However, evidence from sub-Saharan Africa shows that digitalization often prioritizes commercial scalability over inclusivity, sidelining rural and smallholder youth. This study critically examines Ghana’s digital agriculture ecosystem through a youth inclusion lens, drawing on policy reviews, empirical literature, program reports, and practitioner insights. Using thematic analysis, it explores patterns of inclusion, exclusion, agency, and power, focusing on how institutional arrangements, policy incentives, and market-driven models shape youth participation.

Findings reveal significant gaps between policy ambitions and practice, including poor rural connectivity, high costs of data and devices, limited digital literacy support, weak integration of youth perspectives in design, gender and class inequalities, and fragmented institutional coordination. These factors tend to benefit profit-oriented agri-tech platforms and better-resourced youth, while marginalizing rural youth.

The study proposes actionable policy pathways: youth co-design mechanisms in digital initiatives; inclusive public–private partnerships prioritizing affordability and social value; strengthened extension systems with integrated digital literacy; youth-sensitive data governance; and targeted innovation funding for youth-led agri-digital solutions.

The study further contributes to debates on inclusive rural transformation and offers policy-relevant insights for Ghana and similar contexts by framing digital agriculture as a governance and justice challenge rather than a purely technological one.

Paper short abstract

This paper studies the diffusion of drones in agricultural production in an agrarian district in India. It finds that adoption was driven by a local unregulated market led by the dominant agrarian classes. The reach, and implications of drones was influenced by the agrarian structure.

Paper long abstract

Digital technologies are regarded as having the potential to transform different stages of the agri-value chain. This understanding, shared by multilateral organizations, agri-businesses, and research institutions, is reflected in India’s recent policy initiatives as well. The adoption of digital technologies in agricultural production, however, remains limited. Drone technology is a notable exception in, at least, a few regions in India.

This study examines the process of diffusion of agricultural drones through a case study of Nalgonda, a predominantly agrarian district in the state of Telangana. The scaling-up of drones in Nalgonda illustrates how technology adoption is shaped by its intrinsic features, policy environment, wider institutional setup, and, most importantly, the prevalent agrarian structure that the technology operates in.

Agricultural drones offer distinct advantages in terms of lower rental costs, efficiency in time and water-use, and marked reductions in drudgery and exposure to chemicals. Notwithstanding these advantages, the uptake of drones, the paper reveals, is largely due to the development of a local unregulated market for drones, led by the dominant agrarian class and caste of the region – which operates with greater flexibility than its regulated counterpart.

The economics of drone operation, and its ongoing technological evolution favours larger and consolidated landholdings. However, the emergence of competitive custom-hiring markets and collective action among smallholders are countering this scale bias, enabling wider adoption.

The study concludes that the reach, adoption, and implications of digital technologies is the outcome of a complex interplay of conflicting class interests that define the agrarian structure.

Paper short abstract

Tractor scarcity and labour loss hinder Ghanaian farmers, with women facing added barriers. Research in Volta and Bono shows exclusion stems from intersecting factors beyond gender. Digital platforms aid coordination but aren’t a panacea; women use collective and informal strategies.

Paper long abstract

In Ghana, limited availability of tractors and a shrinking rural labour force pose significant challenges for farmers attempting to improve rural livelihoods and boost productivity. Mechanisation is an obstacle for all smallholders, but women face particularly pronounced barriers. Digital matching platforms – mobile applications that link tractor owners with farmers – hold promise, as their algorithms circumvent biases often found in informal networks. We investigate the barriers faced by women and explore the role of digital platforms in facilitating more equitable access. Five-month mixed-methods research in Ghana’s Volta and Bono regions challenges the assumption about gender as the sole determinant of women’s exclusion. Using intersectionality framework, we demonstrate how overlapping identities – gender, socioeconomic status, age, marital status, plot size/location – combine into multidimensional exclusion that cannot be addressed through a single, linear, digital matching intervention. We document entrepreneurial strategies – collective bargaining, appealing to communal ethics, roadside sit-ins, and pragmatic deception – employed by women to access tractors. We argue that digital technologies, such as digital communicators, have an enabling effect by improving communication and coordination. Our findings highlight the complexity of socioeconomic network dependencies that govern rural communities, problematising the widespread application of digital apps as a panacea for women farmers’ problems and underscoring the need for context-aware interventions.

Paper short abstract

On-farm Feed Advisor, a digital application helps dairy farmers to formulate balanced rations using locally available feed resources, thereby reducing feed costs while ensuring adequate nutrient supply to their animals.

Paper long abstract

In the mixed farming system, farmers generally feed their livestock with available crop residues such as straw, stover, haulms, and other agricultural by-products. This basal feed is later supplemented with home-grown or purchased forage and concentrates, although with minimal understanding of the feed composition and actual nutrient requirements of the animal and prices associated with purchased nutrient supplements. This may, in many cases, result in over or under supply of key nutrients such as protein or energy relative to the level of production, and therefore increase feeding costs.

The ‘On-farm Feed Advisor’ mobile application, downloadable from Google Playstore or Appstore utilizes two databases: (i) nutritional requirements of animals (as per Indian Council of Agricultural Research recommendation) embedded in the backend of the application, (ii) nutritional quality of feeds (estimated through Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS)/wet chemistry analysis protocols at ILRI), along with feed prices with a user edit option. The user is required to input farm data such as type of animal , body weight, type of feed, quantity fed, milk production, quality and milk price. From the above data, the app automatically it balances nutrients and generates feed advice to formulate a least cost diet using locally available feed resources

On-farm Feed Advisor serves as a practical tool to guide farmers in preparing balanced rations with locally available feeds. It helps to reduce feeding costs, improve nutrient efficiency, and enhance animal productivity. Ultimately, it contributes to sustainable livestock production, better farm profitability, and improved livelihoods for farmers.

Paper short abstract

The Laiterie du Berger dairy uses digital tools to organize milk collection and payments among Senegalese pastoralists. A survey across 318 farms reveals intersecting digital divides (spatial, vertical, horizontal). Young, unmarried women with little livestock are most excluded.

Paper long abstract

In Senegal, pastoralism, a mobile, resource-dependent livestock system, is dominant, often practiced by family farms in landlocked areas. These farmers face constraints that exclude them from formal milk marketing channels. An important initiative countering this is Laiterie du Berger in Richard-Toll, northern Senegal. Dedicated to promoting local milk, the company has formalized the sector by organizing exchanges and using digital tools for managing milk collection, animal feed distribution, and producer payments. A quantitative survey conducted in November 2022 as part of the Fracture Numérique project investigated the impacts of this digitization. The survey included 318 pastoral concessions (1,272 individuals) across Laiterie du Berger's collection area and a neighboring non-collected zone. The results reveal multiple digital divides: (i) spatial: gaps between different geographical zones; (ii) vertical: differences based on individual resources (e.g., productive capital); and (iii) horizontal: inequalities relating to individual identity (e.g., gender, marital status). These forms of inequality often intersect, becoming mutually reinforcing. The study specifically highlights that young (unmarried) women with limited productive capital (livestock) and those living in remote, landlocked areas are the least likely to benefit from digital opportunities. This raises a crucial question: can digital innovations genuinely include and benefit these discriminated groups, or do they risk widening existing socio-economic gaps?