- Convenors:
-
Ebenezer Ngissah
(Wageningen University and Research)
Esther Kihoro (ILRI)
Katarzyna Cieslik (University of Manchester)
Daniel Ankrah (University of Ghana)
Katharine Legun (Wageningen)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Cees Leeuwis
(Wageningen University Research)
- Discussants:
-
Mariette McCampbell
(Independent consultant)
Rebecca Sarku (University for Development)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Digital futures: AI, data & platform governance
Short Abstract
This panel explores how digital agriculture reshapes power, inequality, and agency in rural development. It questions whether digital tools empower smallholders or entrench large-scale profit, reimagining digital futures toward justice, solidarity, and inclusive rural transformation.
Description
Digital agriculture is often heralded as a transformative pathway for rural development, promising both productivity gains and poverty reduction. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the agricultural research for development (AR4D) sector have invested millions in digital tools, frequently justifying these investments as solutions for smallholder farmers and vulnerable rural communities. Yet, the reality of use reveals deep tensions between competing visions of development.
On one side, investments in digital agricultural platforms, (including mobile apps, AI tools etc,) appear to deliver high returns for large-scale commercial farmers. On the other, smallholders; long positioned as the central beneficiaries of these innovations and the backbone of rural livelihoods in the Global South — face persistent barriers of access, affordability, and agency within these emerging ecosystems. This raises a critical question: is it time to reimagine the role of digital agriculture in fostering rural development, or does it still hold unfulfilled potential to deliver on its promises as celebrated in AR4D and ICT4Ag discourses?
This panel interrogates how digital agriculture reconfigures power, inequality, and agency in rural development. It asks: Whose futures are being prioritized in the digital agriculture ecosystem? How does digital agriculture reproduce or disrupt entrenched hierarchies of scale, class, and geography? Can smallholders leverage digital tools to assert agency and resist marginalization, or are profit-driven models entrenching exclusion?
The panel situates digital agriculture within wider struggles over development futures — exploring whether it reinforces the politics of inequality or can open pathways toward justice, solidarity, and alternative paradigms of rural transformation.