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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.