Presentation short abstract

Ethnography of Kenyan agri-tech examines how startups invoke and operationalize “sustainability” in their daily work. Fieldwork among developers, entrepreneurs, and intermediaries suggests competing commercial and ecological logics shape digital tool design and the agricultural futures imagined.

Presentation long abstract

Kenya is a continental leader in agricultural digitization, judging by the number of agri-tech startups operating in the country. Yet what are the realities behind the celebratory reports? Ethnographic research on the developers, entrepreneurs, and intermediaries building these systems remains sparse. This paper draws on extended fieldwork among Kenyan agri-tech startups and digital agriculture practitioners to examine how those designing the “future of farming” conceptualize sustainability: a term constantly invoked, but rarely defined clearly.

The paper addresses the research question: how do agri-tech actors understand and engage with the notion of sustainability? Using qualitative data from semi-structured and unstructured interviews, participant observation inside startup offices, and site visits to farms and agvet shops, the analysis combines insights from anthropology of entrepreneurship and science and technology studies to interrogate how sustainability becomes articulated in day-to-day practice.

Findings indicate that sustainability is overwhelmingly interpreted as commercial survival: securing investment, customers, and revenue streams. Ecological concerns - soil health, biodiversity, input reduction - enter the conversation only insofar as they can be instrumentalized into business models or investor pitches. This narrow framing sidesteps farmers’ ecological priorities, as well as shapes the design of digital tools in ways that foreclose more substantive environmental commitments.

The paper argues that this entrepreneurial redefinition of sustainability has implications beyond Kenya. It reveals how digital agriculture globally may be consolidating a market-centric vision of environmental action. Recognizing this dynamic opens space for rethinking what kinds of agricultural futures are being built - and for whom.