For decades, Africa’s digital revolution has been told through the stories of mobile money, fintech, and urban connectivity. Yet, the true test of the continent’s digital transformation lies not in its cities but in its fields. Agriculture remains Africa’s largest employer and the backbone of its economies, accounting for up to 40 percent of GDP and as much as 80 percent of employment in some countries. To transform Africa’s economic future, digital innovation must reach its most traditional sector — and that is precisely where AgriTech is now taking root.

In a recent TechAfrica News Podcast , Aliou Maïga, Regional Industry Director for the Financial Institutions Group in Africa at  International Finance Corporation (IFC), articulated why agricultural technology has become central to the continent’s development strategy. For the IFC, which sits at the intersection of finance and development, AgriTech is not just a tool for innovation; it is a pathway to productivity, job creation, and economic resilience.

“If you want to create jobs in Africa, the biggest employer in Africa is agriculture. Unless you make it more productive — not only for food security but for job creation — you miss half of the potential,” Maïga explained.

In this #TechTalkThursday edition, we explore how AgriTech is driving Africa’s digital economy, drawing insights from this conversation.

The Shift from Aid to Self-Reliance

As global aid flows become uncertain and donor commitments tighten, the continent’s economic sustainability increasingly depends on its ability to finance its own growth. Agriculture, when digitally enabled, offers both scale and stability.

Maïga noted that the IFC’s new strategic focus links poverty reduction to job creation, a practical lens through which technology becomes a means of empowerment rather than dependency. In this context, AgriTech represents an industrial transformation of farming, integrating data, finance, and digital logistics into one connected ecosystem.

What AgriTech Really Does

Unlike traditional farming aid programs, modern AgriTech solutions address the entire agricultural value chain — from soil to market. These companies provide digital profiles for farms, use satellite imagery and IoT data for crop monitoring, and integrate financial services such as credit, insurance, and payments directly into their platforms.

“AgTechs are essentially fintech companies that provide all the services a farmer or cooperative needs to become productive,” Maïga said. “Financing is just the end of the chain. What enables financing is reducing risk and cost.”

By linking farmers to input suppliers, processors, and banks, AgriTech firms are turning smallholder farms into investable units. This model has already shown measurable success. In Morocco, for example, IFC-supported company Sowit increased yields by 30 percent and farmers’ incomes by more than 50 percent within two seasons by combining satellite data, agronomic advice, and access to finance.

Such outcomes reveal the deeper purpose of AgriTech: to make agriculture bankable by using data to reduce uncertainty. Once risk is reduced, financial institutions can extend credit, insurers can underwrite crops, and governments can plan around real-time production data.

From Manual Farming to Digital Supply Chains

AgriTech’s role extends beyond productivity — it introduces traceability, transparency, and accountability to a sector long characterized by informality. With the digitization of input supply, mechanized services, and output markets, every stage of production becomes visible.

This transparency has far-reaching implications. Governments gain accurate data for policymaking and tax collection, banks can assess creditworthiness based on actual performance, and cooperatives can forecast demand and negotiate better market access.

“If you digitize the farmers, their suppliers, and their offtakers, you have complete visibility of the biggest part of the economy,” Maïga noted. “That visibility allows governments to design better policies and mobilize domestic resources.”

In effect, AgriTech is building an economic record for the informal sector — converting rural activity into measurable, investable, and taxable data. This is how digital technology transforms not just productivity but governance. 

The Human Infrastructure Behind the Technology

One of the most compelling points in Maïga’s discussion is that Africa’s AgriTech revolution is not purely digital — it is phygital, a fusion of physical presence and digital systems.

Each AgriTech firm operates with a network of field agents drawn from local communities. These young, educated, and often unemployed individuals are trained to use mobile devices to support farmers, collect data, and facilitate transactions. They embody the human infrastructure that bridges Africa’s rural reality with its digital future.

This model is as much about employment as it is about efficiency. It transforms agriculture into a space of opportunity for Africa’s youth — a generation often excluded from traditional farming yet fluent in technology.

“Technology has transformed every sector that it was injected into. You look at finance 50 years ago, and more recently the whole fintech revolution. But for some reason, agriculture has remained out of that movement. What we’re trying to do is to inject technology in agriculture to make it efficient and productive as much as technology has done for other sectors. Agriculture has not been made exciting for people. Injecting technology makes it exciting for youth to look at it seriously — both on the tech side and the farming side.”

–Aliou Maïga, Regional Industry Director for the Financial Institutions Group in Africa, IFC  

 

Rethinking Risk and Financing

Despite its potential, agriculture remains one of the least financed sectors in Africa. Most banks prefer post-harvest lending, where risks are lower and assets are tangible. The pre-harvest stage — where farmers need working capital for seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation — is widely seen as too risky.

AgriTech platforms change this calculus by managing risk at every stage of the crop cycle. By monitoring inputs, weather, and yield data, they can predict performance with accuracy. This allows lenders to make data-driven decisions and extend credit to farmers previously deemed unbankable.

Maïga revealed that the IFC is already developing a pipeline of over $500 million in agricultural finance using AgriTech platforms to de-risk loans. The goal is not only to improve access to capital but to reshape how financial institutions view the agricultural sector itself.

Data: The New Currency of Agriculture

In the digital age, data is as valuable as land. AgriTech’s ability to collect, analyze, and interpret data — from satellite imagery to transaction history — gives Africa a new economic asset. This data can inform government planning, improve food security forecasting, and even support domestic resource mobilization by expanding the formal tax base.

Artificial intelligence is already being applied to diagnose crop diseases, predict yield outcomes, and guide precision agriculture. Farmers can now take a photo of a leaf and receive instant insights about plant health — a level of access that was unthinkable a decade ago.

The Infrastructure Question

While digital infrastructure remains uneven across Africa, Maïga dismissed the idea that it is the primary barrier to progress. Mobile connectivity now covers an estimated 70 percent of the continent. Even in remote areas, field agents use mobile phones and motorcycles to connect farmers to digital systems.

The more pressing challenge, he argued, is mindset — among policymakers, financiers, and even farmers. The belief that agriculture is too traditional or risky for innovation is changing, but not fast enough.

“Innovation often comes from outside a sector,” he said. “Agriculture has been managed by economists for decades. Now, we need technologists, financiers, and data experts to work together.”

Measuring Success: An Ambitious Goal 

The IFC’s goal is ambitious: to bring five million hectares of farmland under digital management by 2030, focusing on staple crops like rice, wheat, and maize. This target may represent only a fraction of Africa’s cultivated land, but its multiplier effect is immense — each hectare digitized means greater productivity, better income, and new jobs.

For the IFC, the metric of success is not just financial inclusion but economic transformation — more efficient farming, higher yields, and sustainable food systems supported by technology and data.

Building Africa’s Digital Agriculture Future

AgriTech’s rise signals a broader truth about Africa’s digital economy: the next wave of growth will come not from cities but from the countryside. The digitalization of agriculture links inclusion, productivity, and sustainability in one integrated framework. It brings youth into value chains, empowers smallholders with data, and equips governments with visibility.

Africa’s development story is no longer about catching up — it is about reimagining how technology serves local realities.

“Africa can build its own financial and development systems,” Maïga concluded. “Technology is not an obstacle — it is the bridge.”