This is the 14th post in a blog series to be published in 2022 by the Secretariat on behalf of the AU High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET) and the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogues (CJED)

Kenya's agricultural activities account for approximately 33% of the country's gross domestic product and are responsible for approximately 40% of the total employment rate. Approximately 70% of Kenya's rural population works in agriculture. Thus, the agricultural industry generates about 65% of Kenya's export earnings.[1] Worth noting that agriculture is also driving Kenya's manufacturing sector and stimulating other socioeconomic activities such as construction, transportation, tourism, and education.

Kenya's agriculture sector's importance is underpinned by the Kenyan Agricultural Policy, promoting enhanced agricultural production and income growth, particularly for smallholder farmers. As a result, this is accomplishing enhanced food security and equity, emphasising irrigation to introduce stability in agricultural output, commercialisation, and intensification of production. This policy also strengthens small-scale farming in Kenya with the appropriate and participatory policy formulation and environmental sustainability.[2] In addition, the Kenya Vision 2030 policy identifies agriculture as a key sector through which annual economic growth rates of 10% can be accomplished.[3]

Notably, most of Kenya's employment is generated through the agricultural value chain. This includes crop harvesting, food preparation and processing, and subsequently selling commodities in local markets and international exports. However, the labour engagements within Kenya have been diminishing in the country's agricultural operations. For example, Kenya's agricultural work had declined to 53.8% of overall employment in Kenya in 2020, as compared to 60.3% in 2010.[4]

The United Nations Development Programme reported that Kenya had enormous unemployment predicaments, especially among the youth.[5] Fundamentally, youth unemployment is significantly higher than adult unemployment and is especially prevalent in cities, particularly among females.[6] For example, Kenya's youth unemployment rate is 65% between the ages of 15 and 35 years, resulting in three (3) out of every five (5) jobless.[7] This is significantly crippling the already weak economy, causing political instability and widespread socioeconomic disparities.[8]

However, Kenya's agricultural sector has been identified as an economic sector that can address Kenya's unemployment, more especially among the youth, if it could be digitalised and automated. In this way, it has been estimated that the approximately 800,000 youth entering the workforce each year could benefit from an augmented agricultural value chain. This can be accomplished if Kenya's infrastructural, social, and cultural challenges are adequately addressed. For instance, the Kenyan people, especially women, can own land, have irrigation infrastructure, and increase market access. Fundamentally, this provision can encourage the participation of Kenyan youth in agriculture.[9]

Increasing youth's participation in agriculture should involve making agriculture more attractive and appealing to the youth. This can be accomplished through a well-managed agro-business value chain and changing the cultural innuendos discouraging youth's interest in agriculture. For example, Kenyan learners receive corporeal punishment related to school agricultural activities—consequently, this brands and markets agriculture as a punishment instead of a profitable business venture.[10] Instead, farming should be exhibited and branded as a professional and profitable business enterprise for the youth. This will encourage their participation and inspire interest in agricultural activities.

The African Union High Level Panel on Emerging Technology (APET) notes that Kenya's agricultural sector can potentially expand food production, address unemployment challenges, and advance the development of emerging technologies. Furthermore, APET believes that the country's agricultural value chain can be enhanced by investing in digital agricultural technologies and enabling policy frameworks to attract the technology-savvy youth into agri-business. Fundamentally, this can increase the country's production through digital consulting and financial services, food processing, marketing, and distribution. The digital-enabled farming can enable and offer better decision-making mechanisms, bolster food production, and improve agricultural entrepreneurs' job creation and employment levels.[11] As such, digital farming technologies can also improve access to farming information, inputs, market, finance, and training.

APET believes that the youth can expand their farming activities through digital technologies to expand their marketing capacity and manage their credit history to enable access to financial and loan instruments from their local financial institutions. Therefore, there is a need to invest in agricultural technology and innovation to amplify this sector with opportunities to enhance job creation and repair food systems. It has been reported access to funding, training through extension services, and agricultural technology to support youth can encourage their participation in agriculture-related pursuits. However, Kenya and other African countries should enhance funding mechanisms and access to training to address the agricultural technology impediments.[12]

APET recognises that the youth can be engaged in agriculture through technological innovation, government support for young farmers, and youth inclusive agricultural policy implementation. This can help address the barriers to youth engagements in agriculture, such as the limited access to land, technology, and training because of inadequate or non-existent extension services. Smallholder farmers can improve their farming technology literacy, increase access to information, and enhance affordability to embrace technological innovation. In addition, African farmers can have adequate access to information about adverse weather conditions, insects, pests, and diseases to effectively improve their farming efficiency and production.

Notably, the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 has negatively impacted agricultural-related business activities.[13] Therefore, improving the financial capital to grow agricultural businesses can provide financial capital, capacity building, and access to land to enhance the youths' interest in agriculture.[14] Furthermore, access to technology and innovation can alter and transform the perception and mindset of youth about the agricultural sector.

The limited adoption of technology is also observed among young farmers as characterised by their predominant utilisation of short messaging service (SMS) technology.[15] To address the limited adoption of emerging technologies among young farmers, capacity strengthening through adequate training programmes should focus on introducing farmers to agricultural technology applications and innovation to enhance their yields, production, and income. Hence, an emphasis on the application of technology can inspire farmers to adopt emerging technologies in their farming activities. Thus, addressing access to capital, regulatory, and policy environments can persuade agricultural businesses and youth technology developers to exploit and expand innovative solutions for the agriculture sector.[16]

Commonly, rural smallholder farmers have limited access to smartphones and internet access. Thus, APET suggests availing weekly SMS on available market prices and best input bargains to farmers.[17] Furthermore, African countries, institutions, and the private sector can also develop well-managed training and mentoring programmes for young farmers. These training and mentorship programmes can incorporate exchange programmes and internships. This can encourage mentoring programmes with agriculture and business start-up experience mentors to strengthen well-structured and youth-based agricultural programmes. Furthermore, the training should collect in-depth data and promote localised and evidence-based innovation. This can create agriculture technology solutions and enable prototyping of these technology and innovation solutions before their full adoption.

APET observes that although agriculture contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many African economies and employs more than half of the rural population, the sector remains unappealing to Africa's youth.[18] Many young Africans consider agriculture a futile venture, socially immobile and technologically unremarkable due to the limited agricultural land, loan instruments, and innovations. Thus, African governments should design and establish capital grants, financial assistance, and patronages for the youth interested in agriculture.[19] Such instruments can render agriculture more feasible and sustainable for the youth. Furthermore, African countries should address the agricultural-related challenges such as poor governance and limited investment instruments.[20] This can be accomplished by increasing access to fertilisers, availing superior seed varieties, enhancing farming mechanisation, and addressing weather unpredictability due to climate change, among others.

The approximately 90% smartphone penetration in Kenya[21] provides an opportunity for agricultural technologies to bolster their inclusive agricultural growth, nutrition, and food security.[22] For instance, Kenya is utilising digital technologies to enhance the country's precision agriculture to afford agri-businesses profitability, efficiency, safety, and environmental friendliness. The Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, encompassing sensors, connectivity, data analytics, workflow automation platforms, and applications, offers significant technological solutions to the country's agricultural activities.[23]

The IoT technology is potentially augmenting agricultural productivity to meet food demand. Smart agriculture will utilise IoT-based technologies, and solutions are potentially augmenting agricultural operational competence, maximising yields, and minimising food wastage.[24] This enables real-time field data collection, data analysis, and implementation of control mechanisms. For example, Twiga's Takuwa farms in Kenya are utilising Liquid Intelligent Technologies to deploy precision agricultural IoT systems to enhance farming outputs and production.[25] The IoT technology system incorporates four agriculture sensors to provide a comprehensive and functional weather station, soil moisture and temperature probes, borehole water meters, and sensors for assessing irrigation water acidity and salinity. This system exploits Liquid Intelligent Technologies' extensively low-powered and wide-area IoT network using 0G Sigfox technology.[26] This IoT technology system covers 85% of Kenya's population cost-effectively.[27]

APET notes that IoT technology provides essential data to enable the Twiga agronomy team to assess and evaluate their farm's temperature, humidity, rainfall, and wind speed in real-time. Such essential data benefits the farm managers with accurate farming decision-making and management mechanisms to effectively determine their irrigation protocols and application of pesticides.[28] Furthermore, the water quality sensors provide the farm managers with specific metrics to help optimise their irrigation and fertiliser applications. In addition, the installed soil probes can measure the moisture levels and temperature at various depth levels in the soil. This is also affording farmers with precise soil quality and moisture levels to determine the necessary irrigation requirements at the roots of crops. Consequently, this IoTs technology has significantly improved Takuwa farming methods and has enhanced their crop yields for Twiga Foods.[29]

Precision agriculture allows for soil remediation to be minimal, cost-effective, and targeted, or even to treat individual plants differently. Notably, IoT-based soil monitoring systems can help farmers monitor soil quality in order to prevent degradation, control erosion, compaction, salinisation, acidification, and contamination. As a result, crop yields may increase significantly and food security may improve. This also implies that farmers can now use precision irrigation, fertiliser application, and pesticide spraying.

Furthermore, IoT technologies enable precision livestock farming by utilising real-time monitoring of production, as well as livestock healthcare and welfare to optimise yield. For example, in Western Kenya and Nyanza, an IoT network has been set up to monitor freshwater fish populations. This has been done in collaboration with Kisumu's Lakehub Innovation and various local fish producers.[30] Various sensors have been deployed to monitor fishponds' water temperature and pH levels, improving fishery production outputs.

APET observes that farming is progressively changing, and the incremental use of technology provides agricultural advantages to improve productivity and reduce the utilisation of water, fertiliser, and pesticides. Subsequently, this reduces food prices and encourages sustainable natural ecosystem conservation. [31] Adopting technologies is also making the agricultural sector more attractive to the youth. This is consequently improving sustainable job creation and employment opportunities.

Therefore, APET is challenging African countries to improve their policy implementation programmes by rolling out youth-friendly technologies for agricultural activities. For example, the Kenyan government has developed several policy frameworks to brand agriculture more attractive to enhance youth employment in agriculture. As such, the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy (2019–2029), the Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy (2018–2022), the Kenya Vision 2030, Medium Term Plan III, and the President's Big Four Agenda are some of the policy frameworks that have encouraged Kenyan youth participation in agriculture.[32] This was mainly focused on bolstering Small-to-Medium Enterprises and digital technologies. This is positively influencing the agricultural production in Kenya farming and encouraging the participation of the youth in agriculture.[33] Thus, other African countries could develop their own policy frameworks and implement them to improve agricultural outputs.

Finally, APET also notes that just like other African countries, Kenya ascribes to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, African Union Agenda 2063, and the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, focused on enhancing agricultural value chain opportunities and strengthening food security. Thus, APET believes that by adopting and implementing these continental policy frameworks, African countries can exploit their youthful, innovative, and creative population to enhance food security and job creation.

 

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[1] https://www.fao.org/kenya/fao-in-kenya/kenya-at-a-glance/en/.

[2] https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fsn/docs/Ag_policy_Kenya.pdf.

[3] https://www.rvo.nl/sites/default/files/2019/12/Digital-Farming-in-Kenya.pdf.

[4] Employment in agriculture as a share of total employment in Kenya from 2010 to 2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1204049/employment-in-agriculture-as-a-share-of-total-employment-in-kenya/.

[5] Report on employment in Africa (Re-Africa), Tackling the youth employment challenge. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---africa/---ro-abidjan/documents/publication/wcms_753300.pdf.

[6] Youth employment in sub-Saharan Africa Progress and prospects. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/21.03.24-IWOSS-Intro-paper_FINAL.pdf.

[7] AFRICA IN FOCUS, State of Youth Unemployment in Kenya, Boaz Munga and Eldah Onsomu, August 21, 2014. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2014/08/21/state-of-youth-unemployment-in-kenya/.

[8] https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2010/10/tackling-youth-unemployment-instability-in-kenya/.

[9] https://leap4fnssa.eu/hh_source/future-agricultures-the-average-age-of-a-kenyan-farmer-is-61-but-over-75-of-the-population-is-under-35-how/#:~:text=How.-,Future%20Agricultures%3A%20The%20average%20age%20of%20a%20Kenyan%20farmer%20is,the%20population%20is%20under%2035.

[10] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/agriculture-solution-to-youth-unemployment-kenya/.

[11] https://www.s4ye.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/S4YE%20Note%20Digital%20Solutions%20for%20Youth%20Agripreneurship_0.pdf.

[12] https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/data-hub/how-kenya-can-make-agriculture-attractive-millions-of-youth-3556328.

[13] OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19), COVID-19 and the food and agriculture sector: Issues and policy responses, April 2020. https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/covid-19-and-the-food-and-agriculture-sector-issues-and-policy-responses-a23f764b/.

[14] Can agriculture create job opportunities for youth? https://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/can-agriculture-create-job-opportunities-youth.

[15] Susan Wyche and Charles Steinfield, Why don’t farmers use cell phones to access market prices? Technology affordances and barriers to market information services adoption in rural Kenya, Information Technology for Development, 2015, DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2015.1048184.

[16] Agriculture, land reform and rural development. https://www.gov.za/about-sa/agriculture.

[17] A framework for the development of smallholder farmers through cooperative development. https://www.nda.agric.za/doaDev/sideMenu/cooperativeandenterprisedevelopment/docs/FRAMEWORK-%20OF%20SMALL%20FARMERS%20(2).pdf.

[18] The future of Africa’s agriculture - an assessment of the role of youth and technology. https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/publication/future-africa%E2%80%99s-agriculture-assessment-role-youth-technology_en.

[19] Youth is the key to unlock Africa’s agriculture potential. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2016/07/25/youth-is-the-key-to-unlock-africas-agriculture-potential/.

[20] Unlocking Africa’s agricultural potential. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/16624/769900WP0SDS0A00Box374393B00PUBLIC0.pdf.

[21] Jeehye Kim, Parmesh Shah, Joanne Catherine Gaskell, Ashesh Prasann, and Akanksha Luthra, Scaling Up Disruptive Agricultural Technologies in Africa, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/33961/9781464815225.pdf.

[22] Baumüller, Heike. (2016). Agricultural Service Delivery Through Mobile Phones: Local Innovation and Technological Opportunities in Kenya. 10.1007/978-3-319-25718-1_9.

[23] Smart Farming: The Future of Agriculture. https://www.iotforall.com/smart-farming-future-of-agriculture.

[24] Rehman, Amjad & Saba, Tanzila & Kashif, Muhammad & Fati, Suliman & Choudhary, Huma. (2022). A Revisit of Internet of Things Technologies for Monitoring and Control Strategies in Smart Agriculture. Agronomy. 12. 127. 10.3390/agronomy12010127.

[25] Liquid Intelligent Technologies partners with Twiga Foods to accelerate agricultural transformation in Kenya. https://www.liquid.tech/about-us/news/Liquid_Intelligent_Technologies_partners_with_Twiga_Foods_to_accelerate_agricultural_transformation_in_Kenya.

[26] Reite, Karl-Johan & Fernandes, Jose & Uriondo, Zigor & Quincoces, Iñaki. (2021). The Potential of Big Data for Improving Pelagic Fisheries Sustainability. 10.1007/978-3-030-71069-9_28.

[27] Liquid Telecom Plans Expansive IoT Coverage in Kenya With Sigfox. https://www.connectingafrica.com/author.asp?section_id=530&doc_id=745501.

[28] Liquid Telecom rolls out IOT for precision farming in Kenya. https://itweb.africa/content/o1Jr5Mx9W1zqKdWL.

[29] Liquid Telecom Deploys IoT On Twiga Foods’ Takuwa Farm. https://cioafrica.co/liquid-telecom-deploys-iot-on-twiga-foods-takuwa-farm/.

[30] Akhigbe, B.I.; Munir, K.; Akinade, O.; Akanbi, L.; Oyedele, L.O. IoT Technologies for Livestock Management: A Review of Present Status, Opportunities and Future Trends. Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2021, 5, 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/ bdcc5010010.

[31] https://www.pd.co.ke/third-eye/growing-jobs-for-youth-in-the-agriculture-sector-114922/.

[32] https://agnes-africa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Situational-Analysis-of-the-Agriculture-Sector-in-Kenya_July-2020_Final_Revised.pdf.

[33] Kevin Okoth Ouko, John Robert O Ogola, Charles Adino Ng’on’ga & Jane Ruheni Wairimu | Sandro Serpa (Reviewing editor) (2022) Youth involvement in agripreneurship as Nexus for poverty reduction and rural employment in Kenya, Cogent Social Sciences, 8:1, DOI: 10.1080/23311886.2022.2078527.