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Ghana’s government created an environment that helps D4Ag thrive.

Between 2013 and 2015, Ghana introduced a series of regulatory reforms intended to help expand the use of mobile money in the country. These reforms led to a rapid rise in the adoption of related services and helped open people to the use of digital products and services. Since then, large agribusinesses like Yara have encouraged farmers to adopt mobile money by requiring farmers who work with them to open mobile money accounts. In addition, the recent insecurity of some of Ghana’s trade neighbours (e.g., Burkina Faso, Niger) has pushed more farmers to use mobile money – a safer alternative to in-person cash payments. Moreover, the government has introduced a range of initiatives intended to support the use of innovative technologies specific to agriculture. These include the launch of: (1) ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’, an e-registration platform for farmers with 577,000 farmers registered and with 202,000 farmers participating in 2017 and 677,000

in 2018;393 _{(2) an electronic, agricultural}

input distribution system with barcodes that allows the government to more quickly detect problems like low-yield seeds and poor fertiliser. Policymakers have also set themselves the ambitious target of registering every cocoa farmer in the country.

A number of companies have taken advantage of the supportive environment and built valuable D4Ag services in Ghana.

Outlook

The priority now is to ensure D4Ag solutions reach underserved populations to deliver real impact. Many farmers are

illiterate, so providers are starting to roll-out services that work around this. Similarly, Farmerline and Esoko now provide IVR services that cater to the country’s linguistic diversity by offering services in local languages. Still, some regions remain too unproductive for D4Ag solutions providers to enter, either because soil quality is too poor, transportation infrastructure is weak, or insecurity is high.

D4Ag should be used to address

barriers to access to credit that farmers, particularly low-income farmers, face.

Such farmers enjoy using D4Ag to access financial services, but few use services beyond mobile payments. Credit remains too expensive

for most farmers – 28% interest rates were quoted as recurrent by one expert we spoke to. Although some D4Ag providers have encouraged banks and investment companies to help reduce this cost of debt, little progress has been made. D4Ag may be able to promote farmers’ access to credit indirectly. For example, by improving land rights data, D4Ag can increase farmers’ ability to use their land for collateral when borrowing. At present an

initiative funded by the Omidyar Network is supporting capacity building at government levels in the use of drone technology for land tenure adjudication. This project also extends to the Philippines and Colombia. It aims to build evidence in each country for the effective

massive impact gains for farmers, but if only landowners, who tend to be men, and not other household members are recorded, it may also reinforce gender inequality in land ownership. Similarly, women who work in agriculture in Ghana tend to participate more as retailers in local markets. D4Ag solutions could render many of these jobs obsolete. Firms like Esoko Ghana are demonstrating how to counteract the potentially negative gender effects of such innovations by, for example, actively hiring women to be call centre operators.

Market linkage solutions are likely to be most useful for farmers positioned to service multiple markets. Because

they lack transport options to reach a wider range of potential buyers, most smallholder farmers deal with one local produce buyer only. The impact potential of market linkage D4Ag solutions is therefore limited to larger players and those dealing with multiple markets (e.g., aggregators), who benefit from having a better understanding of when and from where products are coming.

Lessons

uMobile money is a key enabler for D4Ag service providers, because it helps farmers and the broader population trust and understand digital products/services.

uD4Ag has the potential to increase farmers’ access to credit, for example, by improving their ability to use their officially adjudicated land as collateral.

uMarket linkage products are most useful to farmers with the means of transport to work with a range of markets.

utilisation of drones for property mapping and seeks to demonstrate how drones can be deployed for cadastral surveying on a global scale. In addition, Meridia, the leading D4Ag innovator in digitally-enabled land registration, has digitally surveyed and mapped thousands of smallholder farms in Ghana starting in 2017, and has helped issue over 5,000 legal land documents – documents that are crucial to helping smallholders leverage the economic potential of their land, a model with potential across Africa.

Forthcoming D4Ag solutions have the potential to help or harm women’s empowerment in the country. Solution providers must design products that are gender positive. For example, the

digitisation of land rights records will lead to

Nigeria provides an example of how the private sector can drive an innovative digital transformation of agriculture, but it also illustrates how this development can leave more rural and vulnerable farmers behind.

Key D4Ag statistics:

Total users of solutions headquartered in Nigeria394 0.5 million (another 7 million in Cellulant database via

former Cellulant/SES e-wallet subsidy programme).

Number of solutions: 46 (headquartered; 83 (with a presence)

Proportion of users that are women395 _20%

Most common primary use case of solutions Market linkage

Government role Supportive, but private sector plays a heavy role in steering _{the direction of D4Ag.} Snapshot of D4Ag solutions:

NIGERIA