New principles of agricultural development through digitization

As the empirical insights illustrate – from the more general objectives and development concepts in documents on the digitalization of agriculture in the Global South, the formation of a community of practice in the professional context of conferences and workshops, as well as the implementation in a pilot project in southern Tanzania – the turn towards digital technologies entails more than just technological change within the persistent search for technological fixes. It also brings with it a change in the character of agricultural development, which expresses itself most distinctively in three different, yet related principles of technological solutionism in development: datafication, gamification, and experimentation. All three are symptomatic not only of current development practice but also of other fields experiencing a digital transformation.

Reports, conference presentations, and project staff members all wish to accelerate data-driven agricultural development. So far, however, the quality of a project is primarily being defined by the quality of the data rather than its effects on agricultural development. In the recent report by CTA data is even referred to ‘as the new oil’ (Dalberg Advisors and CTA 2019: 11), since ‘for Africa it is certainly the case that data might be the fuel that drives the transformation of smallholder farming and keeps the continent on track’ (ibid.). When examining the projects, it becomes evident that data means knowledge. As expressed in a lightning talk, ‘technology is not a magical solution, but it targets the lack of reliable information’ (Speaker at ICT4ag conference, 2018). Data is not only considered as exact and objective, but it even appears as if data is currently the only ‘real’ knowledge, ‘making socio-economic organization more sophisticated’ (Cherlet 2014: 778). This also has an impact on who is considered as an expert, now privileging those able to program the software and analyse the data.

Instead of ‘basic research’, what drives this field is new investment strategies and sales pitches to attract private funding. Telecom operators regularly run competitions such as, for example, the Orange African Social Venture Prizes, or the MTN app competition challenges to include agriculture as one of the themes for which applications can be developed (see e.g. AGRA 2015). Moreover, being confronted with the YoBloCo Awards, Plug&Play Days, the Inspire Challenge, AgriHack activities, amplify.org, or the Africa Teen Geek Competition, it is striking how the field is increasingly characterized by what has been described as gamification. As Tulloch and Randell-Moon (2018: 204) put it, ‘gamification can be understood as the extension of the principles and mechanics of game-play: rules, points, rewards, leaderboards, and so on into “real-world tasks”’. Even online courses use a points system to make participants engage more, for example, giving points for posts to the online forum, for watching a video or simply for downloading course material (Online Course 2018). The Mahindi Master uses game simulations as a way to teach farmers about fertilizer inputs in relation to different soil types. And in the Inspire Challenge, the new actors of agricultural development introduced above – innovators, start-ups, and entrepreneurs – are encouraged to partner with the well-established CGIAR institutes to produce interoperable datasets. As the CTA report confirms, ‘prize money won in various competitions is a common source of funding. The benefit of this approach is that there are fewer or none of the strong requirements for how the funds can be utilized – as is often the case with grants’ (CTA 2017: 31). While, at first sight, this may seem like a win-win situation for both, it also highlights unequal power dynamics. The conventional centres of power are no longer creating knowledge, but rather ‘curate knowledge production in multiple locations around the globe’ (Tulloch & Randell-Moon 2018: 218). However, most decisions, for example, on who wins and gets the funding, are still made by those working for the big organizations. Another consequence of this, as Schwittay and Braund emphasize, is that it is mainly the process that has changed, rather than the selected ideas (Schwittay and Braund 2017).

The dominant role of large development organizations, as well as the new relevance of technological experts and digital infrastructures, means that many of the technological innovations that are designed to address agricultural development are still being developed in the Global North. These are then ‘tested’ in the Global South – in our case, Eastern Africa – in order to generate a gradual process of technological appropriation. Pilot studies, in particular, are used to detect technological errors, train the different actors involved, facilitate external funding, and explore upscaling opportunities (see e.g. ITU 2017). As the GIZ has pointed out:

This clearly aligns with the new mode of experimentation which is currently being observed in development practice (Donovan 2018, Berndt and Boeckler 2016, Berndt 2015, Webber 2014). Instead of transferring an established technology to the ‘developing world’, ‘contemporary technology aspirations increasingly articulate and practice the Global South as a live laboratory for technological experimentation’ (Fejerskov 2017: 947). As Fejerskov has pointed out, focusing on the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ‘innovation and high-risk engagement and experimentation apply not only to technology but extend far into the private and social realms of people’ (Fejerskov 2017: 955). While failing becomes a legitimate outcome in the learning process of technology experts, it is often unclear what a failed project means for the local population involved. With regard to the farmers, at least in the projects we studied, it appears as if – based on past negative experiences with development projects – expectations remain low. Some ethnographic insights even indicate diverse forms of resistance to and subversion of the new principles of digital transformation. Finally, it often seems unclear to what extent the experiments will eventually serve the ‘development’ of the communities, or whether they will just serve the development of the technologies themselves. The balancing act between testing and development continues to be a daily occurrence in projects, as well as the field more generally.

At least since the institutionalization of ‘development’ in the mid-20th century, attempts to strengthen rural livelihoods in Africa – as elsewhere in the world – have strongly relied on technological solutions. The idea of a technological fix for low agricultural outputs certainly characterizes the majority of ‘development’ interventions in this field. While once irrigation schemes were built, tractors were shipped, or pesticides were sold under the pretext of agricultural modernization, an increasing uptake of digital technologies can be observed in the last decades. In this contribution, we have shown that this latest shift in the long history of technological approaches to agricultural development is more than just a turn to other technologies. Through document analysis, event ethnographies and participant observation in projects on the digitalization of agriculture in Kenya and Tanzania it became apparent that new actors and new visions have emerged which have considerably changed the mechanisms through which agricultural futures are supposed to be realized. In addition to the major development organizations and the numerous NGOs active in the sector, big-technology firms have entered the scene. Moreover, innovative start-ups and software developers all over the world participate in developing technological solutions to what is still one of the most pertinent issues of development in Africa. These new and old actors meet at the many conferences, workshops and fairs where new project ideas are ‘pitched’, discussed, and evaluated.