Nairobi Disruptive Agriculture Technology Conference …



Summary Document April 201924511019685000Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc7032596 \h 4Context PAGEREF _Toc7032597 \h 4Trends in DAT Innovation in Africa and Kenya PAGEREF _Toc7032598 \h 5Vision of the One Million Farmer Initiative PAGEREF _Toc7032599 \h 7Conference Description and Agenda PAGEREF _Toc7032600 \h 9Description PAGEREF _Toc7032601 \h 9Agenda PAGEREF _Toc7032602 \h 10Welcome Remarks PAGEREF _Toc7032603 \h 13Welcome Remarks by Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation PAGEREF _Toc7032604 \h 13Welcome Remarks by Country Director, The World Bank Group PAGEREF _Toc7032605 \h 16Key Points Discussed During the Welcome Remarks PAGEREF _Toc7032606 \h 18Key Learnings from Knowledge Sessions PAGEREF _Toc7032607 \h 21Background of DAT Challenge and Conference - Vision of One Million Farmer Initiative PAGEREF _Toc7032608 \h 21DATs’ Role in the Kenyan context PAGEREF _Toc7032609 \h 22Knowledge Panel 1: Agricultural Productivity PAGEREF _Toc7032610 \h 23Knowledge Panel 2: Market Linkages PAGEREF _Toc7032611 \h 25Knowledge Panel 3: Farmer Financial Inclusion PAGEREF _Toc7032612 \h 27Knowledge Panel 4: Data Analytics and Intelligence PAGEREF _Toc7032613 \h 29Investment Roundtable PAGEREF _Toc7032614 \h 31Policies for Disruptive Agriculture Technology PAGEREF _Toc7032615 \h 32Ignite Talk: Harnessing the Power of Communities PAGEREF _Toc7032616 \h 34Ignite Talk: Disruptive Technology as Game-changers for Small-scale Agribusinesses PAGEREF _Toc7032617 \h 35Ignite Talk: Revolutionizing the Use of Data for Policymaking (The Case of Agriculture Observatory in Kenya) PAGEREF _Toc7032618 \h 36Closing Remarks PAGEREF _Toc7032619 \h 37DAT Challenge PAGEREF _Toc7032620 \h 40Challenge Overview PAGEREF _Toc7032621 \h 40Challenge Process PAGEREF _Toc7032622 \h 41Challenge Track Descriptions PAGEREF _Toc7032623 \h 42Theme 1 - Agricultural Productivity Challenge PAGEREF _Toc7032624 \h 42Theme 2 - Market Linkages (Off-taker Market Access) Challenge PAGEREF _Toc7032625 \h 43Theme 3 - Farmer Financial Inclusion Challenge PAGEREF _Toc7032626 \h 44Theme 4 - Data Analytics and Intelligence Challenge PAGEREF _Toc7032627 \h 45Jury Composition and Judging Criteria PAGEREF _Toc7032628 \h 47Selection of the First Cohort of DAT Innovators by the Jury PAGEREF _Toc7032629 \h 51Partners PAGEREF _Toc7032630 \h 53The World Bank Group PAGEREF _Toc7032631 \h 53The Korea-World Bank Partnership Facility PAGEREF _Toc7032632 \h 53The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) PAGEREF _Toc7032633 \h 53The United Nations Partnership for SDGs Platform PAGEREF _Toc7032634 \h 53Kuza Biashara PAGEREF _Toc7032635 \h 54Dalberg Advisors PAGEREF _Toc7032636 \h 54IntroductionContextThe World Bank Group defines ‘Disruptive Agricultural Technologies (DATs)’ as digital and non-digital innovations that?enable smallholder farmers to overcome their current constraints. The World Bank’s definition of DATs is a broad one, which takes into account the rapid evolution of underlying technologies and business models, as well as the need to tailor these technologies to specific market and value chain contexts. Relevant agricultural technologies include digitally-enabled advisory and climate information services, digitally enabled services that link farmers to production inputs (including mechanization), digitally-enabled services that link farmers and their produce to buyers and markets, macro agriculture decision intelligence tools that can inform government, funder, and agribusiness resource allocation decisions, and data intermediary services that collect and analyze farm or farmer data as an input into downstream decisions and use cases (e.g., drone farm surveillance, weather data analytics, satellite crop monitoring, pest & disease surveillance systems). Beyond such agri-tech products and services, other in scope include agri-energy nexus products (e.g., solar off-grid irrigation, processing and cold-chain solutions), portable agriculture diagnostic tools (e.g., crop, soil, agricultural input diagnostic equipment), and bio-fortified foods.DAT innovations provide many benefits to smallholder farmers and agribusinesses and help them to optimize their operations and improve productivity. While traditional solutions have only produced single-digit annual productivity growth for major crops, DATs have the potential to provide enough disruption to lead to double-digit productivity growth. These innovations directly address critical constraints that farmers face such as low yields, lack of access to markets, and inability to access credit finance. DATs can be a tool to improve yields via tailored advisory services using farm-specific data. They can also enable farmers to access a range of buyers locked in at good price points and increase transaction transparency in the process. Digitally tracking transactions and farm-specific information, can assist the credit vetting process undertaken by financial institutions and potentially lead to increased access to capital. As such, DAT innovations enable smallholder farmers and agribusinesses to scale-up and improve their productivity, profitability, and competitiveness. DATs also have the potential to energize African agriculture by drawing in youth. In Africa, about 70% of the population is under 30, with the youth population growing faster than any other region. This further exacerbates the concern about the increasing youth unemployment rate. High youth employment results in several challenges such as reduced economic growth, increased crime rates, and poverty traps. DAT innovations can help to mitigate this as they create many new, higher quality jobs in the agriculture sector like farmer surveillance and data analysis. Trends in DAT Innovation in Africa and KenyaOver the past two years the number of African DATs has multiplied. Demand for region-specific innovations and a conducive enabling environment in certain cities and countries has spurred this growth. Additionally, DATs in Africa are currently at an inflection point where the falling cost of technology is allowing scalable innovations. For instance, cellular subscriptions are sky-rocketing – with 420 million unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and mobile internet penetration reaching 240 million people (26% penetration in SSA) in 2016. The emergence of these technologies has generated a new genre of entrepreneurs who are responding to the local needs and contexts of Africa’s unique food market. Nurturing this wave of DAT entrepreneurs to help new innovations reach scale would allow African food systems to leapfrog the innovation gap. Despite the proliferation of DATs in SSA’s agriculture sector, DATs are yet to witness systematic and large-scale adoption. According to the Kaufmann Foundation, only 1.1% of technology innovation start-ups across all sectors scale-up. Crucial to scaling up innovations is the “innovation ecosystem” – an environment that enables entrepreneurs to engage in iterative processes. This includes support structures that can enable smallholder farmers to adopt new technologies, investments in basic infrastructure (roads, bridges, storage, etc.) and technology infrastructure (broadband and connectivity), and policies such as tax incentives or spectrum management to ensure connectivity in rural areas for last mile delivery. Scaling up also requires an ecosystem in which actors including governments, companies, investors, and development partners can collaborate to provide support to technology innovations across their life cycles. The potential impact of DATs is especially promising in Kenya, where the agriculture sector employs 40% of the total population and more than 70% of the rural people. The importance of the agriculture sector in Kenya has been emphasized by the President’s Big 4 Agenda and Vision 2030. Given the objective to achieve full food and nutrition security in the country, there has been demand to transform the sector. Currently the agriculture sector directly contributes 26% to Kenya’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and a further 27% indirectly through the manufacturing, distribution, and service sectors. NOTEREF _Ref6509697 \h \* MERGEFORMAT 6Given the contribution of smallholder farmers in the sector it is imperative for them to have the right knowledge, tools, and resources to drive growth in the sector and DATs have the opportunity to accelerate this linkages.Kenya is leading the agricultural technology space in Africa as one of the top-rated digital ecosystems on the continent. The country has the third largest tech incubation and acceleration hub in the region. Additionally, mobile connectivity and high penetration rates contributes to the success of Kenya in the agricultural technology landscape. Kenya has some of the highest levels of mobile connectivity (i.e., 85-90% penetration of unique mobile subscribers vs. 44% on average for SSA region). The country is also characterized by a robust mobile money ecosystem, with over 70% of the population using mobile money regularly. Meanwhile, in 2017, the mobile penetration rate in Kenya was 59% compared to 44% average for SSA, with 30% of rural population owning smartphones while 72% own feature phones. Importantly, approximately 30%?of agri-tech start-ups?in?the SSA region are operating in Kenya and 18% are headquartered there. Using a broader definition of agri-tech, McKinsey estimated that 25% of all agri-tech startups were likewise headquartered in Kenya in 2017. This new genre of DAT innovators is thriving. They recognize unique?local contexts and are successfully using cutting-edge technologies to cater to Kenyan smallholder farmers and smallholder farmer-facing intermediaries like agribusinesses, financial institutions, farmer cooperatives, and NGOs. The timing for DATs to scale-up is ripe in Kenya. Many Kenya-focused DATs have successfully piloted their solutions and are starting to invest in scale-up activities. So far two players (WeFarm and Safaricom’s Digifarm) have broken the 1 million farmers’ barrier. Falling technology cost as an industry trend and evolution in business models are further moving the sector to a tipping point. Nonetheless, due to a range of ecosystem challenges, many DATs are still constrained. An assessment conducted by the World Bank Group found DATs are particularly limited in their economics, impact, and scale. The challenges that underpin this occur across the ecosystem. There is demand for increased policy clarity and support for DATs in Kenya. Additionally, early-staged innovators have difficulty securing funding as there are deemed to have higher risk models. They also lack access to high quality and low-cost data public goods such as weather data, farmer registries, and soil data. Critically, a major challenge constraining DATs is an absence of linkages between them and existing agribusiness platforms and players. This is key because these platforms and players have access to large numbers of smallholder farmers that DATs can leverage on. Vision of the One Million Farmer InitiativeThe World Bank believes that a vibrant innovation ecosystem is crucial to the scaling of DATs. To achieve this, systematic investments in knowledge, innovation, policies, capital, and incubation are all needed in the country. It must enable innovators to engage in iterative processes to improve their technologies and business models, prove out their impact and return on investment, and rapidly extend their reach. Kenya already has a budding innovation ecosystem as evident from the sudden surge in DATs in recent years. This existing system now needs to be harnessed to drive the scale-up of DATs.The World Bank along with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) and Korea-World Bank Partnership Facility is launching the One Million Farmer Initiative. It is a three-year partnership that will link one million Kenyan farmers, across 14 different agricultural value chains and 45 counties in Kenya, to a digitally-enabled platform. The platform will integrate and coordinate the activities of leading Kenya-focused DATs. The One Million Farmer Initiative will build on and link to existing World Bank programming in Kenya, most notably the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP) and the National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project (NARIG). Both projects support more than a million farmers, with aggregate investments of $450 million. Through partnership collaboration, the One Million Farmer Initiative will bring together a group of best-in-class DATs in Kenya and link these innovators to experts, investors, agribusinesses, and government partners at national and county levels. All activities will be centred on a common mission of delivering value to one million Kenyan smallholder farmers (and related intermediaries) covered by the program. A secondary objective is to create demonstration effects to validate the replication of this digitally-enabled innovation ecosystem platform in other geographies beyond Kenya. Currently, the World Bank envisions extending the initiative to an additional 8-10 African countries drawing on lessons learned in Kenya.Through the One Million Farmer Initiative, the World Bank believes that all ecosystem actors will achieve economies of scale in reaching smallholder farmers. The platform will enable DAT innovators to take advantage of large-scale identification, data collection, data analytics services (e.g. agronomy content and geospatial farm and soil maps), as well as digitized farmer profiles. As such, each ecosystem actor will save on undertaking these activities themselves or spending more in operating without this information. As a consequence, this will translate into improved business model sustainability for innovative DAT businesses.Smallholder farmers will also receive a host of benefits derived from the One Million Farmer Initiative. They will have access to affordable services that address major pain-points in their operation. By up-taking the host of innovations on the platform, they will be able to increase their yields, receive financial services, access local and international markets, and many more. Ultimately, through optimizing their operations through innovations, smallholder farmers will benefit from increased income generation and poverty reduction.Conference Description and AgendaDescriptionThe World Bank hosted the Disruptive Agriculture Technology Innovation Knowledge and Challenge Conference on April 5-6 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya. The aim of the conference was to mobilize knowledge for the One Million Farmer Initiative across four themes, namely Agricultural Productivity, Market Linkage, Farmer Financial Inclusion, and Data Analytics and Intelligence. Along with these four themes, the discourse also included sessions to promote conducive policies and investment climate (see conference agenda in the next section).The Conference also included a challenge to mobilize innovators who would join the One Million Farmer Initiative’s platform as the ‘First cohort of innovators’. The Challenge saw leading DAT innovators pitch their strategies with the chance of receiving performance rewards, acceleration funding, incubation, mentoring, and financial support to scale up their innovations in Kenya. The Conference laid the foundation for the innovations to scale up in Kenya by connecting a million Kenyan farmers to disruptive agricultural technologies. Coming out of the DAT Conference and Challenge, further details of the One Million Farmer Initiative platform will be jointly designed by the innovators, partners, and funders involved over the next over the next 3 years.AgendaDay 1: 5 April 2019, Friday8:00 - 8:30 AMRegistrationWelcome Remarks8:30 - 9:30 AMWelcomed by: Prof. Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) & Jeehye Kim, Agriculture Economist, The World Bank GroupSidharth Chatterjee, United Nations Resident Coordinator Edson Mpyisi, Chief Financial Economist and Co-ordinator Enable Youth Programme, African Development BankSriram Bharatam, Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara LimitedPaolo Belli, Program Leader, Africa, The World Bank GroupMary Nzomo County Executive Committee, Representing the Council of GovernorsMicheni Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and IrrigationBackground of DAT Challenge and Conference - Vision of One Million Farmer Initiative9:30 - 9:45 AMDr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupDATs’ role in the Kenyan context 9:45 - 10:15 AMMichael Hailu, Director, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)Michael Tsan, Partner, Dalberg10:15 -10:45 AMCoffee BreakTheme 1 – Agricultural Productivity 10:45 – 12:00 PMModerator: Dr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank Group & Michael Tsan, Partner, DalbergKnowledge Panelists:Boniface Akuku, Director of ICT, Kenya Agricultural Livestock and Research Organisation (KALRO)Dr. Benjamin Kwasi Addom, Team Leader, ICTs for Agriculture, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation(CTA)Janalize van Buuren, Divisional Sales Manager – East and Central Africa, John DeereJohn Logan, Country Director Kenya, TechnoServe Shaun Ferris, Director of Agriculture and Livelihoods, Catholic Relief ServiceTania Lozansky, Senior Manager, International Financial Corporation (IFC)12:00 – 1:00 PMChallenge: How will your approach/innovation help ensure Kenyan farmers have achieved disruptive changes in productivity using the latest knowledge, training, practices, and data?Presentations and pitching by shortlisted innovators1:00 – 2:15 PMNetworking Lunch 2:15 – 2:30 PMIgnite Talk: Harnessing the Power of CommunitiesSriram Bharatam, Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara LimitedTheme 2 - Market Linkages2:30 – 3:45 PMModerator: Jeehye Kim, Agriculture Economist, The World Bank Group Knowledge Panelists:Mary Nzomo, County Executive Committee, Trans Nzoia CountyBenjamin Makai, Senior Manager, Technology for Development, SafaricomBetty Kibaara, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation, Africa Region OfficeCastro Antwi-Dandso, Director of Sales and Marketing, ESOKOMikael L. Clason H??k, Mastercard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning LabSidhartha Samal, Digital Head, Africa & Middle East, OLAM 3:45 – 4:15 PMCoffee Break4:15 – 5:15 PMChallenge: Given the limited market linkages for both inputs and production, how can you facilitate linkages between buyers and sellers along the value chain?Presentations and pitching by shortlisted innovators 5:15 – 5:30 PMIgnite Talk: Disruptive Technology as game-changers for smallholder AgribusinessesTim Chambers, Co-founder & Managing Director and founder, InspiraFarms5:30 PM onwardsNetworking CocktailDay 2: 6 April 2019, SaturdayTheme 3 - Farmer Financial Inclusion8:30 - 9:15 AMModerator: Diego Arias, Lead Agriculture Economist, The World Bank Group & Naoko Koyama-Blanc, Partner, DalbergKnowledge Panelists:Esther Kasalu-Coffin, Country Director, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)Leesa Shrader, AgriFin Accelerate Program Director, Mercy CorpsLucas Meso, Managing Director, Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC)Reuben Gicheha, Program Officer, Financial Inclusion, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)9:15 - 10:00 AMChallenge: How can your innovation help to expand coverage of financial services to farmers, including credit, savings, and other financial services?Presentations and pitching by shortlisted innovators 10:00 - 10:30 AMIgnite Talk: Revolutionizing the use of data for policymaking (The case of Agriculture Observatory in Kenya)Dr. Erick C.M. Fernandes, Global Lead - Technology, Innovation, & Climate-Smart Agriculture, The World Bank GroupCaroline Sartorato Silva Franca, Consultant, The World Bank Group10:30 - 10:45 AMCoffee break Theme 4 - Data Analytics and Intelligence10:45 -12:00 PMModerator: Ashesh Prasann, Agricultural Economist, The World Bank Group & Michael Tsan, Partner, DalbergKnowledge Panelists:Boniface Akuku, Director of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)Christophe Bocquet – Senior Data Scientist & AgriTech Lead, Dalberg Data InsightsDebisi Araba, Director, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Dr. Kala Fleming, Founder, Diaspora AIDr. Ladisy Komba Chengula, Lead Agriculture Economist, The World Bank GroupStewart Collis, Senior Program Officer, Digital Agriculture Solutions, Gates Foundation12:00 - 12:45 PMChallenge: How can you increase access to low-cost and accessible data in agriculture or use existing data to enable other entities to better serve farmers?Presentations and pitching by shortlisted innovators 12:45 - 1:45 PMNetworking LunchInvestment Roundtable1:45 – 2:45 PMModerator: Tim Smyth, Kuza Biashara LimitedKnowledge Panelists:Anup Jagwani, Principal Investment Officer, International Finance Corporation (IFC)Martine Jansen, Manager Data-Driven Innovation, Rabobank Foundation Olukemi Dolly Afun-ogidan, Principal Agribusiness Officer, African Development BankSandeep Khapre, CEO, Binder Dijker Otte (BDO)Shudhan Kohli, Co-Founder, and CEO, Grey Elephant VenturesPolicies for Disruptive Agriculture Technology2:45 – 3:45 PMModerator: Arif Neky, Senior Advisor – UN Strategic Partnerships, Coordinator – SDG Partnership Platform, UN Resident Coordinator’s Office Knowledge Panelists:Prof. Jerome Ochieng, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT)Prof. Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Andrew Karlyn, Strategic & Learning Lead, AgriFin Accelerate at Mercy CorpsMulat Demeke Desta, Senior Policy Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)Philip Thigo, Technical Advisor - Data & Innovation, Office of the Deputy PresidentSynthesis Session3:45 PM – 4:00 PMSynthesis session: summary of the two daysMichael Tsan, Partner, Dalberg DAT Awards and Closing Remarks4:00 – 5:00 PMClosing Remarks Simeon Kacou Ehui, Director, The World Bank GroupJury’s reflection on Challenges Jury RepresentativesAwards: One Million Farmer Initiative ‘First Cohort Awards’Dina Umali-Deininger, Practice Manager, The World Bank Group Thank you NoteParmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupProf. Jerome Ochieng, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) Prof. Micheni J. Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Mr. Harry K. Kimtai, Principal Secretary - Livestock, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Welcome RemarksWelcome Remarks by Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation347726079098900(Represented by the Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation)The Government of Kenya, in partnership with the World Bank Group, Korea World Bank Partnership Facility (KWPF), and Kuza Biashara, welcomes you to Savannah Valley for the Disruptive Agricultural Technology Challenge and Conference 2019.Kenya is beginning to ride a new wave of a technology revolution with sky-rocketing cellular subscriptions (with 28.3M unique mobile subscribers, 60% penetration). Today, Nairobi is the epicenter for technological innovation. Kenya's?$1 billion?tech hub is the home to hundreds of innovators, as well as global technology firms like IBM, Intel, and Microsoft. Our innovators are focusing their creative energies on challenges that matter most to Kenyans; we believe that no challenge is more significant than raising agricultural productivity and rural incomes. Whereas we have made progress in modernizing agriculture in Kenya, however, we have not yet reached our full potential. To achieve this potential, we must do agriculture in a different way. The Agriculture Technology (AgriTech) innovators today are disrupting the conventions in agriculture by providing solutions to key constraints faced by farmers – financial, market information, data, and advisory services; therefore, supporting our farmers to leapfrog to new levels of productivity, efficiency, competitiveness, and income, improve nutritional outcomes and enhance resilience to climate change. Thus, Kenya is at the forefront of technology-driven transformation for small and marginal farmers on the continent.The Agriculture Technology (AgriTech) revolution aligns well with the strategic objectives of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALF&I) as it allows us to create an enabling environment for agricultural development, increase productivity and output in the agricultural sector, improve market access and trade, and ultimately enhance national food security. The focus of these innovations has been smallholder agriculture which is in line with Kenya Vision 2030. Vision 2030 reiterates the importance of transforming smallholder subsistence agriculture into an innovative, commercially oriented, and modern sector. These AgriTech innovations can also help achieve the first flagship goal of Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy (ASTGS) 2019-2029, which aims to increase smallholder farmers income by targeting 1 million farmers. Furthermore, the new-age innovators are attracting skilled youth to agriculture thus fulfilling Kenya’s Youth Agribusiness Strategy which is aimed at providing new opportunities for youth in agriculture. MoALF&I is already leveraging technology to make value chains more efficient and reduce risks. MoALF&I is working with the Ministry of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) to register all farmers in the country, a move that is expected to boost service delivery to smallholder farmers. MoALF&I is also working with the World Bank on Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP) and National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project (NARIGP) to find ways to make market linkages more effective through digital tools. The Kenyan Government, together with the Swiss Re Group, GIZ, World Bank and ILRI, is also implementing the Kenya Livestock Insurance Program (KLIP) since 2014. KLIP is an index-based livestock insurance program that uses satellite technology to protect pastoralists in the remote, arid and drought-prone rangelands of Kenya from the impacts of extreme weather. Hence, the technology revolution has kickstarted well with contributions from all sector actors. All it needs now is a scale-up to multiply the impact. At the conference, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) along with the World Bank Group will launch One Million Farmer Initiative. The One Million Farmer initiative aims to impact the lives of one million farmers in Kenya by leveraging the potential of disruptive technologies. To this end, the Conference will mobilize the agricultural ecosystem to discuss the potential of disruptive technologies in Kenya. Innovators will get an opportunity to present their ideas and join the One Million Farmer Initiative. We believe that this Conference will build the momentum to scale-up the innovations and agricultural technologies by providing a historic platform that brings together global leaders, innovators, leading policymakers, development partners, and technology experts to discuss innovation for agricultural transformation in Kenya and beyond.The two-day conference will provide an interactive experience through:The Disruptive Agriculture Technologies (DAT) Challenge will bring together over 20 inspiring innovators to pitch their Agritech solutions focused on smallholder farmers in Kenya6-panel discussions drawing together 30+ experts in the Agritech field, covering a wide variety of topics, such as access to advisory services, access to financial services and data policy for disruptive agriculture technologies.The panel discussions and DAT challenge will provide a platform for all innovation ecosystem players to interact with one another, build a network of Agritech in Nairobi, find synergies to collaborate and grow together, further channelizing the investments to scale-up their operations.I would like to close by highlighting that smallholder agriculture provides employment to 75% of the population and 80% of food supplies, but has limited access to finance, inputs, markets, information, and other services. Technology innovations can overcome all these challenges – but it won’t happen automatically. We need to combine innovation, investment and policy to harness the power of the technology revolution to benefit smallholder farmers. I urge you all to engage in the dialogue, share thoughts and ideas on the future of agriculture. Hon. Mwangi Kiunjuri, EGH, MGHCabinet Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and IrrigationWelcome Remarks by Country Director, The World Bank Group(Represented by Paolo Belli, Program Leader, Africa, World Bank Group) 5143510403000I am pleased to welcome you all to the first ever Disruptive Agricultural Technology Challenge and Conference. At the World Bank Group, we are committed to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Agriculture and food systems play a central role in meeting these goals. We know that Africa will be home to 2 billion people by 2050; over the same period, the number of Kenyans will grow to 85 million. Kenya’s food production will therefore need to grow by 75% by 2030 to keep up with the additional food demand. On the supply side, Africa’s agriculture and food business are projected to grow to 1 trillion dollars by 2030. Accounting for input supply, logistics, processing, packaging, trade, retail and other off-farm activities within value chains, agriculture remains the largest employer in Africa, with several emerging jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities for engaging technologically savvy youth. Indeed, these trends offer a unique opportunity to create high-quality jobs all along the agri-food system, spur farmer-centered technological innovation, and enhance agricultural productivity. In Kenya, agriculture is the main contributor to the attainment of two of the pillars of the Government’s Big 4 Agenda – manufacturing and food and nutrition security. The World Bank is currently supporting Kenya’s food and nutrition security agenda through the following projects: Climate Smart Agriculture (US$250 million), the National Agricultural Rural Inclusive Growth (US$200 million), the Regional Pastoral and Livelihoods Resilience (US$77 million), and two large-scale irrigation projects. Innovation in agriculture is, without doubt, an important tool to tackle food security, and raise overall productivity and profitability in the agriculture sector. The range of agri-tech innovations that can be employed to transform Kenya’s agriculture is both exciting and endless. This includes weather data analytics, drones and satellites-based remote sensing and imagery, precision agriculture, Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications utilizing sensors for soil, water, plant and animal diseases, and fintech solutions for farmers, among many others. Low-cost digital technology represents a vast untapped potential for farmers, investors, and entrepreneurs in Africa. Over the next two days, you will actively engage with each other on practical and actionable solutions to scale up innovations that have the potential to transform Kenyan agriculture and the challenges faced by farmers. However, developing agri-tech innovations is not enough. Firstly, farmers need to be engaged and trained on how to effectively adopt them. Secondly, investors need to back the innovators to scale up. Lastly, governments need to create the policy environment and infrastructure that will encourage the large-scale use of these disruptive innovations.Reaching one million farmers in the next 10 years with disruptive agri-tech innovations seems ambitious, but I have confidence that the innovators and all actors in this conference will provide useful insights on how to attain these targets. On behalf of the World Bank Group, I would like to congratulate all the finalists of the innovation challenge. Their business ideas and plans will contribute to the transformation of Kenya’s agriculture, towards improved incomes for farmers, food security and job creation.Let me thank the Government of Kenya, the Korea-World Bank Group Partnership Facility, Kuza Biashara, Dalberg and many others who made this Disruptive Agricultural Technology Challenge and Conference possible.Key Points Discussed During the Welcome RemarksDescriptionThe Conference opened with remarks by senior leadership from the World Bank Group, United Nations, African Development Bank, and Kuza. The Principle Secretary, Fisheries delivered the inaugural Address, which was followed by a speech delivered on behalf of the Chairman of the Council of Governors, and comments made by the Principle Secretary, State Department for Agriculture Research.Speakers11575203980Sidharth ChattereeUnited Nations Resident Coordinator Edson MpyisiChief Financial Economist and Co-ordinator Enable Youth Programme, African Development BankSriram Bharatam Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara LimitedPaolo BelliProgram Leader, Africa,World Bank Group Sidharth ChattereeUnited Nations Resident Coordinator Edson MpyisiChief Financial Economist and Co-ordinator Enable Youth Programme, African Development BankSriram Bharatam Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara LimitedPaolo BelliProgram Leader, Africa,World Bank Group 845820189865Micheni Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Hamadi Boga Principal Secretary, Agricultural Research , Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Mary Nzomo County Executive Committee, Representing the Council of Governors 0Micheni Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Hamadi Boga Principal Secretary, Agricultural Research , Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Mary Nzomo County Executive Committee, Representing the Council of Governors Key points discussed Paolo Belli, Program Leader, Africa, World Bank GroupAgriculture and food systems play a central role in meeting the World Bank Groups goals of ending poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Africa will be home to 2 billion people by 2050; over the same period, the number of Kenyans will grow to 85 million. Kenya’s food production will therefore need to grow by 75% by 2030 to keep up with the additional food demand. On the supply side, Africa’s agriculture and food business are projected to grow to 1 trillion dollars by 2030. In Kenya, agriculture is the main contributor to the attainment of two of the pillars of the Government’s Big 4 Agenda – manufacturing and food and nutrition security. Innovation in agriculture is an important tool to tackle food insecurity and raise overall productivity and profitability in the agriculture sector. Low-cost digital technology represents a vast untapped potential for farmers, investors, and entrepreneurs in Africa. However, developing agri-tech innovations is not enough. Firstly, farmers need to be engaged and trained on how to effectively adopt them. Secondly, investors need to back the innovators to scale up. Lastly, governments need to create the policy environment and infrastructure that will encourage the large-scale use of these disruptive innovations.Sidharth Chatterjee, United Nations Resident CoordinatorThe timing of this conference is crucial because there is strong political weight and push from the government behind the agriculture transformation agenda. The right public policies and leadership are in place to drive transformation in the sector. County governors are not just grappling with the challenges of food insecurity but are transforming their counties into food surplus areas. Through the convergence of partnerships and knowledge we can transform the space. We cannot achieve scalable results for the Sustainable Development Goals without the might, innovation, and technology of the private sector. The United Nations working together with the World Bank, civil society, the private sector, and the Kenyan government can drive these results. Kenya has an opportunity to set the blueprint for what agribusiness and scale will look like in Africa. Edson Mypisi, Chief Financial Economist and Co-ordinator Enable Youth Programme, African Development BankThree elements - the youth, agriculture, and ICT – must be addressed to move the agriculture agenda forward and drive economic activity in Africa. Since over 70% of the population in Africa is under 35 years, the youth need to be put at the center of all policies, programs, and strategies introduced. Meanwhile, there is a huge productivity gap in agriculture, as highlighted by the $35 billion annual food imports in Africa that needs to be closed. Advances in technology offer endless opportunities to change the business models in the agriculture sector. Connectivity and internet utilization are very important in the space. During an African Development Bank value chain project in Gabon, youth leaders commented that they would only move from the city to rural areas to enter the agriculture space if there is internet connectivity. Sriram Bharatam, Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara LimitedThere is enough space for all players in the ecosystem to collaborate. There is a lot of room for everyone to contribute their own respective expertise. Kuza has impacted more than 4.2 million people and created 150,000 new jobs in Kenya over 4 years. Kuza has also created a backpack kit that is packaged with technological solutions, which enables people to go into communities to service farmers. Through partnerships and mentoring of new entrepreneurs, Kuza aims to expand its reach of smallholder farmers in Kenya.Micheni Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Agricultural produce is a lot more than just for consumption. It is also a source of raw material for trade, security, health, supporting manufacturing industries, and driving economic activity. Data and information are very important for the agricultural sector and need to be captured and managed at all levels of government. The absence of good data leads to reduced output and other challenges in the sector. With new technology, the government will be able to capture data accurately and in real-time to move the industry forward. Mary Nzomo, County Executive Committee, Representing the Council of GovernorsCounties’ governments are key to catalyzing agriculture transformation and need to be included in every step of the transformation process. Implementation of policies and strategies take place at the county level which makes buy-in at this level critical for success. All stakeholders in the ecosystem should therefore visit the counties. The World Bank Group should develop a partnership agreement with the Council of Governors. This would ensure that the scalable ideas and technologies generated from the Challenge are implemented and showcased to other counties. Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary, Agricultural Research, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)All stakeholders need to support smallholder farmers and provide them with an ecosystem that enables them to increase their income. The government aims to utilize smart solutions for the fertilizer and seed subsidy program in order to reach the right farmers with the right inputs. Integrating technology within the program will make it more transparent and efficient. The lack of information collection and data analytics is a major challenge in the sector. Volumes of data have been generated from different government initiative. However, due to fragmentation in industry, such data have not been combined and collectively assessed. There is high demand for data to be concentrated and analyzed to facilitate informed decision-making by the government. For example, in order to make the right interventions to mitigate the current drought experienced by communities in the north of Kenya, the government needs to collect data. Overall, the ecosystem as a whole needs to collaborate and consolidate data to create synergies. Key Learnings from Knowledge SessionsBackground of DAT Challenge and Conference - Vision of One Million Farmer Initiativecenter254000Dr. Parmesh Shah Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods and Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank Group00Dr. Parmesh Shah Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods and Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupDescriptionThe session outlined the vision of the One Million Farmer Initiative, which aims to provide solutions to the challenges faced by farmers by connecting them to a digital platform. The platform will bring together different disruptive technology innovators to offer an end-to-end platform solution keeping farmers’ challenges as a focal point. The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) of Kenya, along with the World Bank Group and the Korea-World Bank Partnership Facility are the key partners of the initiative.Key points discussedThe World Bank is supporting two agricultural programs in Kenya; The National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project and The Climate Smart Project. The total investment in these projects is USD 450 million and they have been rolled out in 45 counties across Kenya; Nairobi and Mombasa counties are excluded as the scope of agricultural activities in these areas is limited. Through the One Million Farmer Initiative, the World Bank aims to reach one million Kenyan farmers through disruptive agricultural technologies. By leveraging the platform, innovators can scale up their businesses and provide products and services to farmers through access to networking opportunities, knowledge and learning, data analytics services, evaluation and learning, incubation services and financing and investment. It is the vision of the World Bank to have the largest agri-tech incubator in Africa based in Nairobi. The World Bank will therefore work with the government to ensure there exists a conducive environment for growth of agri-techs. This should ultimately lead to significant increases in agricultural productivity throughout the country.DATs’ Role in the Kenyan context 376555240665Michael Hailu, Director, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Michael Tsan, Partner and Global Lead of ICT Practice, Dalberg 00Michael Hailu, Director, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Michael Tsan, Partner and Global Lead of ICT Practice, Dalberg DescriptionCTA, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation, in partnership with Dalberg Advisors, presented the findings from their most recent study on Digitalization for Agriculture. The study highlights the role digital agri-tech companies play in increasing profitability and productivity of smallholder farmers by allowing them to leverage digital solutions in the Kenyan context. Key points discussed CTA, in partnership with Dalberg has been working on a project to assess the digital agricultural ecosystem in Africa with a focus on six countries including Kenya. The project focus is to find out ways through which DATs can scale sustainably. A thorough analysis of the sector will provide data and specific recommendations that can move the sector forward. A focus on Kenya is important as it has the highest penetration of digital agri-tech solutions in Africa. This is largely driven by high levels of mobile phone penetration. Preliminary findings show that approximately 370 digital agri-tech innovators are currently active in Africa with advisory services being the most prominent digital agri-tech services. In Sub Saharan Africa, 33 million smallholder farmers are registered for these services. However, this number is to be taken cautiously as there are duplications and registration does not imply use and impact. Only 33% of smallholder farmers are currently engaged (active users) and it is therefore necessary to find a way to address the gap between registration and use. Furthermore, only 24% of the registered farmers are women yet around 50% of all smallholder farmers in Africa are women.Collaboration between different ecosystem actors including government, investors, and innovators is critical to ensure agri-techs scale sustainably. The project aims to come up with recommendations on some of the areas that require collaboration as it shall highlight the current state, challenges, and opportunities for the agri-tech sector. Knowledge Panel 1: Agricultural Productivity DescriptionPanelists discussed the different types of digital solutions in the market that facilitate the delivery of extension services, climate smart agriculture advisory, input services, mechanization services, and data information services directly to farmers. The panelist also discussed the impact that is derived from equipping farmers with such knowledge and education. 3492527178100Panelists 3492579375Janalize Van BuurenEast and Central Africa Divisional Sales Manager,John DeereJohn LoganCountry Director – Kenya,TechnoServeShaun Ferris Director of Agriculture and Livelihoods Program, Catholic Relief ServicesTania Lozansky Global Head of Advisory, Manufacturing Agribusiness and Services,IFC Benjamin Kwasi AddomTeam Leader – ICTs for Agriculture,CTABoniface Akuku, Director of ICT, KALRO 00Janalize Van BuurenEast and Central Africa Divisional Sales Manager,John DeereJohn LoganCountry Director – Kenya,TechnoServeShaun Ferris Director of Agriculture and Livelihoods Program, Catholic Relief ServicesTania Lozansky Global Head of Advisory, Manufacturing Agribusiness and Services,IFC Benjamin Kwasi AddomTeam Leader – ICTs for Agriculture,CTABoniface Akuku, Director of ICT, KALRO Key points discussed Many of the productivity challenges that farmers face can be solved by analog solutions. Analog solutions lay down the foundation to build digital technologies. It is important to have the analog elements working well for farmers across the five key services - organization, productivity, finance, marketing, and innovation - and harness digital tools to drive and scale these. So far, the analog-side of agriculture has only produced annual single-digit productivity growth for major crops. Harnessing digitalization is likely to provide enough disruption to lead to double-digit growth. Farmers need to shift their mindset. Currently across the value chains, many smallholder farmers do not see their operations as a business. Until they change that mindset it will be very difficult to get uptake of technologies and best practices. Improving financial literacy amongst smallholders can contribute to overcoming this and enable them to make better decisions to improve productivity.There would be a significant increase in adoption amongst farmers if tailored productivity innovations are provided for free. Currently, many large farms are utilizing precision technology and other innovations because they see its value and they can afford it. In contrast, there is low uptake from smallholder farmers because they cannot afford the services. To address this, business models need to be continuously tested to ensure that their offerings are affordable and accessible to smallholder farmers. Businesses can work with development partners and NGOs to test this, and may require a subsidy to absorb the cost of providing free services. Similarly, technologies can be used to drive service aggregation so that farmers have access to more services at lower price points. In the sector, technology should be harnessed to create inclusivity and not drive inequity. The government needs better data to aid the scale up of services and improve productivity in the sector. It will be very hard to achieve this without good data. For instance, the public sector needs quality information on soil and weather systems, which have a direct effect on farmer yields. Overall, there is a need for governments to stop being reactive to issues in the sector and utilize data to become proactive and predict issues in advance.Knowledge Panel 2: Market Linkages Description This panel explored the various disruptive agri-tech solutions that connect Kenyan farmers willing to sell their produce, to buyers both in local and international markets. Bridging the gap between buyer and seller is vital to fostering and increasing the economic activity and the productivity of the agriculture sector, especially given the context where farmers currently struggle to reach the market. -47625299720Castro Antwi-DandsoDirector of Sales and Marketing,ESOKOMary NzomoCEC,Trans Nzoia CountyBetty Kibaara, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation, Africa Region OfficeBenjamin Makai, Senior Manager, Technology for Development, Safaricom Mikael L. Clason H??k, Mastercard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning LabSidhartha SamalGeneral Manager,OLAM00Castro Antwi-DandsoDirector of Sales and Marketing,ESOKOMary NzomoCEC,Trans Nzoia CountyBetty Kibaara, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation, Africa Region OfficeBenjamin Makai, Senior Manager, Technology for Development, Safaricom Mikael L. Clason H??k, Mastercard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning LabSidhartha SamalGeneral Manager,OLAMPanelists Key points discussed Over 80% of smallholder farmers in Kenya sell their post-harvest produce. They sell to both the formal and informal markets regardless of volumes. Market linkages to buyers in the formal agricultural value chain by firms like Twiga and Tulaa as well as informal agricultural value chains by Olam are crucial for the livelihoods of the smallholder farmers. Kenyan farmers have for a long time experienced various challenges when it comes to access to markets. Some of the most identifiable challenges have been poor infrastructure as most farmers are in rural areas, unreliable middlemen when selling produce, lack of market information, high transaction costs for access, lack of relevant processing facilities, seasonality in production, inefficiencies in produce collection and aggregation, challenges in compliance to safety and quality standards, lack of economies of scale, and unpredictable market. Different challenges will call for different solutions. Various players in the agricultural ecosystem are developing different solutions to eradicate some of the challenges. Safaricom is partnering with agri-tech incubators through the DigiFarm platform to connect smallholder famers to markets. Through its large customer base, its partners can now easily reach farmers on the platform. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Foundation, through the YieldWise Project is providing farmers with solutions to their most pressing issues. The project is helping farmers in the mango value chain in Kenya find a solution to losses caused by fruit flies. The foundation has a goal to open the export market for farmers in Kenya through a partnership with Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) to improve quality of produce and limit post-harvest loss. For ESOKO and Olam, providing farmers with transparency in pricing of their commodities is important. The firms are leveraging the prevalence of mobile technology to optimize market linkages for farmers. In addressing the challenge of unreliable middlemen, it is critical to remember they play a very important role in the value chain given poor infrastructure in farming zones in Kenya. Some strategies like contract farming, selling directly to the processors, ensuring transparency in pricing and reducing the cost of production to create competitive markets can go a long way to reduce challenges of unreliable middlemen. However, they cannot be entirely eliminated from the value chain. Generally, most new innovations across the value chain provide an array of bundled services under one platform. Market linkages are bundled with advisory services as well as data analytics services. Bundling of these services has reduced the time and expenses used by the farmer in accessing innovative solutions. Knowledge Panel 3: Farmer Financial Inclusion DescriptionPanelists discussed digital innovations that give farmers access to various affordable financial products. They also discussed the strides and gaps in access to credit, savings, insurance and payment services that have been tailored to serve the needs of smallholder farmers. Panelists0705730207010Leesa ShraderAgriFin Accelerate Program Director,Mercy Corps/AFALucas MesoManaging Director,Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC)Reuben Gicheha Program Officer – Financial Inclusion,AGRAEsther Kasalu-Coffin, Country Director, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)0Leesa ShraderAgriFin Accelerate Program Director,Mercy Corps/AFALucas MesoManaging Director,Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC)Reuben Gicheha Program Officer – Financial Inclusion,AGRAEsther Kasalu-Coffin, Country Director, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)Key points discussed Farmer cooperatives (SACCOs) have vast amounts of untapped data on farmers. Innovators can use the data generated by SACCOs to build credit profiles for farmers. For instance, a model that is working for AGRA involves creating and integrating digital IT platforms for SACCOs with M-pesa wallet. This enables farmers to apply for a loan and receive it on their phone. Financial institutions that do not want to deal with the smallholder farmers directly can provide wholesale financing to the SACCOs and SACCOs can lend to smallholders through their panies must take a farmer-centric approach in creating relevant products and services to smallholder farmers. Currently, many large financial and non-financial companies with digital platform do not know how to tailor their offering to smallholder farmers. Since agriculture is a large market - with 70% of the working population in the sector - these companies want to have a presence. To overcome this, they should listen to the farmers first, identify their major pain-points, and then design their financial offerings accordingly. A major financial pain-point for farmers is that they need cash immediately after a harvest. Many farmers wait a long time before they receive payment from buyers. Some buyers take advantage of the farmers immediate cash need and negotiate prices drastically below market value. As a result, many farmers lose out on profitability. Technology platforms can be used to track successful farm product deliveries and the quantities delivered to create a profile on the farmer. In return, banks and other financial institutions can provide credit to farmers to relieve them of their immediate post-harvest cash needs. It is important to note though that many farmers are nervous to take on debt. One reasons for this is that they lack a clear understanding of the financial-side of their business. Most farmers just want a savings product that smoothens their cash flow and would rather use their own savings than take on loans. Studies also show that farmers would prefer to solve issues in their operations such as climate change and pest disease to increase yield, before turning to debt.Knowledge Panel 4: Data Analytics and Intelligence DescriptionPanelists discussed data sourcing, curation, data analytics and data insights as well as different types of datasets such as farmer registry data/farmer profiles, field sensors data providing data on soil, agronomy data from field trials, weather and climate data, remote sensing data, crop surveillance data, pest and disease surveillance data. New innovations in hardware and software agri-tech such as remote sensing, drones, machine learning, blockchain, AI and their impact on the quality and quantity of data available to farmers were also discussed. In addition, the panel explored how these new data sources can be used to improve the lives of smallholder farmers. 0321310Boniface AkukuDirector of ICT, KALRO Christophe BocquetSenior Data Scientist & Agritech Lead, Dalberg Data InsightsDebisi ArabaDirector, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)Dr. Kala FlemingCo-Founder & Director, Diaspora AI Dr. Ladisy Komba ChengulaLead Agricultural Economist – Agriculture Global Practice, World BankStewart CollisSenior Program Officer – Digital Agriculture Solutions, Gates Foundation 00Boniface AkukuDirector of ICT, KALRO Christophe BocquetSenior Data Scientist & Agritech Lead, Dalberg Data InsightsDebisi ArabaDirector, International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)Dr. Kala FlemingCo-Founder & Director, Diaspora AI Dr. Ladisy Komba ChengulaLead Agricultural Economist – Agriculture Global Practice, World BankStewart CollisSenior Program Officer – Digital Agriculture Solutions, Gates Foundation Panelists Key points discussed It is critical for farmers to have high quality, accessible and timely data on their farms. To achieve this, there is a need to focus on specific farmer issues to tailor products and services to their needs. This will ensure they make timely decisions on when, how and what to plant for maximum yields and income.The agricultural data ecosystem in Kenya is faced by various challenges. There has been lack of integration of ground-truth data into decision making, lack of high-quality primary data that is in granular form, information asymmetry, and difficulty in creating trust for usage of data. In addition to that, there is a poor balance between amount of historical data and real time data available. Historical data is useful for modelling but cannot be used to provide real-time insights to farmers. The One Million Farmer Initiative will help address some of these challenges. The World Bank has developed a partnership with International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and other key stakeholders to ensure they capture, analyze, and disseminate information to farmers. In addition to that, the AgObservatory team from the World Bank in collaboration with Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) will provide farmers with access to a big data platform of all the counties in Kenya except for Mombasa and Nairobi. The platform will provide agricultural data insights to the various agricultural sector stakeholders ranging from farmers, policy makers, donors as well as private sector organizations. Investment Roundtable DescriptionPanelist discussed issues around data, legislative environment, commercial viability, and risk from the perspective of Development Finance Institutions, donors, and private investors – that are preventing capital flows from entering the agriculture sector. In addition, the panel discussed actionable solutions that can be leveraged by ecosystem players in order to unlock systematic investments at scale into the sector. 342903390900Panelists48761651224280Martine Jansen Manager Data-Driven Innovation, Rabobank FoundationMartine Jansen Manager Data-Driven Innovation, Rabobank Foundation36671251219835Shudhan Kohli Co-Founder and CEO, Grey Elephant VenturesShudhan Kohli Co-Founder and CEO, Grey Elephant Ventures24587201223645Sandeep KhapreCEO, Binder Dijker Otte (BDO)Sandeep KhapreCEO, Binder Dijker Otte (BDO)342901216660Anup Jagwani Principal Investment Officer, International Finance Corporation (IFC)Anup Jagwani Principal Investment Officer, International Finance Corporation (IFC)12465051226820Olukemi Dolly Afun-Ogidan Principal Agribusiness Officer, African Development BankOlukemi Dolly Afun-Ogidan Principal Agribusiness Officer, African Development BankKey points discussedLarge amounts of grants and donor capital in the agriculture sector can be a deterrent for private/commercial investors. Due to efforts to reduce poverty and drive economic growth in the sector, many grants have been distributed to prop up businesses. Such businesses are not sustainable and considered a risk from the perspective of investors. As a result, when evaluating investment options in the agriculture sector, investors assess whether the underlying business model can survive long-term without donor capital. Those that can are deemed to be worthy investments. Blended finance options are helping to tackle the perceived riskiness of investing in the agriculture sector. Public-private partnerships have been an effective finance option for de-risking agriculture investments. By combining donor money with that of commercial institutions, investors are more willing to include digital agriculture investments under their portfolio that they would otherwise not. Development partners can play a role in investing in early stage businesses. This is important as there is a lack of seed capital available to business in Africa, which limits business growth. At early stages in the business lifecycle, companies tend to raise capital from family and friends to get their business going. However, in Africa there is a lack of wealth amongst such groups which makes it difficult for businesses to secure funding. As a result, when raising rounds from institutional investors, they are perceived as a risk. Institutions such as IFC are overcoming this by investing in venture capital and private equity funds to enable them to uptake these investments.Policies for Disruptive Agriculture TechnologyDescriptionThe objective of this panel was to get insights from all the key players of the ecosystem on how to create an enabling policy environment for DATs to scale-up. The panellists discussed the key policy constraints, priority areas for policy making as well as the general changes that should be made to the policy making process in Kenya to ensure that the agricultural sector has a conducive policy environment to encourage scale-up of DATs. 0299720Prof. Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) Andrew Karlyn, Strategic & Learning Lead, AgriFin Accelerate at Mercy CorpsMulat Demeke Desta, Senior Policy Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)Philip Thigo, Technical Advisor - Data & Innovation, Office of the Deputy PresidentProf. Jerome Ochieng, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) – represented by Mr Timothy Were0Prof. Hamadi Boga, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI) Andrew Karlyn, Strategic & Learning Lead, AgriFin Accelerate at Mercy CorpsMulat Demeke Desta, Senior Policy Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)Philip Thigo, Technical Advisor - Data & Innovation, Office of the Deputy PresidentProf. Jerome Ochieng, Principal Secretary, Ministry of Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) – represented by Mr Timothy WerePanelistsKey points discussedThe Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation has a vision to make Kenya a food secure country by encouraging an innovative, commercially aware, and competitive agricultural sector. This has led to the establishment of the Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy by the Ministry. To support that, the president of Kenya, His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta has committed himself to achieving 100% food and nutrition security by 2022 under the Big 4 Agenda. Several key policy constraints are holding Kenya back from harnessing the power of DATs. There lacks a concise policy on collaboration, sharing, and digitization of data by key agricultural sector players. Most agricultural departments especially in the government have their records on paper which makes sharing of information resources with other stakeholders very challenging. In addition, there is an increasing need on legislation of policies that can solve issues of data privacy and ownership in Kenya. It is critical to learn how to make policies that can adapt to the ever-changing innovations in technology. One way of doing this would be making sure that ICT is at the initiation of all government projects and hence all records are digitized. Furthermore, the government should consider legislating collaboration among the various stakeholders in the agricultural sector when it comes to sharing information/data. Involving the private sector and DAT entrepreneurs in the policy making process would go a long way in ensuring policies can last and adapt to new technologies. Legislation should also be elaborate, to ensure that issues of data ownership and privacy are tackled.Ignite Talk: Harnessing the Power of Communitiescenter3841750center1206500Sriram Bharatam, Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara Limited 00Sriram Bharatam, Founder & Chief Mentor, Kuza Biashara Limited Key points discussedPeople at the base of the pyramid especially smallholder farmers, women and the youth are equally engaged when it comes to the need for information. With everyone becoming time poor, it is critical to find innovative ways to engage the people at the base of the pyramid. Kuza Biashara has found new innovative ways to tackle this challenge. Some of their innovative solutions include providing bite time learning through 2-3-minute videos which can be uploaded on social media. This includes more than 40 million of video content for farmers in different languages. Kuza also provides micro-learning, micro-distribution and micro-mentoring to smallholders farmers in partnership with agencies like Syngenta Foundation.One prevalent model to reach rural farmers is the Agripreneur model. The Kuza team uses the process of selection, training, launching, mentoring and farmer engagement to grow businesses. Their team goes from village to village to identify rural entrepreneurs, equip them with the necessary skills for entrepreneurship, incubate them and support their businesses. Some of the services they offer through this model are crop advisory and access to credit. Ignite Talk: Disruptive Technology as Game-changers for Small-scale Agribusinesses23850606350000center4734Tim Chambers Co-founder & Managing Director and founder, InspiraFarms00Tim Chambers Co-founder & Managing Director and founder, InspiraFarmsKey points discussedTo take advantage of the growth in export markets globally, the Kenyan agriculture industry needs massive investment and upgrade. There has been a 250% growth in demand for avocados in the past few years and 70% growth in demand for the export market for bananas, but growth in production in Kenya has been flatlining. Investment is needed to strengthen infrastructure and have more people on the ground to boost production. Upgrading the sector requires both hardware and software-based solutions.Effectively managing cold-chain storage is important in being competitive in the export and domestic market. Retaining product quality during the route-to-market, facilitates repeat purchases and increases the likelihood of income growth. InspiraFarms addresses this directly by supplying energy-efficient, solar-powered refrigerators, cold rooms, and modular packhouses. Ignite Talk: Revolutionizing the Use of Data for Policymaking (The Case of Agriculture Observatory in Kenya)center1163320Dr. Erick C.M. Fernandes, Global Lead - Technology, Innovation, & Climate-Smart Agriculture, The World Bank Group00Dr. Erick C.M. Fernandes, Global Lead - Technology, Innovation, & Climate-Smart Agriculture, The World Bank Group2342515227965Key points discussedThe over-arching role of the AgObservatory in Kenya is to provide agricultural intelligence for The World Bank and its partners. One of the goals of the Observatory is tracking food and feed systems; both in the private sector, of which the information is proprietary; and the public sector, of which the information is open/free access. The Observatory also provides advanced indices and localized and timely insight for farmers to ensure maximum production. The Observatory partners with aWhere to process huge volumes of data. The data can be obtained from both ground stations and satellites within a short period of time and processing is done in real-time, providing agricultural ecosystem players with critical real-time data for informing their decisions. Big data techniques such as machine learning algorithms are applied to process the data. In Kenya, the Observatory is working with KALRO to provide agronomical near real-time insights for Kenyans. Through the KALRO website/app, farmers can access weather information for any part of Kenya to help guide their farming decisions. Closing Remarks04156Simeon Kacou Ehui, Director, The World Bank GroupDina Umali-Deininger, Practice Manager, The World Bank Group Prof. Micheni J. Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Dr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupMary NzomoCounty Executive Committee,Trans Nzoia County00Simeon Kacou Ehui, Director, The World Bank GroupDina Umali-Deininger, Practice Manager, The World Bank Group Prof. Micheni J. Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)Dr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupMary NzomoCounty Executive Committee,Trans Nzoia CountySimeon Kacou Ehui, Director, The World Bank GroupThe Conference has highlighted key innovative agri-tech solutions that are tackling the challenges of low productivity, constrained financial and market access and data deficient decision making. The World Bank will launch the One Million Farmer Initiative in Kenya and bring together the first cohort under the platform to reach one million smallholder farmers. The Bank will also host similar Challenges in other African countries. In line with the Digital Moonshot target for Africa, the World Bank has a vision of the future Kenyan smallholder farmers. Before the planting season, they can use their mobile phones to access real-time data on their farms, tailored farm advisory services, and receive credit in their mobile wallet. During the planting season they can order tractors, mechanization tools, and farm inputs on-demand. During the harvesting season, they can harvest at optimal times receiving guaranteed prices on e-platforms and utilize energy-efficient storage on the route-to-market. It is the hope that such a future will be realized through the One Million Farmer Initiative.Dina Umali-Deininger, Practice Manager, The World Bank GroupThe World Bank recently launched a “Digital Moonshot" strategy. Through this strategy, exceptional and coordinated efforts are being made to ensure that all Africans have universal and affordable access to ICTs by no later than 2030. In Africa, President Kenyatta has volunteered to be the first to sign up to the Digital Moonshot to support the Big 4 Agenda; this means every farmer in Kenya will be digitally enabled by 2030. To achieve this, the Conference and the One Million Farmer Initiative is the start to that, and the World Bank is committed to helping Kenya achieve its goal. Kenya is on a path to be a world leader in agri-tech. However, that will require collaboration between the various players in the sector: government, public and private sector both across and within the sectors. The Ministry of Agriculture will have to work with DAT entrepreneurs and other ecosystem players to ensure there is an enabling environment for entrepreneurship. On the other hand, entrepreneurs will have to work with each other to leverage their strengths, and financiers will have to work with innovators to help them scale up their technologies. If this is achieved, then Kenya will easily have a thriving agricultural sector. Dr. Parmesh Shah, Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods & Agricultural Jobs, The World Bank GroupBoth Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 members will be part of the One Million Farmer Initiative by the World Bank. The initiative will have an agri-tech incubator in Kenya which will be the largest incubator for DATs in Africa. The One Million Farmer Initiative will reach the farmers under the two World Bank projects currently in Kenya through a digitally enabled platform. All members on the platform will receive minimum incubation services and networking opportunities. The Initiative will bring together a network of members from Africa and around the globe and financing options will be discussed between the individual platform members and the World Bank team. In the next three months following the conference, all Platform members will be approached by the World Bank to develop a value proposition of how they will work together to impact Kenyan farmers. Mary Nzomo, County Executive Committees (CECs), Trans Nzoia CountyCounty Executive Committees (CECs) are driving agriculture in the country. We have 47 CECs and they have a caucus which holds periodic meetings to discuss the way forward on the state of the agriculture in the counties and the country at large. They are committed to work with the World Bank to implement agricultural projects in the counties.The vision of the counties is aligned with the Big 4 Agenda and both levels of government are committed to providing an enabling environment for DATs. The counties are looking up to the national government to create policies and are ready to implement them for the counties. The promise of the counties is that they are ready to adopt DATs in their implementation of agriculture strategy and support the national government in developing the best environment for DATs. The two levels of government are not in competition and are going to work together to reach farmers. Prof. Micheni J. Ntiba, Principal Secretary - Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)We are getting a solution to the many challenges of the Kenyan farmer through DATs. The conference has been a first step towards achieving one goal in the Big 4 Agenda; food security. The government and all other key stakeholders need to make a commitment that the journey will not collapse and that all ideas discussed at the Conference will be implemented. The national government is ready to work with the counties. The CECs are welcomed to ensure both levels of government work together to have food security in the country. After the Conference, there will be need to prepare an action plan that is shared by both levels of government and the World Bank to ensure smallholder farmers are uplifted. The national government called on the CECs to start developing their action plan with a specific timeline for the agricultural sector. DAT ChallengeChallenge OverviewThe One Million Farmer Initiative in Kenya will work with multiple cohorts of 10-15 agri-tech innovators over three years. The first cohort of DAT innovators was selected through a pitch challenge competition during the DAT Innovation Knowledge and Challenge Conference on April 5-6th, 2019. Future challenge rounds will invite additional applicants in 2020 and 2021. The DAT innovators selected in the first cohort will receive performance-based awards to support their scale-up and integration into the One Million Farmer Initiative. Equally important, the selected innovators will receive in-kind support in the form of access to knowledge, shared ecosystem and data services, and access to an expanded network of partners including private investors, funders, agribusinesses, technical and business model expert mentors, and government leaders. Those not selected as awardees (second cohort) during the Challenge will still receive program support (training, mentorship, and connections to networks; and will be eligible for joining the One Million Farmer Initiative program as full partners if they meet eligibility criteria over time.Overall, twenty-three DAT innovators pitched during the first DAT Challenge on April 5-6th, 2019. The innovator pitches were judged on their product/service quality, potential for scale-up, impact potential, business model sustainability, and their ability/willingness to contribute as partners to the DAT ecosystem generally and to the One Million Farmer Initiative platform.Based on the results of the challenge, the 23 DATs were divided into two cohorts: ‘First Cohort of Innovators’ – These were the top ranked DAT pitches, who were considered ready to join the platform. From the World Bank’s end, they will:Receive a performance-based grant when they achieve certain milestones Receive non-financial assistance in the form of incubation and mentorship support, as well as connection to investors, agribusiness, and technical expertsBe deployed directly within the World Bank One Million Farmer Initiative project and have the chance to work closely with the Kenyan government‘Second Cohort of Innovators’ – These were the top remaining DAT pitch participants. They will:Receive non-financial assistance, including mentorship and coaching to help them achieve the level needed to work directly with the World Bank on the One Million Farmer InitiativeHave the option to join the ‘First Cohort of Innovators’ once deemed ready without going through another Challenge roundThus, the conference lay the foundations for innovations to scale up in Kenya by connecting a million Kenyan farmers to disruptive agricultural technologies through a platform.Challenge ProcessThe DATs selected for pitching on the day of the Challenge had been through a rigorous shortlisting process. This process was competitive as well as transparent. There were three stages of the selection process: Ecosystem players convening workshop: All DATs in Kenya had access to an open invitation to the workshop in June 2018. Some of the Challengers attended the workshop, which brought together various players in the agri-tech sector in Kenya and lay a foundation for the DATs Challenge and Conference. Online application: All DATs in Kenya had access to an online application. The deadline to apply was 26th March. World Bank received 37 submissions by the deadline. The DATs online applications were reviewed based on the following criteria:They are serving farmers in Kenya (or have clear intention to enter Kenya, but are already serving farmers elsewhere)Have commercial orientation, or, at the very least, earned revenue elements in their models or proven track record of donor and government support if they are non-profits They are in validation/scaling stage of their business, not early stage pilotsThey clearly address one of the four 2019 DAT challenge themesThey combine digital technologies, data analytics and innovations, IoT or innovative business models and digital and analog outreachThey are crop or commodity specific, or have track record delivering value for specific crop value chains, except for financial inclusion track that could be more generalThe World Bank team reviewed all 37 DAT submissions with an eye on these criteria and shortlisted 25, with particular focus on three binding criteria – (i) a minimum scale of 3000 farmers, (ii) successful pilot or proof of concept (iii) technology-enabled disruption potential. These 25 DAT submissions were invited to participate in a pitch bootcamp.Pitch bootcamp: 24 out of the 25 invited DATs participated in the bootcamp. This was a 2-day bootcamp (28/29 March), where the World Bank Group shared its vision of One Million Farmer Initiative and DATs prepared their presentation for the day of the Challenge and practiced their pitches. The DATs got feedback and support to structure their pitch towards aligning with the One Million Farmer Initiative platform thinking.Additional individual coaching sessions: Seven out of the 24 invited DATs took part in additional individual pitch coaching sessions. They received feedback and support on various aspects of their pitch, including content and presentation skills. Additionally, ~15 Challenge participants did dry runs of their presentation with Dalberg support the day prior to the Conference.Challenge Track DescriptionsThe DAT challenge participants were aligned against four themes/tracks namely – Agricultural Productivity, Market Linkage, Farmer Financial Inclusion, Data Analytics and Intelligence. Theme 1 - Agricultural Productivity ChallengeContext: The average productivity of major crops in Kenya has not increased at a sufficient rate annually. Maize productivity, for instance, has increased by 17% over the last decade resulting in an annual increase of only about 1.7%. Relative to the need to more than double agricultural productivity by 2030 to meet national targets, this baseline pace of growth needs very substantial acceleration (e.g., 5-10x) in coming years. There are multiple reasons why growth in productivity has been slow such as – increased reliance on rainfed agriculture (98%), weak reach and uptake of advisory and extension services, lack of access to climate-smart practices, and – critically – limited access to improved agricultural production inputs (e.g., seeds, fertilizer, pesticides) and mechanization for production (i.e., land preparation equipment like tractors and irrigation). To reach their full potential, farmers need to have access to the latest technologies and actionable information.Some relevant disruptive technologies for this track include (i) digitally enabled agriculture advisory services for smallholder farmers, including climate smart advisory (direct-to-farmer digital advisory services or digital advisory services intermediated via agribusiness, government, or NGO extension agents), (ii) digitally enabled models for linking farmers to inputs like fertilizer, seeds, etc., (iii) digitally enabled models for linking farmers to production stage machinery (e.g., uberized, shared economy, or PAYG models for irrigation and tractor services), and (iv) agriculture hardware innovations at the agri-energy nexus (e.g., off-grid solar powered irrigation equipment).There were examples of each of these types of models among the pitch challengers with all falling in two broad categories – (i) digitally enabled advisory players and (i) digitally enabled market linkages to agricultural inputs (including mechanization inputs).Key impact question/objective for this track: How will the DAT approach/innovation help ensure Kenyan farmers have achieved disruptive changes in productivity (expressed primarily as increases in yield) by gaining access to high quality digitally enabled advice/training/insights or digitally enabled access to critical production inputs, including mechanization technologies.ChallengersAgrics provides agricultural products and services on credit to smallholder farmers to increase production and value chain effectiveness. Agrics sells high quality inputs; fertilizers and seeds and provides farmer tailored advisory services.Digital Green uses a video approach to amplify extension providers’ effectiveness to improve farmers’ livelihoods. They partner with existing extension officers to provide videos with highly localized content, human mediators to reinforce key messages and use near real-time data and feedback from farmers to inform adjustments on the content of the videos.DigiCow provides extension services to farmers using an innovative mobile phone solution. They provide training through a mobile app in which farmers can also chat and share ideas. Voice-based training coupled with SMSs is provided to farmers without access to smartphones. Farmers Pride leverages technology and franchising to break down barriers that have limited success of farmers. They provide a one stop village level online mobile app/web platform popularly known as DIGISHOP that ensures access to all the necessary inputs, services and information farmers need. Hello Tractor connects tractor owners to farmers through a digital solution. They enable farmers to request affordable tractor services, while providing enhanced security to tractor owners through remote asset tracking and virtual monitoring. This value also extends to banks financing tractors and dealers who service them. Precision Agriculture for Development provides low-cost mobile agronomic advice to farmers that is accessible, relevant, and customized to boost yields.Sunculture offers solar-powered irrigation systems to smallholder farmers and helps provide financing for acquiring these machineries to smallholder farmers.Waterwatch’s Crop Disease Alert and Tracking solution (CDAT) is a (smart)phone application that combines weather data, satellite imagery, and pictures taken by farmers with their smartphones (image recognition).Theme 2 - Market Linkages (Off-taker Market Access) ChallengeContext: While 83% of the Kenyan farm households sell part of their crop production (the rest are subsistence farmers that consume everything they produce), the majority of Kenyan SHFs participate in poorly structured “loose” or “semi-loose” value chains rather than in “tight” commercial value chains that are linked to large domestic or export-oriented buyers. This means that most Kenyan farmers struggle to find guaranteed buyers for their produce (with a range of downstream effects on their earnings). When they do sell their produce, Kenyan farmers struggle to secure sufficiently high prices and lose substantial value to various intermediaries between the farm gate and the end-buyer. Fast and reliable access to markets is critical for Kenyan farmers’ success. Obstacles to such access include asymmetric information on production volumes and prices, perceived or actual low quality of produce (from the perspective of high value buyers), limited knowledge of and physical access to high quality buyers/offtakers, and timing effects (e.g., markets exist, but farmer is unable to get produce to the market at the right time). Disruptive technologies for this track included a wide range of digitally enabled market linkage (i.e., off-taker market access) models that match sellers with buyers, reduce information asymmetries, or dramatically reduce the costs for agribusiness of formalizing and managing previously loose smallholder value chains.Key impact question/objective for this track: Given limited SHF linkages and access to markets, how can the DAT solution facilitate market links between produce buyers and produce sellers along the value chain?ChallengersFarmshine's platform helps smallholder farmers aggregate and sell their harvests directly to reliable commodity companies.Farmster is a digital platform that operates over an SMS Chatbot for farmers and a mobile Application for local buyers. Farmers use the Chatbot to answer basic questions about their expected harvest: location, crop, expected quantity, and harvest date. Buyers receive this information through an app and directly reach farmers.M-shamba is a Nairobi based Start-up that has been working with farmers across East Africa to effectively deploy farming technologies among smallholder farmers using basic mobile phones. The innovation focuses on the use of simple phones commonly known as feature phones to deliver vital information to the smallholder farmers even in remote areas.TruTrade is a social enterprise that digitizes value chain transactions making rural agricultural markets work better for farmers, aggregators and buyers. TruTrade’s service provides farmers with reliable routes to market and fair prices as well as agribusinesses and wholesalers with traceable produce to meet their quality specifications.Tulaa is a marketplace for smallholder farmers in Africa. Using mobile technology and artificial intelligence, Tulaa provides quality inputs like fertilizer on credit, tailored advice, and access to reputable buyers to smallholder farmers.Theme 3 - Farmer Financial Inclusion ChallengeContext: Financial inclusion has significantly increased in rural Kenya.?However, access to agricultural finance for small and medium farmers is still limited in Kenya.?Only 10% of the smallholder farmers have access to financial services including credit and insurance (<4% of SHFs).?A growing number of Kenyan farmers, estimated at ~30% use mobile money for payments, but very few (<5%) consistently pay for their inputs or sell their produce via mobile money transactions. The quantity of credit is also inadequate with only 4% of credit supply flowing to the agriculture sector.?Many factors have hampered access to financial services.?These include lack of reliable data to support agricultural lending decisions, lack of collaterals to secure financing, the high transaction cost of accessing and delivering financial services to rural areas, and lack of data platforms for assessing risk and delivering financial services (e.g., high costs of traditional claims processing for agri insurance). Additionally, the high cost of credit translates into a lack of demand for credit by farmers.Disruptive technologies for this track included a range of fintech models. For credit and insurance products, these DAT models typically incorporate digital channels and new types of data (e.g., weather, soil, crop yield estimation, etc.) for identifying new customers, assessing customer risks, developing/designing new financial products, monitoring and mitigating portfolio risks, managing client relationships, and running other vital operations like credit collections and insurance claims processing. The DAT solution providers are not necessarily financial institutions themselves, many are data analytics and digitalization intermediaries that work with financial institutions as their B2B clients to enable them to tap into new smallholder markets, deploy new products, and reduce transaction costs and risks. In the payments and savings space, financial inclusion DAT models typically include the use of digital payment or digital savings accounts “agri-wallets” to improve farmer access to these vital financial services. Key impact question/objective for this track: How can your technology help to expand coverage of financial services to farmers, including credit, savings, insurance, and low cost payments?ChallengersACRE is a service provider that links farmers to insurance products so that they can confidently invest in their farms. ACRE automates weather risk modeling, payments and communication through SMS and USSD platforms, claims calculations, and disbursement through mobile money. Arifu is a social enterprise making it possible for the least served people to access the knowledge they need on financial services from the organizations they trust on any mobile phone. Arifu provides both an education technology platform and a content digitization service. Cellulant has built a blockchain based smart contracting and customer relationship management; connecting them to market and helping them sell their goods to a diverse range of corporate buyers. Birthed in Nigeria and nurtured in Liberia, this platform (Agrikore) gives the farmers access to financial services and government subsidy programs to help reduce their costs and increase yields.Agri-wallet is a platform that enables financial inclusion of all value chain actors around smallholder farmers.Juhudi Kilimo is a financial services provider to rural smallholder farmers and micro-entrepreneurs with operations in 34 locations across 24 counties in Kenya, it operates through Grameen model.Theme 4 - Data Analytics and Intelligence ChallengeContext: The rapid development of data infrastructure, profusion of digital technologies, and low-cost precision agriculture devices (ICT, Drone Aerial Surveillance, Satellite GIS, Weather Data Analytics, Blockchain, Internet of Things) in Kenya has the potential to deliver farm-level, geospatial, and real-time analytics to inform policies and targeted investments by governments, agribusinesses, and various types of intermediary service providers. In many cases, generating and accessing large scale national data sets is a costly challenge for any individual player in the market. In other cases, even when data is affordable, it is simply not accessible and not shareable across silos (e.g., private sector data sets that companies may have few incentives to share with the broader ecosystem). Certain types of data have strong public good components and rely on substantial upfront investments into data capture and analytics infrastructure that the private sector may be unwilling to subsidize (e.g., weather data, soil data). Finally, many Kenyan agriculture ecosystem actors lack the scarce data analytics and big data science skills that capturing, cleaning, and analysing large agriculture and agronomy data sets require. Disruptive technologies that can address these challenges include new types of data collection and data analytics players including those that focus on geospatial agronomy analytics (e.g., field trial, crop testing data), weather and climate data, soil data, drone surveillance data, or models that integrate across a number of different data layers to generate insights that can feed into various downstream use cases including advisory services, macro agri intelligence, and financial inclusion models.The DAT challenge participants covered several of these models including, most notably, the sourcing and analytics of geospatial satellite and drone data, as well as weather and soil data analytics.Key impact question/objective for this track: How can your DAT innovation enable the large-scale collection, analysis, visualization and deployment of high-resolution, high-frequency, and low-cost agricultural data by public and private entities to enhance sector intelligence and farmer services? ChallengersAgrocares offers a unique operating system combining agronomic knowledge (in a smart phone) application, inhouse developed sensor technology, databases for soil, feed and leaf and deep learning algorithms.Astral Aerial is a drone operator. Offers up to date, problem-specific data to farmers using drones (a drone covers 1000 acres per flight, with sensors to detect crop health at an affordable price).Capture Solutions enables digital payment and advances to small scale farmers through a fully traceable supply chain with an easy to use solution.Oakar’s solution package offers farmers and other stakeholders access the latest knowledge, training, practices, data and mechanization best suited for them. Oakar’s Analytics platform incorporates dynamic datasets that can provide market information and facilitate easy links between producers and markets.UjuziKilimo provides a simple and fast way for smallholder farmers to monitor soil fertility. UjuziKilimo’s proprietary Sensor technology SoilPal is a GPS and internet enabled device with sensors that is used in farms to monitor the levels of macro nutrients, weather, soil pH and moisture content which directs water, lime and fertilizer nutrient application rates based on local requirements.Jury Composition and Judging Criteria The Jury: The Challenge was judged by a 5-member jury on the first day of the conference (April 5th) and a 5-member jury on the second day of the conference (April 6th).The jury members included:DAY 1 (April 5Th)069850Vikas Choudhary Senior Agricultural Specialist, The World Bank GroupBenjamin MakaiSenior Manager, Technology for Development, Safaricom Anup JagwaniPrincipal Investment Officer, International Financial Corporation (IFC)John KimaniProject Coordinator, National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project (NARIGP)Shaun Ferris Director of Agriculture and Livelihoods, Catholic Relief Service00Vikas Choudhary Senior Agricultural Specialist, The World Bank GroupBenjamin MakaiSenior Manager, Technology for Development, Safaricom Anup JagwaniPrincipal Investment Officer, International Financial Corporation (IFC)John KimaniProject Coordinator, National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project (NARIGP)Shaun Ferris Director of Agriculture and Livelihoods, Catholic Relief Service15875304165Joanne Gaskell Senior Agriculture Economist, The World Bank GroupKlaus Tilmes Senior Advisor, The World Bank GroupLeesa ShraderAgriFin Accelerate Program Director, Mercy CorpsSandeep GondhalekarChief Transformation Officer, Kuza BiasharaTom Dienya Head of Agricultural Stats, Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP)Joanne Gaskell Senior Agriculture Economist, The World Bank GroupKlaus Tilmes Senior Advisor, The World Bank GroupLeesa ShraderAgriFin Accelerate Program Director, Mercy CorpsSandeep GondhalekarChief Transformation Officer, Kuza BiasharaTom Dienya Head of Agricultural Stats, Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture Project (KCSAP)Day 2 (April 6Th) The World Bank team, in collaboration with Dalberg and discussions with other partners, aligned on eight individual criteria and two group summary criteria for judging the Challengers based on factors that show readiness to be part of the One Million Farmer Initiative. The eight judging criteria included:Product/service qualityThe product addresses the challenge core question (see challenge track descriptions)The product meets a pressing market need and/or major obstacle for ag transformationThe product has strong additionality relative to other solutions Clarity of the product value proposition for smallholder farmers, agribusinesses, and other SHF value chain intermediaries (in the case of B2B products and services)Quality of the product/service vis-à-vis market alternatives ScalabilityThere is evidence that the product/service can achieve substantial scale (3-5X of current size) or (in rare instances) has already reached very substantial scale in KenyaJury’s assessment is that the scale up plan is realisticProduct has competitive positioning vis-à-vis other offeringsScalability is not focused on number of registered farmers but rather farmers who are actively engaged and using productEcosystem engagementReadiness and willingness to collaborate/partner with others on the One Million Farmer Initiative platformWillingness to generate and share public goods, particularly data public goods, with others on platform and/or broader ecosystems (e.g., anonymized farmer registry data, soil mapping data, GIS data)ImpactProven impact either at pilot or broader deployment scale that includes achievement of key impact objectives, with precise details varying by track, but translating into improved productivity, income, resilience of farmersWhere known, impact is proxied by evidence from internal or external evaluations with the gold standard being independent third-party evaluations (internal M&E metrics considered but given lower weight)Track specific impact metrics to consider include:Agricultural Productivity Improvement of yieldsOutcome level proxiesImproved farmer knowledge/awareness of good agricultural practices, improved decision quality, etc.Labour-, input-, resource efficiency, and time savings due to access to mechanization technologiesIncreased uptake and use of production input volumes relative to baselinesMarket Linkages Improved farmer incomes/profitsOutcome level proxiesMarketed volumesAccess to better and/or more guaranteed pricesLower cost for off-taker in reaching and managing farmerInclusion in more formal / commercial value chainsFarmer Financial InclusionImproved yields Improved incomeOutcome level proxiesFarmer access to payments, credit, insurance vs market alternativesCost of financial products relative to marketReduction in risks and costs for finance providers due to B2B fintech products and servicesFarmer access to more formal financial servicesData Analytics and IntelligenceImproved yields and incomes as a result of better decisions being made by decision makers across value chains (i.e., better market planning, better resource allocation, etc.)Outcome level proxiesGreater availability of and access to valuable data (e.g., high frequency, real time, farm or field level, unique depth such for soil diagnostics, etc.)Lower cost of data accessQuality of data relative to marketBusiness model sustainability / financial viabilityFor commercial DAT solutions, business model sustainability is defined as the likelihood that the proposed model/approach will be commercially viable i.e., has potential to breakeven and ideally is already profitableFor non-commercial or blended model, business model sustainability is defined as the ability to generate at least some earned revenues and to fill the gap with substantial on-going government or donor results based funding based on the outcomes of the products/service Relevant considerations for commercial financial viability include:Evidence of profitability or clear path to profitabilityClearly defined revenue / monetization model with some evidence that the model is supported by market realitiesFunding raised to date to fuel business expansion and growthRelevant considerations for non-commercial or blended models include:Significant donor/govt funding secured for scale / expansionLong track record of successful fundraisingEvidence of / compelling plan to increase earned revenue to meet any grant revenue shortfallsPitch deliveryThe overall pitch should be clear and informativePitch should be engaging and interestingPresenter is confidentThe visual aids are clear and easy to understandFinally in order to ensure that the Challengers would most benefit (from) the platform, two additional criteria were used:Company will benefit most from the platformThe company will benefit the most from financial and incubation servicesCompany that offers the most value-add to the farmers on the platformThe company is answering the most pressing needs of farmers (focus on priority crop, or major farmer pain-point)Selection of the First Cohort of DAT Innovators by the JuryChallengers were ranked and evaluated on each criterion by each jury member on the basis of information available in challenger dossiers, pitch presentations, responses to jury questions during pitch discussions, and jury members expert judgement of DAT business models and sector trends. The eight criteria were weighted based on the level of their importance for the One Million Farmer Initiative program design. Jury deliberations followed each pitching session to compute average scores as well as a rank ordering of challengers.Based on normalized scores, the first cohort of DATs selected were:Agricultural Productivity ThemeDigital Green uses a video approach to amplify extension providers’ effectiveness to improve farmers’ livelihoods. They partner with existing extension officers to provide videos with highly localized content, human mediators to reinforce key messages and use near real-time data and feedback from farmers to inform adjustments on the content of the videos.Farmers Pride leverages technology and franchising to break down barriers that have limited success of farmers. They provide a one stop village level online mobile app/web platform popularly known as DIGISHOP that ensures access to all the necessary inputs, services and information farmers need.DigiCow provides extension services to farmers using an innovative mobile phone solution. They provide training through a mobile app in which farmers can also chat and share ideas. Voice-based training coupled with SMSs is provided to farmers without access to smartphones.Precision Agriculture for Development provides low-cost mobile agronomic advice to farmers that is accessible, relevant, and customized to boost yields.Sunculture offers solar-powered irrigation systems to smallholder farmers and helps provide financing for acquiring these machineries to smallholder farmers.Market Linkages ThemeM-shamba is a Nairobi based Start-up that has been working with farmers across East Africa to effectively deploy farming technologies among smallholder farmers using basic mobile phones. The innovation focuses on the use of simple phones commonly known as feature phones to deliver vital information to the smallholder farmers even in remote areas.TruTrade is a social enterprise that digitizes value chain transactions making rural agricultural markets work better for farmers, aggregators and buyers. TruTrade’s service provides farmers with reliable routes to market and fair prices as well as agribusinesses and wholesalers with traceable produce to meet their quality specifications.Tulaa is a marketplace for smallholder farmers in Africa. Using mobile technology and artificial intelligence, Tulaa provides quality inputs like fertilizer on credit, tailored advice, and access to reputable buyers to smallholder farmers.Farmer Financial Inclusion ThemeACRE is a service provider that links farmers to insurance products so that they can confidently invest in their farms. ACRE automates weather risk modeling, payments and communication through SMS and USSD platforms, claims calculations, and disbursement through mobile money. Arifu is a social enterprise making it possible for the least served people to access the knowledge they need on financial services from the organizations they trust on any mobile phone. Arifu provides both an education technology platform and a content digitization service. Agri-wallet is a platform that enables financial inclusion of all value chain actors around smallholder farmers.Data Analytics and Intelligence ThemeAstral Aerial is a drone operator. Offers up to date, problem-specific data to farmers using drones (a drone covers 1000 acres per flight, with sensors to detect crop health at an affordable price).Oakar’s solution package offers farmers and other stakeholders access the latest knowledge, training, practices, data and mechanization best suited for them. Oakar’s Analytics platform incorporates dynamic datasets that can provide market information and facilitate easy links between producers and markets.UjuziKilimo provides a simple and fast way for smallholder farmers to monitor soil fertility. UjuziKilimo’s proprietary Sensor technology SoilPal is a GPS and internet enabled device with sensors that is used in farms to monitor the levels of macro nutrients, weather, soil pH and moisture content which directs water, lime and fertilizer nutrient application rates based on local requirements.PartnersThe World Bank GroupThe World Bank works with low and middle-income countries and partners to provide innovation and resources so that the food system lifts people out of poverty, produces safe and nutritious food for all, and is more sustainable and resilient in the face of resource constraints and climate change.Learn more: agricultureThe Korea-World Bank Partnership FacilityThe Korea-World Bank Group Partnership Facility (KWPF), established in May 2013, is an initiative to strengthen ties between the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) and the World Bank Group (WBG). The facility’s overall objective is to assist developing member countries of the WBG in achieving inclusive and sustainable economic growth and to foster broader dialogue on economic development issues. The facility supports a broad range of economic development opportunities with a focus on promoting best practices by leveraging the WBG’s knowledge and convening power and Korea’s expertise. The Government of Korea provided US$90 million from FY14 to FY16 and a replenishment of US$90 million from FY17 to FY19 through this facility.Learn more: Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation (MoALFI)The ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation has a vision to have a secure and wealthy Nation anchored by an innovative, commercially oriented and competitive agricultural sector. To achieve its vision, its strategic objectives are to create an enabling environment for Agricultural development, to increase productivity and outputs in agricultural sector, to enhance national food security, to improve market access and trade and to strengthen Institutional capacityLearn more: United Nations Partnership for SDGs PlatformThe?Partnerships for SDGs online platform?is United Nations’ global registry of voluntary commitments and multi-stakeholder partnerships made in support of sustainable development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Partnerships for SDGs platform also facilitates the sharing knowledge and expertise among multi-stakeholder SDG-related partnerships and voluntary commitments, and for providing periodic updates on their progress.Learn more: BiasharaKuza Biashara is an organization offering small business learning, training and empowerment in Africa. The organization is based in Nairobi, Kenya. It is a mobile first micro-learning platform offering youth, women & micro-entrepreneurs from informal communities opportunities to learn, connect & grow on their own terms and at their own convenience.Learn more: AdvisorsDalberg Advisors is a strategic advisory firm which brings the best of private sector strategy skills and rigorous analytical capabilities with deep knowledge and networks across emerging and frontier markets. We work collaboratively across the public, private and philanthropic sectors to fuel inclusive growth and help clients achieve their goals. Learn More: ................
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