Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date (Issue Year)

5-2023

Journal Name

Agriculture

Abstract

This study focuses on agriculture, which is the main source of economic growth in many West African countries. In recent years, conventional agriculture has undergone a remarkable evolution and digital technologies are widely used for different purposes. While the world is rapidly using advanced digital technologies to grow their agriculture, Africa seems to be lagging behind, especially West Africa. To know how to contribute effectively, it is important to know what is being performed about this issue. The objective of this study is to examine the state of digital agriculture in five countries, namely, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. The study consisted of an analysis of the scientific contributions of these countries and the cases of actual deployment. This is carried out by means of a bibliometric study based on data collected from the Web of Science and a comparative review of the technologies used in the target countries using data from several sources, such as IEEE, Scopus, Science Direct, Google Scholar, etc. The bibliometric analysis based on 3249 publications revealed that research interests have increased significantly since 2014. Climate change, machine learning (ML), and adoption have been the hottest topics of discussion and most of the organizations working on the topic are academic bodies. Moreover, a considerable amount of the scientific input was obtained from Nigeria, which is the most populous of the five countries considered. The survey on digital farming showed that publications in Nigeria that address deployment cases were focused on the internet of things (IoT), wireless sensor networks, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In Ghana, practical cases of blockchain, AI, and big data deployment were observed, while Burkina Faso focused on IoT and AI. In Côte d’Ivoire and Benin, the deployment cases generally focused on AI.

Keywords

technologies, innovations, agriculture, artificial intelligence, internet of things, machine learning

Grantee Name(s)

Jules Degila

Project Title

AGriDI-Accelerating inclusive green growth through agri-based innovation in Western: Baseline study of the project in target countries

Type of Grant

Research Award

Thematic Area

Climate Change

Funding Statement

This research was funded by Accelerating Inclusive Green Growth through Agri-based Digital Innovation in West Africa (AGriDI); EuropeAid ID: KE-2009-GBC-3107646852, Contract No.: FOOD/2018/402-634. Funding for this study was provided by the “Accelerating inclusive green growth through Agri-based digital innovation in West Africa” (AGriDI) project, which is one of the 12 Innovation Fund projects financed by the European Union through the ACP Innovation Fund of the Organi-zation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).We also thank the consortium partners: International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), Agropolis Foundation (France) and Gearbox Pan African Network (Kenya).

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