Disruptive technologies will impact Africa the most, with innovation greatly transforming the continent’s economic potential and delivering the greatest amount of change – and industry can assist farming communities to embrace this digital future.

“Agriculture plays a critical role in meeting Africa’s developmental goals, with a huge focus on increasing agricultural production in a sustainable way, while also decreasing costs,” says information and communication technology solutions provider Datacentrix chief digital officer Rudie Raath.

Technology, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), analytics and blockchain, can help shift this industry beyond a business-as-usual farming approach to one of transformation, he told delegates at the second yearly Agri Indaba, held during October, in Limpopo.

However, farming communities will require assistance in embracing the digital move.

Industry can step in to provide support by better equipping these agribusinesses with information on existing and emerging solutions that can help transform business processes, increase performance and deliver a better customer experience.

“With disruption comes great opportunity, where Africa will use technology to improve our competitive advantage on a global scale,” he says, adding that the barriers to technology entry for the agriculture sector are being lowered, with cloud computing, drones, IoT and automation increasingly within reach of the average farmer.

The agriculture sector’s complex environment, characterised by highly variable and uncontrollable factors, can also provide an “ideal setting” for machine learning and IoT sensor measurement.

This can allow the local agriculture sector to transform itself – and its products – to help make farming smarter, more efficient and more sustainable.

“But connectivity remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks for the local agriculture sector, with a direct correlation to the adoption of new technology within this market,” he adds.

Internet service providers face the persistent challenges of attempting to deploy expensive infrastructure in low-density areas, such as farmlands, where the cost of infrastructure is not aligned with the number of users in the area.