Strategy for agricultural transformation in africa

ICT 
Previous experience, but need to develop 
expertise 
at 
scale:
The 
Bank’s 
communication portfolio currently accounts 
for only 1% of its total resource allocation, 
illustrating the relatively constrained scale of 
activities from the AfDB in this area. Unlike 
other infrastructure, much of the ICT network 
growth has been spearheaded by private 
sector actors, and efforts to deepen the Bank’s 
engagement with the sector will require close 
collaboration 
with 
the 
major 
telecommunications and network providers 
of the continent.
90
The Bank has historically 
interacted 
very 
little 
with 
innovative 
technology solutions providers, due in part to 
the differences in ticket sizes, funding 
models, and risk appetites of technology start-
ups and NGOs and major development banks; 
however the financial inclusion team within 
OFSD is working to change this. 
The Bank will need to develop in-house expertise to stay apprised of trends in—
and be able to coordinate large scale deployment of—agriculture and 
agribusiness ICT (e.g., farmer e-registration and mobile platforms for facilitating 
transactions). These projects involve new and often cutting edge technologies 
that may have limited track records, will involve taking a more VC-type approach 
to managing investments, and potentially a more interventionist approach. As the 
Bank gains clarity on the role of ICT in driving financial inclusion, information 
dissemination, and service deployment in agricultural value chains, there are also 
opportunities to capture and leverage lessons from repeated deployments, further 
supporting the rationale for deepening in-house capability to institutionalize 
capacity and know-how and drive success and return on ICT-for-Agriculture 
investments. 
The required FTE(s) must be able to display and understanding of current trends 
in use of ICT, such as computers, mobile phones, satellites, applications, 
information systems, and digital platforms, to enable and enhance agricultural 
production at a variety of stages. In particular, they will have had experience 
using these to farmers’ access to products, services and information. 
3 
90
AfDB Project Database. 2016. 

---

- 26 -