Agriculture in Africa: The emerging role of artificial intelligence

This chapter critically considers the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to agriculture in Africa. It contends that, while African countries can utilise AI to address agricultural challenges, realising the full potential of AI in agriculture requires the judicious adaptation of pervasive AI technologies to serve African interests. Africa’s young, vibrant population along with the movement of people, goods and services around the continent, promoted under the African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 provide a fecund platform for AI-driven agricultural transformation. This is pivotal because of the multilayered agricultural paradoxes on the continent. For instance, Africa is endowed with an abundance of uncultivated arable land and diverse agro-ecological zones, from rainforest vegetation to dry and arid vegetation, which engender the growth of wideranging food and cash crops, yet it suffers an alarming increase in food insecurity.1 An AU, United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) Report on Food Security and Nutrition in Africa confirmed that 281.6 million people on the continent, comprising one-fifth of the population, faced hunger in 2020;2 346.4 million Africans suffered from severe food insecurity while 452 million suffered from moderate food insecurity in the same year.3