Publication database

Commendable progress has been made across many parts of Africa over the past years to increase agricultural productivity, reduce hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, create new employment opportunities for young people and improve the livelihoods of rural communities. Yet, demographic change, urbanization, shifting diets and climatic changes mean that pressure is growing on food systems to make more food and more varied and nutritious food available and accessible.  How African countries position themselves to harness and deploy digital technologies will determine the future competitiveness of African agriculture and its contribution to African economies.

The current report — Byte by byte: policy innovation for transforming Africa’s food system with digital technologies— summarizes the key findings of a systematic analysis of what seven African countries at the forefront of progress on digitalization of the agriculture sector have done right. It analyzes which institutional and policy innovations were implemented and which actions by the private sector and agtech start-ups were taken to increase the development and use of digital tools and services in the agriculture value chain. The objective of this report is to identify interventions that work and benefit farmers and other actors in the value chain and recommend options for policy and program innovation that allow countries to develop a digitalization ecosystem in which digital technologies and services can be developed and used to foster growth and competitiveness in Africa’s agriculture value chains. 

This white paper seeks to articulate the impacts of connectivity and propose a framework of financial, social and economic key performance indicators for the last-mile connectivity (LMC) sector, in order to ultimately drive investments in the sector. The purpose of the framework is to illuminate impact pathways that link investments in LMC enterprises to positive development outcomes.

For over a decade, mobile money has been driving financial inclusion, opening access to digital transactions and giving people the tools to better manage their financial lives. This publication delves further into this topic and addresses the following key questions: How should the mobile money business model evolve to meet the changing needs of individuals and small businesses, and what is required to make this shift? Who will benefit from the ‘payments as a platform’ approach?

This report addresses the opportunity for the private sector to play a role in developing digital payment systems. It highlights various sectors where these opportunities are largely untapped and where global companies can leverage their networks to help bring consumers into the digital economy.