Agricultural Information Systems (AGRIS) as a Catalyst for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa: A Critical Literature Review

Introduction

The absence of well-developed agricultural information systems (AGRIS) has continued to hinder agricultural development in Africa. Efforts designed to modernize agriculture through AGRIS by the public and private sectors, including agricultural interventions from international organizations, have been hindered by administrative bottlenecks, weak political will from governments, display of ineptitude by farmers/associations, and institutional corruption. There is a need to strengthen the agriculture sector and increase the productivity of agribusinesses in the continent, leveraging AGRIS. The continent’s low agricultural productivity is compounded by weak linkages of research findings and advisory services, inadequate basic infrastructure, ineffective information packaging and dissemination, limited commercial farming capability, and poor access to new agricultural technologies for the benefit of the farmers (Oluwole, Youdeowei, Ohiomoba, Adewale, & Yemi, 2016; Vidanapathirana, 2012). Unfortunately, for a continent with a population estimated at about 1.3 billion (WPR, 2020), it is also the most hit by food insufficiency, hunger, and abject poverty. Previous blueprints on sustainable development such as the green revolution, millennium development goals (MDGs) and sustainable development goals (SDGs) made food sufficiency and agricultural productivity across the globe a priority.

The food and agricultural organization (FAO) had long advised that the number of food-insecure people across the globe could be reduced to 675 million by 2015 because there are environmentally-sustainable technologies with the capacities to help double world food production without causing threats to ecosystems. However, the targeted reduction of the number of food-insecure people could not be achieved because of insufficient political will on the part of countries (FAO, 2017). The situation has worsened beyond the FAO 2015 estimates because the population of the world continues to grow with more frightening population growth rates coming from the developing countries. Therefore, developing countries must increase their food production in the agricultural sector to match their growing populations to ensure food security (FAO, 2017).

But, the quest to achieve food security for the hungry population of Sub-Sharan Africa will remain a tall order without higher levels of investments in AGRIS, water resource development, human capital development, basic infrastructure or transport systems, power grids, agricultural research and extension, and genuine political will from the governments of Sub-Saharan Africa. While other continents are making systematic efforts at boosting their agricultural systems leveraging technology and information systems, the African continent still heavily relies on aid and food importation to sustain its growing population.

Providing an enabling environment for the implementation of SDGs justifies investments in AGRIS to accelerate the progress towards achieving the SDGs in Africa. The viability of AGRIS-SDGs synergy has attracted the attention of the international community. The United Nations has appointed FAO as a ‘custodian’ for 21 of the 230 SDG indicators that cut across SDGs 2, 5, 6, 12, 14 and 15, and a contributing agency for six more (FAO, 2017). However, there is also a paucity of literature connecting AGRIS and the SDGs in the African context. Very few articles from FAO only reported the synergies between AGRIS and the SDGs. Since 2016, FAO and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have been working to boost the capacity of developing countries to deploy AGRIS for tracking agricultural data, which would accelerate the realization of SDG 2 that aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture (Wahlen, 2016). There exists a knowledge gap to be filled with regards to the relevance of AGRIS to all 17 SDGs in Africa.