Food Security in Africa: Microsoft, OCP Africa pool efforts to support smallholder farmers
Microsoft, through its Africa Transformation Office, and Morocco’s OCP Africa announced at the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), held in Doha, March 5-9, a partnership to support smallholder farmers and other stakeholders across Africa by 2025.
OCP Africa, an African company that provides fertilizer solutions tailored to local conditions and the needs of soils and crops across the continent, is partnering with Microsoft to strengthen and expand its digital agriculture platform, a statement released Friday said.
The digital platform is meant to improve the quality of farmers’ production and enable them to better manage their businesses.
The partnership between the two companies will allow the rapid expansion of the agricultural platforms to new and existing geographical areas, improving the services offered and developing new ones.
In this time of increasing food insecurity, building the resilience and livelihoods of smallholder farmers is necessary to increase agricultural productivity, including reducing losses in the food production chain, the statement said.
With the increasing impacts of extreme weather events becoming more frequent, adaptation and resilience are of critical importance for food system transformation.
Working with African AgriTech startups, agribusinesses, and other partners to increase access to agricultural technology, skills, and knowledge is critical to optimizing the industry and generating new revenue streams that will ensure global food security.
Microsoft aims to support digital transformation in agriculture to drive economic growth. The adoption and integration of technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, agricultural data platforms and Azure application modernization in the agricultural space will drive transformation in the form of precision agriculture.
The partnership will enable smallholder farmers to access skills and information through agri-digital services by leveraging OCP Africa programs such as the agri-hub concept to support millions of farmers.
OCP Africa will also work with Microsoft to explore the use of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to build their data and artificial intelligence platform to improve operational efficiency and better serve ecosystem stakeholders.
“We believe that precision agriculture, brought about by the adoption of advanced technologies in the agricultural sector, will revolutionize food production and help eliminate hunger and poverty in Africa,” Microsoft Africa Regional Cluster Managing Director Wael Elkabbany, was quoted in the statement as saying.
He added: “Technology is the key factor in enabling and increasing access to finance, equipment and sustainability for rural farmers, empowering local farmers in Africa. Our partnership with OCP Africa will help to directly impact smallholder farmers and improve production”.
For his part, the CEO of OCP Africa, Mohamed Anouar Jamali, stressed that “African agriculture is at a transformative moment in its history and a time of incredible opportunity and promise for farmers and industry.”
“The digitization of agricultural practices in Africa enables smallholder farmers to optimize their decision-making, which helps optimize production. The partnership between OCP Africa and Microsoft will allow us to increase the services provided, expand our digital platform, extend our reach and have an even greater impact on food security across the continent,” he added.
