Harnessing use of agricultural data to help smallholder farmers in Kenya manage climate change effects

This blog post was written by Boniface Akuku, who is currently the Director of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO).

The good or promising practice are about the various use of ICTs for agriculture or rural development. Following 2017 call for Good and Promising Practices in Agriculture this paper was selected for review and publication.

The paper asserts that development of an agro-weather tool and digitizing agricultural value chain is a promising practice for climate smart agriculture in Kenya. The author further contends that the various constraints and challenges facing smallholder farmers in Kenya can be addressed by harnessing use of data from agricultural researchers and meteorologists. In addition, improving access to these datasets as well as creating value and obtaining insight from the datasets can be achieved effectively by embracing a paradigm shift towards creating value from data through application of ICT and disruptive technologies.

Read the full paper