Dear Esteemed Listers,

Reports by AGRA and Disrupt Africa consistently position Kenya as the global leader in the number of tech ventures and digital solutions for agriculture (DSAs). By GSMA's 2020 report which tracked 713 active DSAs, more than half (437) were in sub Saharan Africa. Kenya led with 95 and Nigeria was at a distant second with about half of Kenya's number. Studies have questioned the ability of these DSAs to scale out so as to significantly impact a sector that is the mainstay of most sub Saharan African economies (including Kenya). 

My co-authors and I sought to contribute in diversifying the thinking about efforts to unlock the promise of digitalisation and digital transformation of agriculture in sub Saharan Africa. We conceptualised an aggregator platform for digital services in agriculture (AP4DSA). This is a special type of digital platform for agriculture whose characteristics can partially be observed in nascent platforms such as Safaricom's DigiFarm, EcoFarmer in Zimbabwe, Bayer's Climate FieldView, and an "imaginary instance of Google play store for agriculture". Such a platform can be expected to address DSA discoverability challenges including fragmentation of the digital agriculture ecosystem, absence of a one-stop-shop, and an unmet desire for comprehensiveness. 

We proceeded to examine the underlying structure of value creation sources in such a digital platform as perceived by likely users in Kenya. We recently published our findings in the Digital Business Journal on the link below (pdf downloadable)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666954421000065 (see also attached graphical abstract)

I take this early opportunity to invite listers' review of our findings. I am particularly wishful for feedback about the issues of value chain coverage and digital inclusivity, which our research finds as sub-themes of platform inclusivity, a major theme on amplifying the value of such a platform.

Kind regards. 

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