Your thoughts and feedback on Aggregator Platforms for Digital Services in Agriculture.
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.
John, Thanks. It may be easier to find articles on pre-print servers or national repositories such as: http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/ http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/ https://sorer.somaliren.org.so/ Maybe national/regional pre-print servers are a good alternative to or addition to university pre-print repositories. Benson
John Thanks for sharing. Definitely an important read. Will purpose to read in-depth and give you feedback. Regards *Ali Hussein* Digital Transformation Tel: +254 713 601113 Twitter: @AliHKassim Skype: abu-jomo LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with. On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 12:25 PM John Kieti via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
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.
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/
Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com
The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
Thanks, @Ali, Looking forward to your thoughts. @Benson Since the article already went past the formal peer-review process and got published (via Elsevier), pre-print servers may not be applicable. It's also an open-access (CC BY 4.0) article which should free it up for circulation. But thanks for the idea of pre-print servers - I could use them for some pending publications. So I am slightly less of an academic and a little more of a practitioner. Therefore am quite keen to hear what fellow practitioners (and policy folks) think of the findings and their relevance (irrelevance?) - to practice and policy in Kenya. Kind regards On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 7:21 AM Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> wrote:
John
Thanks for sharing. Definitely an important read. Will purpose to read in-depth and give you feedback.
Regards
*Ali Hussein*
Digital Transformation
Tel: +254 713 601113
Twitter: @AliHKassim
Skype: abu-jomo
LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>
Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 12:25 PM John Kieti via kictanet < kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
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.
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/
Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com
The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
-- John Kieti Phone: +254-735-764242 // +254-722-764242 Twitter: @johnKieti <https://twitter.com/johnkieti> // Skype: jkieti Blog: gmeltdown.com <http://www.gmeltdown.com> // LinkedIn: https://ke.linkedin.com/in/*kieti* <https://ke.linkedin.com/in/kieti> The ordinary just won't do
Dear John, Thanks for an interesting read. Understanding how digital platforms can help grow an economic sector is very important. To help grow the reputation of the Kenyan knowledge economy, it would be great if you can also increase the visibility of your article and also the Kenyan knowledge economy. The journal policies allow you to post the article to institutional repositories: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/submit-your-paper/sharing-and-promoting-you... https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/copyright As an example, Covenant University in Nigeria requires all publications to be hosted on their institutional repository a forward looking policy that ensures that research discovery is easier and that the reputation of Covenant University and Nigeria as places of knowledge generation are enhanced. This research discovery problem is similar to the platform discovery problem you examine, and could be an object of study in its own right. Research originating primarily from African institutions may be more difficult to find than research originating from regions with a high per capita income. By also making your research available on your institutional repository, you can contribute to alleviating the African research discovery problem. Making your survey data available for others to use (possibly with some anonymization), would be nice. Instead of Atlas.ti could you use: 1) qdap https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/qdap/ 2) rqda http://rqda.r-forge.r-project.org/ 3) KH coder http://khcoder.net/en/ if the data can be made available, this would enable others to more easily reproduce and/or extend your qualitative analysis. It would also allow for examination of the algorithms used in performing the qualitative analysis to check they are doing something reasonable. Selection bias will be important. Your choice of survey technique is cost effective for the surveyor, but will primarily capture farmers with good digital access (smartphones or computers). Kenyan census data shows that most people do not have such access on a regular basis, and so the survey will likely miss out on many small scale farmers as well as people working in cattle rearing who may have no fixed abode. The cost of data, even when one has a smartphone or computer, is also relatively high. As an example Twiga foods primarily uses their platform in regions close to Nairobi, probably partly because of the above reasons. It would be helpful to know to what extent having a smartphone/computer with internet access gives rise to greater income from being able to access a digital platform. Could SMS communication with occasional internet access for example at an internet cafe be sufficient to obtain similar income increases? Economies of scale in agriculture often mean that only a small proportion of people are employed in the agricultural sector in high productivity economies. If the survey is repeated several times in future, it may be good to capture the extent to which people move to other sectors and digital platforms increase production productivity and access to markets. Could the survey be done on a regional basis rather than a country basis? There are a number of free trade areas within Africa, with cross border trade being quite important in ensuring customers get high quality produce at fair prices - as an example Uganda exports agricultural produce to Kenya since it has more favorable environmental conditions for many types of farming. Production incentives and education are still mostly confined to the country of production. Comparing different countries can be quite informative on appropriate policy actions to take. This might also require your survey to be available in languages such as Kiswahili, French and Arabic. You raise important issues on platform accessibility. One other area of concern with digital platforms is data confidentiality. In a competitive market with many players, all can benefit from the collected data. Such data aggregation can also be helpful in preventing food shortages and oversupply. In a market with only a few players, or a few large players who can influence price, data sharing may be more problematic and each of the players will likely create their own digital platform if they can. Finally, within Kenya, one might want to compare different counties, so geographical information would be good to add to future surveys. Regards, Benson On 3/29/21 11:55 AM, John Kieti via kictanet wrote:
Thanks, @Ali, Looking forward to your thoughts.
@Benson Since the article already went past the formal peer-review process and got published (via Elsevier), pre-print servers may not be applicable. It's also an open-access (CC BY 4.0) article which should free it up for circulation. But thanks for the idea of pre-print servers - I could use them for some pending publications. So I am slightly less of an academic and a little more of a practitioner. Therefore am quite keen to hear what fellow practitioners (and policy folks) think of the findings and their relevance (irrelevance?) - to practice and policy in Kenya.
Kind regards
On Mon, Mar 29, 2021 at 7:21 AM Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke <mailto:ali@hussein.me.ke>> wrote:
John
Thanks for sharing. Definitely an important read. Will purpose to read in-depth and give you feedback.
Regards
*Ali Hussein*
Digital Transformation
Tel: +254 713 601113
Twitter: @AliHKassim
Skype: abu-jomo
LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim><http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>
Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the organizations that I work with.
On Sun, Mar 28, 2021 at 12:25 PM John Kieti via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>> wrote:
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 partiallybe 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 <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 valuechaincoverageand digitalinclusivity, which our research finds as sub-themes of platforminclusivity, a major theme on amplifying the value of such a platform.
Kind regards.
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet> Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet <http://twitter.com/kictanet> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/ <https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/>
Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/info%40alyhussein.com>
The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
--
John Kieti Phone: +254-735-764242 // +254-722-764242 Twitter: @johnKieti <https://twitter.com/johnkieti> // Skype: jkieti*** *Blog:gmeltdown.com <http://www.gmeltdown.com>// LinkedIn: https://ke.linkedin.com/in/*kieti* <https://ke.linkedin.com/in/kieti>
The ordinary just won't do
_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet Twitter: http://twitter.com/kictanet Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KICTANet/
Unsubscribe or change your options at https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/benson_muite%40emailpl...
The Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) is a multi-stakeholder platform for people and institutions interested and involved in ICT policy and regulation. The network aims to act as a catalyst for reform in the ICT sector in support of the national aim of ICT enabled growth and development.
KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.
participants (3)
-
Ali Hussein -
Benson Muite -
John Kieti