Kenya leads the way for African countries to shift to more open, accessible and data-driven national agricultural policies

Agriculture industries around the world are changing. And that's a good thing. They need to.

Here are the facts:

• By the year 2050, the world will have 9.7 billion inhabitants.
• The majority of this population growth will take place in developing countries.
• 70 percent of the world will live in an urban environment.

So what does the reality of such a world look like?

Well, that's a lot of people to feed and a lot of pressure on global food production.

As income levels also rise and as more of the world develops a roaring appetite for the food now eaten in developed countries (meat and lots of it!), food production (not including food used for biofuels) must increase by 70 percent.

That means: "annual cereal production will need to rise to about 3 billion tonnes from 2.1 billion today and annual meat production will need to rise by over 200 million tonnes to reach 470 million tonnes," according to a 2009 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

The context for GODAN:

Today, a group of farmers, governments, academics, scientists and other stakeholders are trying to do something about this future scenario. Right now, there is a tremendous amount of data being generated in the agriculture and food nutrition industries.

The problem is that the stakeholders in this field haven't traditionally shared their data with each other or the wider public.

As a result, studies are duplicated, food production may be repeated, and it's difficult for anyone to learn learn from each other.

In addition, different technical vocabularies on the subject matter are used worldwide, preventing a common language of understanding. 

GODAN's Diana and Ruthie (centre) meet Kale (left) and Mary (right) from FarmDrive, a local partner based in Nairobi that uses mobile phones, alternative data, and machine learning to close the critical data gap that prevents financial institutions from lending to creditworthy smallholder farmers.

Open data

The concept of 'open data' for agriculture and nutrition is changing that.

Open data is data that is accessible, usable, find-able and free.

GODAN, or Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition, the organization that I work for, is the world's leading advocate for the 'open data for agriculture.'

Right now, our small secretariat (7 people) leads a global membership network of high-level governments, companies and civil service leaders (550 and growing quickly).

Through research, publications and events we make sure the important stakeholders start talking to each other and begin to build a common 'data ecosystem' where they can all speak a common language.

If the concept of "open data for agriculture and (food) nutrition" is still confusing by this point, watch this 5 minute documentary below.

It's part of a five-part series I created to show how "open data" and a plethora of technological products (mostly on smartphones) are really changing things for farmers worldwide.

Meet Eunice, a Kenyan farmer who is part of the open data revolution in Mombasa, Kenya.

Using an app from the Haller Foundation (a GODAN partner) that has digitized 50 years of local farmer knowledge, she has increased her yields and is helping raise money to send her kids to school.

Keep watching: David from South Africa, Dorn from the USA, Blanca from Colombia, Andrew from the UK.

Why this matters, now:

• Kenya: largest GDP in East and Central Africa
• Traditionally exports: tea, coffee, now also fresh flowers

Last month, I went to Nairobi with colleagues to help co-host a conference that could be a game-changer for agricultural policies around the world.

The conference, held on the 14th-15th of June, 2017 was called the:

'Ministerial Conference on Catalyzing Agricultural Transformation for Inclusive Growth.'

The event had a simple mission: to spur greater investment in agriculture and food nutrition data, especially in the G77 countries - a mission shared by the United Nations and the African Union this year.

The conference was co-convened by the Government of Kenya, the G77 Secretariat, African Union (NEPAD) and the Platform of African Farmers' Organizations (PAFO).

Casper Sitemba, a Senior Director at the Office of the Deputy President, told me that the Kenyan government believes "there is a need for mobilization of political capital to ensure data is shared in an accessible way and to drive the transformational aspects of agricultural growth."

The conference also focused on practicalities: how to actually improve how all of the tremendous sums of data in this fields are coordinated across many different stakeholders: governments, the private sector, and academia, to name a few.

Of course, accompanying public policies will have to follow, as will a myriad of platforms for national and local levels to share the streamlined data.

It's my personal hope that initiatives especially focused on women, youth and indigenous/traditional knowledge-led farmers will be given a space to incorporate this data story into their future.

Around 200 high level participants attended the event, including Hon. Willy Bett, Cabinet Secretary of Agriculture Livestock and Fisheries in Kenya, Juergen Voegele, Senior Director of Agriculture Global Practice at the World Bank and Fatma Ben Rejeb, CEO of the Pan-African Farmers Organization (PAFO).

“Only an evidence-based approach using credible data will help us transform our economies through agriculture. Such data will be useful in engaging with the private sector and other players in moving the wheel of development through agriculture transformation,” said Hon. Bett in a recent press release.

“In the climate change era where drought has become a new and constant reality we cannot build resilience without the right type of data being available to inform the decisions we make. As an example, we need data for the insurance companies to develop innovative agricultural packages,” he added.

During the same week, Nairobi also played host to the 4th Agritec Africa exhibition on agriculture technology.

According to Agritec Africa, Kenya is a leader in producing commodities such as tea and coffee, and fresh produce such as cabbage, onions and mangoes.

Weather, global economic conditions and other externalities play a big influence on the country's agriculture sector.

It's also very important to the Kenyan government - there are numerous national policies and strategies in place.

Right now, the country is implementing a "Strategy for Revitalizing Agriculture (SRA)" with the intention to “transform Kenya’s agriculture into profitable, commercially oriented and internationally and regionally competitive economic activity that provides high quality gainful employment to Kenyans," according to Agritec Africa.

Read the official outcome from the conference: Nairobi Declaration

Final thoughts

Overall, the conference was a first step in parallel with many initiatives around the world trying to solve the problem of increasing food production in a sustainable manner, in anticipation of growing world population numbers. The next big event takes place this week at the Africa Open Data Conference in Ghana.

Leave your thoughts and comments down below on this ever evolving field of 'open data for agriculture and nutrition.'

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About Diana Szpotowicz, Strategic Communications Advisor, GODAN:

For further news and updates on my work, follow myself or GODAN on Twitter and check back in the future on my LinkedIn page.

?To watch more episodes of the 5-minute GODAN "open data for agriculture" documentary episodes, click here.

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