Digital agriculture solutions for climate-resilient smallholder agriculture: Lessons from the GSMA

• by MSC
• Jul 7, 2023
• 2 min

MSC (MicroSave Consulting) conducted a webinar titled “Digital agriculture solutions for climate-resilient smallholder agriculture: Lessons from the GSMA” on 21st June 2023. Click on the timestamps from the webinar stream to hear specific segments. You can also click on the image below to experience the complete webinar.

This session resulted from a collaboration between GSMA and MSC’s climate-resilient agriculture virtual club #CRAgVC. Our shared mission was to amplify knowledge sharing and disseminate findings from two groundbreaking reports from the GSMA AgriTech Programme.

The session explored the transformative potential of digital solutions to build climate resilience for smallholder farmers.

00:00 – 06:56 Welcome note and introduction of the webinar’s topic and guests by Willis Ogutu, Manager, Private Sector Development, MSC

Guests:

• Lisa Chassin: Insights Manager, GSMA AgriTech
• Jan Priebe: Senior Insights Manager, GSMA AgriTech

06:58- 24:38 Jan Priebe presented on “Digital agriculture solutions for climate-resilient smallholder agriculture.”

25:10 – 52:16 Lisa Chassin presented on “Developing and scaling digital services for climate resilience.”

53:08 – 1:05:18 The panelists responded to a round of questions from the audience.

Question 1) Do the rural landscapes of most developing countries have enough mobile towers to facilitate rainfall measurements reasonably, consistently, and accurately? And can local farming communities avail of the data freely and easily?

Question 2) Using the developer approach, can you identify the rainfall level in mm?

Question 3) How did the GMSA reconcile the need for credit risk assessment and loan repayment? How did it recognize that providing access to credit (easy-to-access, distribute, and collect payments) is critical for small-scale farmers to become climate-resilient and move toward sustainable farming livelihoods?

Question 4) Is the cost of SMS included in the service offering’s feasibility for telecommunication company partnerships to provide these advisory services? From experience, a third party would find it difficult to offer these services when it has to pay for SMS as a service.

Question 5) As cell technology evolves into 5G, 6G networks, and more, will commercial microwave links (CML) data continue to work in the same way?

1:06:15 – 1:07:06 The guests shared their concluding remarks.

1:07:06 – 1:08:01 Willis Ogutu of MSC presented the concluding remarks.