Digital Agri Hub partners with Digital Impact Alliance

Authors: Digital Agri Hub team, Digital Impact Alliance team 

Publish Date: 26 January 2023

A joint initiative providing cutting-edge and innovative D4Ag Database

In a sector that is highly fragmented, synchronizing data prevents duplication of efforts while strengthening the potential of digital technologies and practices for agricultural development. Sowing the seeds of meaningful partnerships in the digital agriculture (D4Ag) sector is crucial to harmonizing data on digital innovations transforming agriculture. Anchored on the strength of each partner, Digital Agri Hub and  Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) have initiated a collaboration to leverage the Digital Agri Hub dashboard and DIAL's digital tools backed with the SDG Digital Investment Framework. This will make existing digital resources readily available to the broader audience working with digital solutions and services for small-scale producers (SSPs). This partnership ultimately aims to create a “one-stop-shop” for data and information, benefiting mutual stakeholders and thus mobilising D4Ag-based funding in low- and medium-income countries (LMICs) for investors and investees.
 

DIAL Catalog of Digital Solutions

Grounded in the SDG Digital Investment Framework, the main goal of the DIAL Catalogue of Digital Solutions is to support informed decision-making and greater coordination in digital investments, planning & implementations across sectors. The taxonomy of the information stored there connects UN Sustainable Development Goals, with the use cases, workflows and building blocks that can help to achieve them – all while pulling in products, solution providers, and datasets. As a data aggregation tool, the Catalog helps summarise information from different sources under a unified architecture, while also providing users with the ability to trace the source and dig deeper into any given area. Provided that data is particularly important for digital agriculture projects, an Open Data tab was added recently, with links to freely available datasets,  as we believe this feature can be most impactful in building resilient agricultural systems and economies. 
 

Digital Agri Hub

Built on the vision towards a more sustainable D4Ag landscape, Digital Agri Hub tracks the development of the digital agriculture sector in low- and middle-income countries. The focus is on sustainable digitalisation with the aim to generate tangible impacts for small-scale producers, particularly those groups that have been left behind in accessing D4Ag solutions, products, and services. The Hub’s dashboard publishes data on digital initiatives around the world, information about solutions and suppliers, and monitors digital developments for agricultural transformation worldwide. It provides insights into available digitalisation benefiting small-scale producers and supports investments in solutions that have a real impact. As the D4Ag sector remains highly fragmented, Digital Agri Hub has mapped these discrepancies at an ecosystem level and continues to raise awareness for enhanced collaboration.
 

Two tools coming together to support your needs

Partnerships are at the core of accelerating the growth of the agriculture sector and overcoming the existing obstacles associated with inclusive access to D4Ag solutions. The strategic partnership between Digital Agri Hub and DIAL comes at a pivotal time, when there is a growing need for harmonized data to develop digital strategies, digital tools, SDG-based maturity rubrics and evaluation metrics with a badge of approval by the DIAL catalogue. By bringing together our intellectual resources and tools, we expect to further support anyone working in the D4Ag space by providing broader access to and insights into the vast library of existing solutions. Similarly, we want to boost solution providers by giving them access to a broader audience and support digital transformation initiatives with better and broader access to data.
The foundation of this partnership is built upon linking resources and the harmonization of use cases specific to the D4Ag ecosystem. The table of use-cases below shows specific fields of application where users can use a D4Ag solution or platform to improve their operations towards achieving their objectives:
 

Aiming to serve as a “one-stop-shop” for data and information hub for actors working in the D4Ag ecosystem, the Hub and DIAL share a common interest in identifying and monitoring innovative digital agriculture solutions and providing data and impact metrics to strengthen decision-making and steer investments in the D4Ag sector. On one hand, investors (development institutes, impact investors & governments etc.) require deal sourcing, an impact strategy with SDG matrices and a return on investment. On the other hand, investees (D4Ag start-ups, agri-business, SMEs etc.) require data and insight for business model support, tools for risk assessment and best practices.

An illustrative usage scenario: finding investable digital solutions

Research indicates how investors grapple with the refined deal flow (investable initiatives), reliable impact (aligned with SDG matrices), entrepreneurship and solution (technology readiness, market readiness etc). Our partnership seeks to identify these bottlenecks and convert them into opportunities by disseminating tailor-made knowledge, market insights and technical support on digital tools as building blocks, data and insight on impact metrics, and ecosystem support for market scalability and networking within and across geographies.

This can be illustrated with a realistic usage scenario that combines the benefits of both tools, might start with Marianne, who works as an impact investor. Her organisation aims to invest in solutions that support the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger. First, Marianne will find the associated sub-goals in DIAL’s Catalogue, with the list of use cases mapped to tackle zero hunger. For example, Target 2.3, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers. Under this target, one will find two use cases: Market Linkage and Rural Advisory Service for Farmers. Each use case page outlines the technical building blocks required to build it, and the associated SDGs it can support.

Next, she jumps over to the Open Data tab for the selected use case, to explore which datasets can potentially feed into this solution. By searching Zero Hunger, she finds the Digital Agri Hub portal. Redirected to the Hub’s portal, first, she can filter the dataset by use case. From there, she can add filters such as relevant technologies (AI, sensors, machine learning, etc.), maturity stages of solutions (pilot, start-up, etc.), organization type, or channels (chatbots, SMS, etc.). Exploring the map she can also find out which solutions and/or organizations are operational in different parts of the world. As she specifically focuses on India, she can find data on and links to 163 digital solutions to support the use case. For every single solution, she can then access information about their funding, country deployments, available languages, and other use cases supported.
 

Future outlook

Looking towards the future, Digital Agri Hub and DIAL aim at strengthening their partnership and offering impactful support for digitalization in agriculture. Whether you are a solution provider, a farmer or farmer organisation in search of a solution, or an investor looking to amplify your impact, we’d welcome the opportunity to collaborate.

Digital Agri Hub invites solution providers to share their data to obtain more exposure in the broader global digitalization ecosystem. We encourage everyone to reuse the data that is provided by the Hub or to create synergies in other ways. If you collect data or have collected data in the past, and you want to link and connect your data to the global data ecosystem, let us know by sending a mail to info@digitalagrihub.org

DIAL invites you to share your story, provide feedback, and suggestions, or ask questions. Get in touch with the DIAL team at info@solutions.dial.community and Sign up to be on their mailing list for the quarterly newsletter.