CRC TRR 228 Project B06

Digital Agrarian Futures

The political economy of the implementation of new technologies

B06 Digital Agrarian Futures

Project Summary

Digitalization is one of the key drivers of future-making worldwide and the basis for many utopian and dystopian visions in Africa. The digital revolution in global agriculture has begun, and it is largely driven by international companies including large agricultural businesses, multinational software and big-data companies, but also by international donors (Matejcek, 2022) and local start-up companies (Kiaka, 2024). In rural areas, we are currently seeing the implementation of a variety of digital tools, ranging from applications to test the creditworthiness of smallholder farmers, to precision agriculture and decision-support tools at farm level, and online marketplaces (Prause et al., 2021; Krone, Dannenberg and Nduru, 2016).
Already, its proponents present digitalization as the solution to achieving food security and other sustainable development goals (FAO, 2020; Fairbairn and Kish, 2022). This optimistic vision contrasts sharply with a more critical view of the impacts of the digital revolution. Critiques emphasize the danger of an expansion of corporate power through digitalization, disemployment effects, and the loss of farmers’ autonomy and knowledge (Rotz et al., 2019).

While the interpretations and visions linked to these technologies sharply diverge between a climate-smart utopia and a corporate-controlled, data- and machine-centred, industrialized food-system dystopia, empirical studies on the actual social and ecological impacts of these technologies in the global South and particularly in Africa are still missing, and older studies are getting rapidly overtaken by new developments (Stone, 2022).
The project therefore seeks to analyse, explain and evaluate current digital-tech developments in African agriculture and close the gap within the CRC since the end of project C04 (Smart Futures) after the first phase. We identify digitalization as an important element of futuremaking. Digital and smart technologies are a way of ordering and making legible agrarian systems. Our study will pick up on elements of prior CRC work in C04, moving beyond the “ICT4D” frame, to address digitalization involving big data, artificial intelligence, and precision farming through the “internet of things”.
To understand the current unfolding of digital agrarian futures and their politics, our objectives in this project are to analyse and explain the related financialization and data ownership (WP 1), labour and class, gender and generational relations (WP 2) as well as corporate power and food-system transformation (WP 3). Beyond this analytical and explanatory approach, we want to contribute with our academic findings to international decision-makers and the broader society via international policy-dialogue activities and organize the planned CRC policydialogue forum in Namibia (WP 4). 

Digitalization is strongly associated with higher-value crops, with export crops, and with horticulture more than other sub-sectors of agriculture. We therefore propose a study across horticultural sectors in two countries, which will allow for comparison of different structures of agrarian production relations, food systems, digital infrastructures and policy environments.
Two African PhD students, based at the University of the Western Cape, and co-supervised by the two PLs, will each focus on one empirical case study, with distinct digital ecosystems and compare their result. One case will be in in Tanzania (moderately digitalized) and one in Kenya (forerunner in digitalization in Eastern Africa). Apart from the two PhD students working in Kenya and Tanzania, two masters’ students (based in Cologne) will focus on European suppliers of digital technologies in order to understand the global entanglements and power relations which come with the introduction of mainly Western-based technologies. This will include digital technology actors – from development finance, to hardware firms, to software providers, to technical assistance. This presents an important element of our study, which is to study value-chain linkages through the digital ecosystem, from sites of digital deployment (in Africa by PhD students) to digital development (in Europe by masters’ students). Here we will build on results of C04, which identified problematic attempts by European companies (e.g. in Morogoro) to capture capital and data via investments in digital agriculture.

 

In the work packages, synthetic analysis will build from the work on financialization, labour and equity, and agro-food system restructuring, to address overarching research questions:

  • Drivers: What and who drives digitalization of food systems in rural Africa (e.g. different businesses and policies)?
  • Intervening variables: Which factors contribute to the adoption of or resistance to digital technologies for food production, distribution and consumption (e.g. policy environment, agrarian structure, infrastructure for tech, agency and response)?
  • Outcomes: What are the outcomes of digitalization on the food system? What are the implications for farmers and (farm and food) workers? Can digitalization contribute to a just and socio-ecological transformation of food systems? And if so, how? How does digitalization reshape labour markets and labour power, including class, gender, migrants etc? How are young people implicated and responding? What aspects of current food systems does digitalization stabilize? Which aspects does it change or even disrupt? To what degree can we see challenges of data ownership or data grabbing?
  1. Digitalization in African agriculture is a means by which corporate power is being extended within African food systems.
  2. Digitalization is driven by financial-sector actors seeking to expand their client base via non-traditional methods (using different market-entry strategies depending on their different interests, capabilities and influences including their role and influence within the value chain).
  3. Digitalization changes the nature and extent of labour demand, and introduces forms of labour control and surveillance, which contribute to the restructuring of agrarian class relations.
  4. The impacts of digitalization are highly diverse, and contingent on the governance, regulation and ownership regimes in place.
  5. Digitalization produces differentiated social outcomes which interact with, and can either accentuate or mitigate, the class, gender and generational dimensions of inequality.
  6. Development interventions by African states, international agencies, and private- and nonprofit-sector actors can shape the outcomes of digitalization for agrarian change.
research area tanzania

Project-and subject-related list of publications

ACB (African Centre for Biodiversity) 2023. The rise of digital agriculture and dispossession in Africa: the implications for smallholder farmers. Briefing paper, August 2023. Johannesburg.
Barrientos, S. 2019. Gender and Work in Global Value Chains: Capturing the Gains? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781108679459.
Birner, R., Daum, T. and Pray, C. 2021. ‘Who drives the digital revolution in agriculture? A review of supply-side trends, players and challenges’, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 43(4), pp. 1260–1285. DOI: 10.1002/aepp.13145.
Bryceson, D.F. and Jamal, V. (1997) Farewell to Farms: De-Agrarianisation and Employment in Africa. London: Routledge.
Carmody, P. 2024 “Digital provide” or product consumption diffusion cycle? The diffusion impact and potential of digital technology in the Global South’, Information Technology for Development, pp. 1–14. DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2024.2368539.
Clapp, J. 2021. The problem with growing corporate concentration and power in the global food system, Nature Food, 2(6), pp. 404–408. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00297-7.
Coggins, S., McCampbell M., Sharma A., Sharma R., Haefele S.M., Karki E., Hetherington J., JSmith J., and Brown B. 2022. How have smallholder farmers used digital extension tools? Developer and user voices from sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, Global Food Security, 32, p. 100577. DOI: 10.1016/j.gfs.2021.100577.
Dannenberg, P., Revilla Diez, J. and Schiller, D. 2018. Spaces for integration or a divide? Newgeneration growth corridors and their integration in global value chains in the Global South’, Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 62(2), pp. 135–151. DOI: 10.1515/zfw-2017-0034.

Daum, T. et al. 2022. Connected cows and cyber chickens? Stocktaking and case studies of digital livestock tools in Kenya and India’, Agricultural Systems, 196, p. 103353. DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103353.
Fairbairn, M. and Kish, Z. 2022 . A poverty of data? Exporting the digital revolution to farmers in the Global South’, in J. Goldstein and E. Nost (eds) The Nature of Data: Infrastructures, Environments, Politics. University of Nebraska Press, pp. 211–229. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv2t46r84.
FAO 2020. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the agri-food system: Proposing a new International Digital Council for Food and Agriculture. A concept note. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Follmann, A., Dannenberg, P., Baur, N., Braun, B., Walther, G., Bernzen, A., Börner, J. Brüntrup, M., Franz, M., Götz, L., Hornidge, A-K., Hulke, C., Jamali Jaghdani, T., Krishnan, A., Kulke, E., Labucay, I., Nduru, G.M., Neise, T., Priyadarshini, P., Revilla Diez, J., Rütt, J., Scheller, C., Spengler, T., and Sulle, E. 2024. Conceptualizing Sustainability and Resilience in Value Chains in Times of Multiple Crises – Notes on Agri-food Chains’, Die ERDE, 155(1), pp. 29–48. DOI: 10.12854/erde-2024-692.
Foster, L., Szilagyi K., Wairegi, A., Oguamanam C. and de Bee, J. 2023. Smart farming and artificial intelligence in East Africa: Addressing indigeneity, plants, and gender’, Smart Agricultural Technology, 3, p. 100132. DOI: 10.1016/j.atech.2022.100132.
Fraser, A. 2019. Land grab/data grab: precision agriculture and its new horizons’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46(5), pp. 893–912. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.1415887.
Hall, R. 2023. Digital Technologies in African Agriculture: Livelihoods, Climate Change and Food System Change. Workshop report, 25-26 September 2023. Cape Town: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape. Available at: https://plaas.org.za/digital-tech-in-african-agriculture-livelihoods-climate-change-and-food-system-transformation/.
Hall, R., Scoones, I. and Tsikata, D. 2017. Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(3), pp. 515–537. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2016.1263187.
Hall, R., Tsikata, D. and Scoones, I. (eds) 2015. Africa’s land rush: rural livelihoods & agrarian change. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Hartmann, G., Nduru, G. and Dannenberg, P. 2021. Digital connectivity at the upstream end of value chains: A dynamic perspective on smartphone adoption amongst horticultural smallholders in Kenya’, Competition & Change, 25(2), pp. 167–189. DOI: 10.1177/1024529420914483.
Heeks, R. 2008. ‘ICT4D 2.0: The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development’, Computer, 41(6), pp. 26-33. DOI: 10.1109/MC.2008.192.
Jayne, T.S., Muyanga, M., Wineman, A., Ghebru, H., Stevens, C., Stickler, M., Chapoto, A., Anseeuw, W., Van der Westhuizen, D. and Nyange, D. 2019. Are medium-scale farms driving agricultural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa?’, Agricultural Economics, 50(S1), pp. 75–95. DOI: 10.1111/agec.12535.
Kiaka, R.D. 2024. Digital Technology in Kenyan Agriculture: A Scoping Report. Working Paper 67. Cape Town: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape. (supervised by R. Hall). Available at: https://plaas.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Working-Paper-67-Digital-Technology-in-Kenyan-Agriculture-Kiaka.pdf.
Klerkx, L., Jakku, E. and Labarthe, P. 2019. A review of social science on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: New contributions and a future research agenda’, NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 90–91(1), pp. 1–16. DOI: 10.1016/j.njas.2019.100315.
Koshy, N.S., Jagadeesh K., Govindan S. and Sami, N. 2021. Middlemen versus middlemen in agrifood supply chains in Bengaluru, India: Big data takes a byte’, Geoforum, 127, pp. 293–302. DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.013.
Krone, M. and Dannenberg, P. 2018. Analysing the effects of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the integration of East African farmers in a value chain context’, Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 62(1), pp. 65–81. DOI: 10.1515/zfw-2017-0029.
Krone, M., Dannenberg, P. and Nduru, G. 2016. The use of modern information and communication technologies in smallholder agriculture: Examples from Kenya and Tanzania’, Information Development, 32(5), pp. 1503–1512. DOI: 10.1177/0266666915611195.
Lioutas, E.D., Charatsari C., La Rocca, G. and De Rosa, M. 2019. Key questions on the use of big data in farming: An activity theory approach’, NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 90–91(1), pp. 1–12. DOI: 10.1016/j.njas.2019.04.003.

Luxen, V. 2024. Digital Technology in Zambian Agriculture: A Scoping Report. Working Paper 66. Cape Town: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of Western Cape (supervised by P. Dannenberg). Available at: https://plaas.org.za/digital-tech-inafrican-agriculture-the-case-of-german-actors/.
Malik, S.A. 2022. Linking climate-smart agriculture to farming as a service: mapping an emergent paradigm of datafied dispossession in India’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 50(6), pp. 2187–2209. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2022.2138751.
Matejcek, A. 2022. Das tansanische Reisfeld als lebendes Labor? Eigenlogiken des Übersetzungsprozesses einer technologiezentrierten Pilotstudie in ein
Agrarentwicklungsprojekt’, Geographica Helvetica, 77(2), pp. 239–252. DOI: 10.5194/gh-77-239-2022.
Matejcek, A. and Verne, J. 2021. Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure in Rural Tanzania: Anticipating Diverging Agricultural Futures and the Production of (In)securities in the Kilombero Valley, Culture Unbound, 13(3), pp. 45–69. DOI: 10.3384/cu.1535.
Mbunda, R. 2016. The Developmental State and Food Sovereignty in Tanzania’, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy: A triannual Journal of Agrarian South Network and CARES, 5(2–3), pp. 265–291. DOI: 10.1177/2277976017700210.
McMichael, P. 2014. Food regimes and agrarian questions. Halifax: Practical Action Publishing (Agrarian change and peasant studies, 3).
Nalwimba, N. 2024. Digital Technology in Zambian Agriculture: The Case of German Actors. Working Paper 68. Cape Town: Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, University of the Western Cape. (supervised by R. Hall). Available at: https://plaas.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Working-Paper-68-Digital-Technology-in-African-Agriculture-German-Actors-Luxen.pdf.
Ouma, S. 2024. Accounting for Capital in the Countryside: Toward a Visual Politics of the Asset Form’, The Professional Geographer, 76(6), pp. 805–813. DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2023.2223253.
Ouma, S., Stenmanns, J. and Verne, J. 2019. in M. Graham (ed.) Digital Economies at Global Margins. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 341–364.
Prause, L. 2025. The farm as digital factory: controlling labour and nature in digital agriculture’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, pp. 1–19. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2024.2443667.
Prause, L., Hackfort, S. and Lindgren, M. 2021. Digitalization and the third food regime’, Agriculture and Human Values, 38(3), pp. 641–655. DOI: 10.1007/s10460-020-10161-2.
Pye, O. 2021. Agrarian Marxism and the proletariat: a palm oil manifesto’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 48(4), pp. 807–826. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2019.1667772.
Rotz, S., Duncan, E., Small, M., Botschner, J., Dara, R., Mosby, I., Reed, M. and Fraser, E.D.G. 2019. The Politics of Digital Agricultural Technologies: A Preliminary Review’, Sociologia Ruralis, 59(2), pp. 203–229. DOI: 10.1111/soru.12233.
Schimpf, M. 2020. Digital Farming. Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brüssel: Friends of the Earth. Available at: https://www.scholacampesina.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/FoEEdigital-farming-paper-feb-2020.pdf.
Stone, G.D. 2022. Surveillance agriculture and peasant autonomy, Journal of Agrarian Change, 22(3), pp. 608-631. DOI: 10.1111/joac.12470.
White, B. 2020. Agriculture and the generation problem. Halifax: Practical Action Publishing Ltd.
Wolford, W.W. et al. 2024. Global land deals: what has been done, what has changed, and what’s next?’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, pp. 1–38. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2024.2325685.

 

Team Members

Peter Dannenberg

Prof. Dr. Peter Dannenberg

German Institute of Development and Sustainability

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image of ruth hall, prof. at the university of the western cape

Prof. Dr. Ruth Hall

Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS)

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