Digital agriculture platforms: Understanding innovations in rural finance and logistics in Uganda’s agrifood sector

Non-PR
IFPRI1; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies
Agriculture is the mainstay of Uganda’s economy, contributing about 25% of the GDP, a third of the ex port earnings and almost all the country’s food requirements. Yet, the sector still faces various chal lenges that affect production and the income derived from it. Systemic issues impact smallholder farm ers' livelihoods across markets, land, skills, and capital, with cross-cutting social exclusion issues. Ef fective application of digital agricultural technologies has emerged as a catalyst in addressing produc tivity and efficiency challenges and enhancing inclusiveness in agri-food systems. Digital technologies have shown potential to address bottlenecks in access to extension services, marketing systems, suita ble financial products, reliable weather information, transport services and logistics as well as supply chain management. Scaling of digital agricultural technologies in Uganda is critical for improving productivity and addressing challenges in the agricultural sector. However, for scaling to be undertaken effectively and inclusively, there is need to address the barriers that limit the use of digital innovations for some populations. However, the issues surrounding scaling and inclusivity of digital services are not well understood. This study therefore sought to contribute to bridging this knowledge gap through an assessment of the existing digitally enabled innovative cross-value chain services to gain insights into how the services are addressing inefficiencies, creating opportunities for improving efficiency and inclu siveness as well as identifying promising innovations for scaling. Specifically, the study focused on in novations in finance and logistics for value chains. For finance, the study specifically looked at digital payments, credit, and insurance, while for logistics, the focus was on supply chain management, trans portation, traceability, digital platforms for e-commerce, and (cold) storage across value chains.