For years, Africa’s food crisis has been framed as a problem of scarcity, too little technology, too little innovation, too little investment. A new report argues otherwise. The tools to raise yields, cut losses, and adapt to climate change already exist across the continent. What is missing, it says, is the institutional capacity, data governance, and political coordination needed to turn scattered innovations into a functioning food system.
A new flagship report argues that Africa’s path to food security will depend less on discovering new technologies than on building the institutions, data systems, and governance frameworks needed to scale what already exists.
The 2025 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR), released this week in Kigali, finds that Africa has no shortage of promising agricultural technologies, ranging from artificial intelligence and geospatial tools to biotechnology, irrigation, mechanization, insect farming, and aquaponics. The challenge, the report says, lies in integrating these tools into coherent agrifood systems that are adapted to local realities and supported by strong public institutions.
Published by AKADEMIYA2063 through the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System, or ReSAKSS, the report concludes that Africa’s agrifood future will be shaped not only by innovation but by how effectively technologies are governed, financed, and diffused. Strategic investments in science, digital infrastructure, and accountable institutions, it argues, could allow African countries to move beyond technology adoption toward technology leadership.
“Accelerating progress toward unlocking sustained productivity growth and food security in Africa requires coordinated interventions to strengthen the system-wide application of existing technologies and enable their widespread, efficient use,” the report says.
The study reviews hundreds of digital and biological tools with both immediate and long-term potential to transform agrifood systems. These include digital farming platforms, precision agriculture, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and organizational innovations that can reduce transaction costs, improve efficiency, and support climate-smart productivity gains.
It nhighlights that the Africa Agriculture Watch (AAgWa) platform integrates satellite climate data and machine learning to provide forecasts and reduce uncertainty in decision-making for food production systems across several African countries.
“The Digital Green initiative has combined sensor data with community-based video platforms to provide farmers in Kenya and Ethiopia with advice on soil nutrients. Other drone and sensor startups across Africa are using image analysis for weed detection, irrigation management, and field-level crop health monitoring. Each example demonstrates how AI and geospatial tools are being adapted to local needs,” the study says.
However, it outlines a number of barriers. “Despite these advances, adoption is not uniform. Major barriers persist in many countries. Connectivity remains limited…Electricity supplies, data storage, and computing infrastructure are uneven. There are also human-capital gaps. Relatively few computer scientists and agronomists in Africa are trained in AI, and many smallholders lack digital skills. Finally, financing is scarce, as governments often allocate little to the extension of such innovations, and private investment in African agrifood technologies is concentrated in a few hub economies.”
It emphasizes that successful adoption depends on supportive institutions, predictable policy environments, coherent regulation, and well-organized pathways for technology diffusion. Weak governance and fragmented implementation, rather than a lack of innovation, have been the primary constraints on productivity growth, it finds.
“The Kampala ambitions can be achieved through sustainably raising productivity, cutting costs, and boosting capacity for product and process innovation along agrifood system chains,” Dr. Ousmane Badiane, executive chairperson of AKADEMIYA2063., told Impact Newswire. “The latest Annual Trends and Outlook Report demonstrates that the ‘technology frontier’ is not a single breakthrough, but rather the integration of biological, digital, engineering, ecological, and institutional innovations within a supportive political economy.”
The report was launched at the three-day ReSAKSS Annual Conference and is closely aligned with the implementation of the Kampala Declaration, which entered into force on January 1, 2026. The declaration and the associated Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme strategy set ambitious targets for agrifood output, value addition, trade, investment, and innovation through 2035.
One of the report’s most notable contributions is a first-of-its-kind Untapped Potential Index, which ranks African countries based on their opportunity to scale artificial intelligence and geospatial technologies in agrifood systems. The index assesses readiness, enabling conditions, needs, and current adoption.
South Africa and Botswana lead in the deployment of AI and geospatial technologies in agriculture, according to the report, while Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Mali are approaching readiness. South Sudan, Niger, and Zambia record the highest untapped potential, reflecting large productivity gaps, high hunger levels, and relatively adequate infrastructure, combined with low current adoption of advanced digital tools.
The report also introduces a new Agricultural Research and Development System Capacity Index, which seeks to measure not just spending on research but the extent to which investments translate into scientific capacity and outcomes. An application of the index to selected West African countries highlights significant progress in Ghana, driven by a high share of PhD-qualified researchers, sustained growth in research intensity, and increased investment per researcher.
Untapped Potential Index (UPI)
The analysis shows that three countries stand out with the highest UPI values: South Sudan, Niger, and Zambia. These countries share a pattern of very high need, with large yield gaps and high hunger rates, decent readiness infrastructure, such as policies or good connectivity, but very low current adoption of AI and geospatial tools.
For example, Zambia has a digital agriculture strategy and rapidly expanding mobile connectivity, yet almost no active precision farming projects. In the medium-high UPI range between 1.75 and 2.25 are Sudan, Mauritania, and Chad, which similarly have supportive governance environments and acute agricultural challenges but limited scaling of innovation.
Countries with a moderate UPI of between 1.00 and 1.75 include Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, and Mali. These countries have emerged with digital infrastructure and some AI projects; therefore, their adoption is closer to readiness levels.
A few countries, including South Africa and Botswana, have low UPI values, indicating that their AI and geospatial technology deployment in the agrifood sector has begun to match what our indicators would predict as their potential, even if adoption is primarily in the early-adopter sectors.
Beyond digital tools, the report points to underused opportunities in small-scale irrigation, water harvesting, and resource-efficient production systems. Innovations such as insect farming, circular economy solutions, aquaponics, organic waste valorization, and integrated nutrient management, it says, could reshape production while creating new economic opportunities, particularly for young people and small enterprises.
The study concludes with five strategic priorities for the next decade of innovation-driven transformation under the Kampala agenda. These include strengthening innovation ecosystems and science institutions, expanding inclusive mechanisms for technology dissemination, investing in digital and climate intelligence infrastructure, prioritizing climate adaptation, and reinforcing governance, coordination, and accountability mechanisms.
“The Kampala Declaration recognizes the role of science and innovation in Africa’s agrifood system transformation,” said H.E. Moses Vilakati, commissioner for agriculture, rural development, blue economy, and sustainable environment at the African Union Commission. “This edition of the Annual Trends and Outlook Report provides timely evidence on how frontier technologies can be governed and scaled to deliver food security, inclusive growth, and climate adaptation across the continent.”
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