Africa’s population is expected to reach about 2.6 billion by 2050. This will require an increase in agricultural and food production by up to 70% to fit the need of the population, a serious challenge for the agriculture and food systems. Such requirement, in a context of resource scarcity, climate change, COVID-19 pandemic, and very harsh socioeconomic conjecture, is difficult to attain without the intervention of emerging technologies and innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) to leapfrog the transformations required in the sector.

The overall objective of this initiative is to advance the responsible development, deployment, and scaling of homegrown AI research and innovations to tackle pressing challenges in agriculture and food systems in Africa. This will be accomplished through setting-up, managing, and supporting an innovation research network on AI for agriculture and food systems. This network will consist of 6-10 innovation research projects that will develop, deploy, test, and seek to scale responsible and homegrown artificial intelligence research and innovations.