Agricultural yields in Africa are currently sitting at around one quarter of the global average. Although technology is essential to improving the situation, adoption in the developing world is evolving more slowly than in other geographies. Reasons include smallholders with shortages of capital, poor rates of literacy and the dominance of mobile phone production.
It is vital that efforts to increase the use of farming technologies do not simultaneously destroy the jobs and incomes on which large proportions of African populations depend.
There are also concerns that agricultural technologies may push farmers towards more chemically based farming systems, which, although providing short-term yield increase, deplete and degrade soils over longer periods of time.
Judicious use of agricultural technologies can have the opposite effect, by minimising and optimising the amount of chemicals used.