Farai Mabeza, Senior Staff Writer 
ZIMBABWE is seeking to enhance farm productivity under the new five-year National Agritech Strategy running up to 2025, which encourages the use of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agriculture.
The strategy was also jointly launched this week with the Agritech Blueprint for Africa, which was developed for Smart Africa by Zimbabwe, with technical assistance from a consultancy firm, Science and Advanced Global Innovation Technologies (SAGIT).
“The AgriTech strategy encapsulating smart agriculture initiatives will enhance overall productivity in all subsectors of agriculture and provide a basis for industrialisation, as the provision of timely and relevant information to the farming community. Useful relevant information is required before, during and after cultivation,” Agriculture permanent secretary, John Basera said during the launch.
Information Communication Technology minister Jenfan Muswere
Smart Africa represents an alliance by 32 African states to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent through affordable access to broadband and usage of ICTs.
The continental Agritech blueprint is also meant to assist countries to accelerate agricultural productivity using ICTs.
Frequent droughts, low and erratic rainfall, intermittent floods and the current Covid-19 pandemic are among factors that have affected productivity in Zimbabwe.
Small-scale producers, however, can contribute far more than they currently do, to economic growth, job creation, food security, nutrition and addressing climate change, with the right investments.
“The farming community is keen to adopt and embrace technologies that relate to easing the way they do operations. These include sensing technologies — including soil scanning (type and nutrients), water moisture, light humidity, temperature management.
“We will have specialised software solutions that target specific crops suitable for agricultural regions in the country as well as software for livestock farming,” Basera said.
Pre-cultivation resources that will be provided to farmers through the new strategy will cover crop selection, land selection, calendar definition and access to credit, among others. During the crop cultivation and harvesting phase, ICT resources will be utilised to support land preparation and sowing, input management, water management and fertilisation, pest management.
In the post-harvest stage, the strategy will focus on marketing, transportation, packaging and food processing. There will be weather forecasting, communication platforms (mobile communication access, access to markets — local and international — global positioning system and drone technologies.
The strategy will also see the creation of databases and data centres for agriculture, data analytics, agricultural inputs, dissemination of information to farmers, Agritex officers and decision makers.
Agriculture deputy minister, Vangelis Haritatos said Smart Africa Alliance and its AgriTech blueprint for Africa would enable African countries to integrate and eventually mainstream ICTs into agriculture.
“Zimbabwe … developed the National AgriTech Strategy to leverage innovations to improve efficiency, to increase effectiveness, to reduce costs and enhance the competitiveness of agriculture, resultantly improving production and productivity and promoting the agriculture sector’s contribution to gross domestic product,” Haritatos said.
Vangelis Haritatos, the deputy Agriculture minister
“The implementation of the AgriTech Strategy will require a reliable and accurate agriculture information system for measuring progress towards food security, assessing import substitution, evaluating foreign currency generation and undertaking an inventory of value addition and beneficiation, while taking stock of employment creation and measuring livelihood improvement.”
The strategy will be implemented through the government’s Integrated Agriculture Information Management system.
ICT minister, Jenfan Muswere said the use of technology under the new strategy would accelerate economic development in the country.
“For all our economic priorities to come to fruition we must utilise ICTs for the development of our country. Zimbabwe joined the Smart Africa Alliance as the 26th member and was assigned agriculture as a sector that we should focus on as a country.
“ICT is the electricity of the 21st century and broadband is the new oil. We need to ensure we connect, we innovate and we transform the entire agriculture sector through the use of ICTs,” Muswere said.
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