Mind the gap: Data solutions for enhancing agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa
31 August 2022
Last update: 02/09/22 16:08
The benefits of data sharing and improved data access are widely acknowledged, potentially resulting in significant increases in global GDP. In practice, however, data owners are, for obvious reasons, often reluctant to share their data, especially if it has not yet been published.
Ethiopia has a long history of agricultural research and is blessed with a rich pool of soil and agronomy data. In 2018, a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) facilitated an initiative whereby a group of Ethiopian scientists and research institutions agreed to form a ‘Coalition of the Willing (CoW)’ for enhanced data access and sharing. The CoW, initially formed by a group of around 20 Ethiopian scientists, quickly grew to around 120 members, representing individuals as well as research institutions, both from within and outside of Ethiopia.
The main objective of the initiative is to facilitate the sharing of soil and agronomy data, applying FAIR data principles (FAIR=findable, accessible, interactive, and reusable). It ensures data access and security by uploading the member’s data into a newly established databank hosted and operated by the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). Simultaneously a directive on Soil and Agronomy ‘Data Sharing’ was developed by the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) to govern access and use of the uploaded soil and agronomy data.
As a way of demonstrating the potential of data sharing and of advanced data analyses, the CoW members agreed to analyze and publish their data jointly, thereby producing information that otherwise would never have been created.
The initiative resulted in this special edition of Experimental Agriculture, entitled “Mind the gap: Data solutions for enhancing agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa”. The edition consists of 17 articles, of which ten are based on the soil and agronomy data initiative of the CoW in Ethiopia, six articles report findings from other countries in SSA and one article attempts to assess the value of data governance in agricultural investments, using the CoW initiative as a case study.
Steffen Schulz, GIZ Ethiopia
Guest Editor
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Great effort and achievement. Congratulations to the CoW team members, the taskforce and other partners who support the initiative. The effort has clearly demonstrated the need to share data to support data-driven and knowledge-based decisions. Collating, organizing and analyzing the available ‘agriculture-related data’ in the country can hugely facilitate the agricultural transformation effort!