The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and Mercy Corps’ AgriFin program have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to support ATA implement develop a data hub through which ATA will be able to derive insights from, and provide data-driven holistic solutions to farmers. The data hub will also enable ATA to implement a digital farm-management tool enabling farmers to make data-driven decisions, and improve existing processes and performances within ATA’s Farmer Production Clusters (FPC) program. The agreement was signed by ATA CEO Khalid Bomba and Mercy Corps/Agrifin Program Director, Leesa Shrader, in Addis Ababa and Nairobi.
“This partnership is an exciting and bold initiative for the two institutions. Since the initiation of the partnership last year, Mercy Corps’ AgriFin program has been supporting the ATA and its FPC program to design and test high-impact digital solutions for smallholder farmers. These solutions will ultimately be scaled, benefiting the 2.5 million smallholder farmers under the FPCs,” ATA CEO Khalid Bomba said.
Through the ATA-Mercy Corps AgriFin partnership, ATA is piloting Cropin’s SmartFarm platform, which will enable the organization to obtain real-time insights on the FPCs across various geographies, enabling it to provide timely recommendations and guidance to individual smallholder farmers as well as clusters based on these insights.
“ATA has always been at the forefront of technology innovation for the agricultural sector in Ethiopia, indeed across Africa,” said AgriFin Program Director, Leesa Shrader. She added, “Mercy Corps is honored to work with the ATA team to help them take their work to the next level, combining data and building responsive digital systems which can inform government, private sector and smallholder farmers’ critical work in agriculture, building a solid foundation for Ethiopia’s food security and economic growth.”