Bridging the AgTech Gap for African Smallholder Farmers
Summary
In 2025, One Acre Fund committed to reaching 1 million smallholder farmers across nine countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with tailored agriculture technology (agtech) tools by 2027. These tools will support climate-smart farming practices through digital agronomic guidance and improved climate insurance products. The commitment seeks to address the vulnerability of smallholder farmers – who produce a significant portion of the world’s food – to climate shocks and lack of access to relevant technology. Through a three-phase plan (design/piloting in 2025, refinement in 2026, and scaling in 2027) , One Acre Fund aims to drive productivity, climate resilience, and long-term food security.
Approach
One Acre Fund commits to reaching 1 million smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2027, utilizing a suite of open-source digital tools designed to enhance productivity and resilience to extreme weather. This will include piloting and scaling two interventions: optimized agronomy innovations and enhanced safety net solutions. These tools will help farmers make more effective decisions to improve resilience, productivity, and food security.
Smallholder farmers often make input selections based on the availability of resources. To improve this, One Acre Fund will leverage machine learning techniques on climate and farmer data to develop personalized recommendations for clients. These recommendations will guide clients in selecting optimal inputs for each location and provide tailored guidance on fertilizer use, seed variety choice, soil health, and planting techniques. The pilot will also incorporate digital weather advisory services that provide season-specific guidance on sowing dates, topdress timing, harvest timing, and general daily/weekly weather forecasts. This hyperlocal support enables farmers to tailor their practices to their field-specific growing conditions, thereby improving both productivity and climate resilience.
In parallel, One Acre Fund plans to utilize digital platforms to enhance insurance services for clients enrolled in its programs. As one of Africa’s largest facilitators of smallholder input insurance, One Acre Fund purchases index insurance for clients from private companies and reinsurers as part of its bundled services. Remote sensing, which utilizes aircraft or satellite-based tools to gather information from a distance, presents opportunities for conducting near-real-time field-level monitoring that will enable One Acre Fund to more accurately facilitate targeted insurance payouts for farmers who suffer yield losses in the event of drought, floods, pests, and other disasters.
Together, these two interventions form a scalable approach to strengthening smallholder resilience in the face of climate change. One Acre Fund’s partners are supporting this commitment through critical funding to refine and scale these innovations across markets.
Action Plan
Phase I – Initial Design and Piloting
In 2025, One Acre Fund will launch smallholder-tailored AgTech pilots – combining newly developed tools and adapted innovations – across two key intervention areas, followed by performance evaluation.
Optimized Agronomy – One Acre Fund will design and test personalized advisory tools, including tailored planting recommendations and digital weather advisory services (DWAS) , in at least two countries, reaching 30,000 smallholder farmers.
Safety Nets – One Acre Fund will roll out updated climate-responsive insurance products to at least 100,000 farmers. These products, offered at no additional cost as part of our bundled services, will utilize early models of yield monitoring and flood mapping to enhance responsiveness and payout processes. Participation is opt-in and typically in high demand.
Phase II – Product Refinement and Early Scaling
In 2026, One Acre Fund will use insights from Phase 1 to refine both the agronomic and insurance tools for broader deployment. This phase will include performance tracking and assessments to justify scaling.
Optimized Agronomy – Tools will be enhanced using farmer feedback and data, then tested in at least 2 markets across different agroecological zones to ensure adaptability.
Safety Nets – Insurance tools will be strengthened by refining monitoring models for faster, more accurate payouts during shocks, bolstering farmer trust and adoption.
Phase III – Scale-up of successful products
In 2027, One Acre Fund will expand the most effective solutions.
Optimized Agronomy – Reach 310,000 farmers with at least one form of personalized agricultural recommendations.
Safety Nets – Extend improved insurance products to ~1 million farmers, leveraging advanced remote sensing for more targeted coverage.
Background
Smallholder farmers, who produce a significant portion of the world’s food, are among the most vulnerable to extreme climate events. Increasingly erratic weather patterns are undermining the ability of African smallholders to rely on traditional planting cycles for effective planning and harvesting. Without access to timely, localized climate information or financial safety nets, such as insurance, they face lower yields and increased food insecurity. These disruptions threaten not only the livelihoods of smallholders but also the food security of entire rural communities and limit the sector’s potential to promote climate-friendly farming and more equitable resource distribution.
Modern agricultural technology has the potential to transform farm productivity and livelihoods for millions of smallholder farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa. Although this technology has been designed and made available and accessible for wealthy markets for decades, for millions of African smallholder farmers, who make up a large share of the world’s extreme poor, it remains largely out of reach due to barriers like cost, connectivity, infrastructure, and a lack of design tailored to the specific needs of rural smallholder farmers.
Bridging the digital divide that limits access to AgTech in African smallholder communities is a critical step toward unlocking transformative gains in productivity, climate resilience, and long-term livelihood outcomes. Digital tools such as remote sensing and precision agronomy can boost yields by an estimated 15–20%, helping to reduce hunger and create opportunities for investment in education, health, and nutrition. These technologies also support long-term improvements in soil health, crop diversity, and climate adaptation. When equipped with tailored, data-driven solutions, smallholder farmers can drive rural development and play a key role in addressing global food and climate challenges.
Progress Update
Partnership Opportunities
One Acre Fund is building a network of partners to make innovative technologies accessible to smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa. With support from the Cisco Foundation and Ezrah Charitable Trust, the organization is developing and testing remote sensing tools to generate field-level insights and strengthen climate resilience. To scale this work, One Acre Fund seeks collaborators in four key areas: technology partners to co-design farmer-facing tools like digital weather advisory services and personalized agronomic recommendations; remote sensing experts to enhance crop monitoring and yield prediction; insurance providers with microinsurance experience to expand smallholder coverage; and mission-aligned funders who share the vision of using open-source technology to close the agricultural digital divide. The organization has already established partnerships in each of these areas and is actively looking to deepen collaborations.,One Acre Fund brings nearly two decades of experience working with smallholder farmers, along with trusted access to remote communities across 10 countries in Africa. The organization offers implementation expertise, data-driven insights from its robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning system, as well as tested examples of what works in delivering impact at scale. With a strong track record of designing farmer-centered programs and overcoming last-mile delivery challenges, One Acre Fund is well-positioned to support partners in adapting solutions for rural and smallholder contexts. As part of this commitment, the organization offers its field-tested approaches, research insights, and co-creation support to help partners strengthen the design, rollout, and uptake of digital tools and climate resilience strategies tailored for smallholder farmers.