Digital Technologies in Agriculture- Innovation Journey to Ethiopia

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The Innovation Journey Program is a matchmaking program between innovative Israeli digital AgTech startups and players in Ethiopia that are engaged with smallholder farmers. The main goal is to build innovative partnerships that will contribute to improving productivity, output quality, and driving economic growth among smallholder farmers, while paving the way for Israeli startups and companies to enter the large agricultural market in Ethiopia.

The program, compiled from online and in-person lectures, workshops and interactive sessions, will include information sessions about the Ethiopian market, workshops on partnership building and market penetration, and matchmaking with players in Ethiopia that are engaged with smallholder farmers

The Innovation Journey is a JDC-TOV program, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Industry of Israel, organized in partnership with the Pears Program.

Participating Companies:

OKO - is a solution to secure agricultural incomes in emerging countries with affordable insurance products. We create products that are directly related to weather conditions and satellite observations so that farmers in an area affected by a poor harvest are instantly compensated. Our products are accessible from any kind of mobile phone since we use simple technologies (SMS, call centre, Mobile Money, WhatsApp). This allows unbanked farmers to access insurance even when located in remote areas.

OKO operates in Mali and in Uganda. We have more than 5,800 paying customers who all accessed insurance for the first time."

Saillog - leverages proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision algorithms. Saillog’s algorithms are deployed on its mobile application called Agrio. Growers upload images of crops with suspected pathologies then they receive identifications and treatment suggestions from the AI software. Scouters use Voice-enabled, Structured Agronomy Reporting System to record and share their findings. Saillog was the first responder to the fall armyworm outbreak in Asia. Agrio has accumulated over 200,000downloads worldwide.

AKOlogic - developing an “agricultural cloud” that is designed to allow monitoring of the growth process from field to supermarket.It provides financial and agricultural management tools for farmers and control systems for governments, cooperatives, and food. "AKOLogic Support System" with an intelligent system, sends recommendations directly to the farmer, DSS - decision support system.

Emnotion - develops climate forecasting solutions for urban and rural areas using a methodology based on mathematical algorithms. We supply weather/climate forecasting solutions for short-medium-long range on micro level. No measurement equipment needed.

AgroScout - develops and markets an AI-integrated Agronomy-On-Demand cloud platform that provides valuable early detection of diseases and pests. With high resolution down to pinpointing a single plant, AgroScout’s solution empowers growers and agronomists with the decision-support information required to treat infestations quickly and locally, thus increasing yield and decreasing the use of pesticides.

AgriFriend - makes it easier for small-scale farmers to increase yield productivity and profitability, using a holistic and bottom-up approach. We developed a digital platform that automatically tailors a personal and all-inclusive, step-by-step training process,from planting to harvest. Using smart, best agricultural practices, customized to the farmers' needs and conditions.

SupPlant - is a fast-growing company, with a world leading team in the field of Ag-Tech and agronomy. The company developed and commercialized the first autonomous irrigation system (GBI™) generating autonomous irrigation commands based on analyzed data from plant sensors. SupPlant’s unique mix of easily deployed hardware systems and innovative data processing capabilities, reduce water consumption by 30% while increasing production yields by 20%. Supplant’s product for small growers, offers low cost high value application optimizing irrigation of small farms based on the large data gathered by Supplants high end products.

RapidFarm - is an innovative e-commerce platform for farmers to allow them more options for market outlets based on the ability to sell directly to customers. Rapid Farm's platform was built based on the experience of collaborating with farmers in the United States and Africa, allowing small scale growers even with limited access to the internet and smartphones, to present at any given moment the farm's produce they wish to sell. On the other hand, the system allows private and commercial customers to place orders online.

ChromePay- provides financial services to individuals that are often overlooked yet play a major role in contributing to the economy. A large number of individuals subsisting on income from the informal sector and small-scale agriculture often lack access to the means for conducting digital payment. ChromePay provides individuals like these an affordable way to manage all financial aspects of their business without a bank or POS system.

PickApp - is a data-driven labor-management and decision-support system for productivity optimization and quality assurance.Unlike manual data-entry applications, PickApp’s scan-to-report solution enforces existing work methods to ensure complete data integrity. It is successfully solving the need for increasing farm-labor productivity while maintaining a high level of quality. PickApp overcomes data collection challenges and traceability issues to provide a real-time monitoring system together with a state-of-the-art BI & decision support solution.