About 90% of households in Cameroon are in one way or the other, employed by agriculture. Could be from 250 hectares of family plantations, or just the two beds of water-leaf in the backyard. Agriculture in Cameroon is ever booming.
The point of this article is to unveil in simple language, the digital transformation of this prominent sector of our economy. This will only be done to some extent!
Our primary school teachers used to tell us that agriculture is the backbone of the economy. They sure were correct. The farm alone accounts for over 22% of the country’s GDP and employs about 60% of the active population today.
Digital technology is changing virtually every area of growth in this country. Business, marketing, education, health, communication, and even agriculture are benefiting the most. Over the past few weeks, I’ve paid much attention to seductive online business.
It’s time for a small change.
Let’s explore the help that digital technologies offer to agriculture in Cameroon. Technologies such as; the Internet, software, mobile devices, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, etc. are helping to alleviate farmers of their daily pains.
Tasks such as Planting, watering, crop gathering and pest and disease control, connecting with other farmers/stakeholders, marketing farm products – are becoming much easier for African farmers
Distant farming and monitoring
The reality of our country is; farms are often found in very distant areas, hardly accessible or even habitable. Farmers have to cover long distances to find enough farming space. Without which, they’ll have to depend only on the few beds of njamanjama around the compound.
Digital technologies are looking to fix this problem, through systems that allow farmers to monitor their farms from a distance.
We have a family farm about half a hectar large, on which we cultivate corn and beans. After planting, we have the tendency of visiting the farm to check the result. Then, we can plan the next action; repeat the planting, weed first, or simple begin moulching.
Actually, It was a general tendency for that community. But imagine how difficult it must have been for farmers who had farms miles away from their homes. They had to cover frightening distances, just to “check whether the yield is good.”
Such farmers would say a big WELCOME to distant farm monitoring systems. Surveillance Cameras, drones, are some of the tools that help to achieve distant farm monitoring. A technology that is still not very affordable for most farmers.