<b>An Assessment of ICT Interventions for Improving Information Flow, Market Linkages, and Value Chain Development in Zambian Agriculture</b>

Digital technologies in agriculture have been identified as a game changer in agrifood- systems Policy makers, researchers and corporate interests make claims about how digital technologies in agriculture are significant in making farming more productive, efficient and sustainable. In Zambia, agriculture remains a critical sector to achieve the country’s development goals. FAO states that digital technology is part of the solution to Zambia’s challenges in the agricultural sector. Zambia has not yet developed a policy on digitalization in agriculture and most of the digital interventions in agriculture are done by non-state actors, or supported by parts of the state, but in silos.

The lack of national policy and a strategy leads to fragmented interventions with very little impact in terms of shaping the course of digitalization. Advancement of digital technologies in agriculture can cause negative effects including displacement of labour in agriculture, a boom in cybercrimes and data protection concerns, reproduction of entrenched inequities in the global systems, and lead to new forms of value-chain control and value extraction. With the range of potential benefits and risks, more needs to be done to understand, and inform the development of adequate governance of digital technologies in Zambian agriculture.

The inaccessibility of technological and market information has been cited as the major reason for the low productivity in Zambian agriculture knowledge and information have become the major drivers of social and economic transformation in Zambia and the world at large.

Generally speaking, agriculture sector is dynamic, farmers actively seek timely, accurate and ICTs have been instrumental in information broadcasting to farmers. Policy makers, extension practitioners, scholars and development agencies including, NGOs are advocating ICTs as a tool to foster smallholder farmers productivity, efficiency and performance through information including, new varieties of seeds, fertilizer, livestock breeds, emerging diseases, vaccines, farming technologies, use of pesticides as well as market information. In addition, they enable large hub of know-how and sharing opportunity between agriculturalists, investors and entrepreneurs.

Keywords: Agriculture, ICT, Policy, prices, marketing, Zambia and information