Bridging the Extension Gap: A Strategic Framework for Agricultural AI in Africa

This policy brief, developed from the AfriCHI 2025 Workshop on “Advancing Sustainable Agricultural Practices in Africa with AI” in Cairo, Egypt, presents a strategic framework for responsible agricultural AI in Africa. It examines how AI-enabled advisory systems can help address the agricultural extension gap while accounting for the socio-technical realities of African smallholder farming, including multilingual and oral communication practices, mediated advisory models, gendered implementation constraints, uneven infrastructure, and climate volatility. The brief outlines policy pillars for multimodal and oral-first interaction, mediated advisory frameworks, socially feasible and gender-inclusive evaluation, climate-adaptive reasoning, and institutional coordination through a proposed Pan-African Agricultural AI Network. It is intended for policymakers, development partners, AU actors, agricultural ministries, AgTech implementers, researchers, and other stakeholders shaping agricultural advisory systems and digital public infrastructure across Africa.