Why engineering solutions fail to scale in African food systems: Integrating mechanisation, analytics, and value chain coordination

Agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa has grown steadily over the past two decades. Postharvest losses have not fallen at the same rate. The disconnect points to something structural: the three domains most relevant to food system performance, namely agricultural engineering, data analytics, and value chain coordination, are developed and deployed in isolation from each other. Engineering interventions improve field efficiency without asking what happens next. Value chain programmes assume the production problem is solved. Data initiatives connect to neither. This article argues that meaningful reduction in postharvest losses requires these domains to work as a system, not as separate projects. It diagnoses three specific failure mechanisms driving the scaling gap: engineering solutions designed without market knowledge, coordination programmes that treat production-side performance as a background condition, and data initiatives disconnected from both. A convergence framework is proposed with three interacting components: engineering solutions specified against value chain requirements; a data layer that creates shared visibility across chain stages; and coordination mechanisms that align incentives between farmers, processors, and buyers. The article closes with a call for graduate training that produces researchers capable of working across all three domains simultaneously.