Africa’s Digital Farming Ambitions Risk Leaving Women Behind

As African governments rally around the 2025 Continental AgriTech Blueprint, a glaring disparity threatens to undermine its promise: women, who account for the majority of the continent’s agricultural labor force, are not fully included in the digital transformation agenda.

The blueprint, developed under Zimbabwe’s leadership and endorsed by the Smart Africa Alliance, positions digital technologies as a catalyst for agricultural productivity and food security. It outlines plans to scale innovations such as AI, precision farming, mobile platforms, and data-driven systems across the continent.

But buried in the document’s otherwise detailed roadmap is a critical shortfall: gender inclusion remains more of an afterthought than a foundation.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, women contribute an estimated 60 to 80 % of food production, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) whose figures were cited in the report. Yet, the document acknowledges that women face limited digital literacy, unequal access to the internet and devices, and structural barriers in accessing land, finance, and formal agricultural services.

Only 19% of women on the continent have access to the internet, compared to 24% of men, and women are disproportionately affected by rural connectivity gaps. The gender gap in mobile internet use stands at 37%, according to the blueprint’s data tables. These disparities directly limit women’s ability to benefit from mobile-based extension services, e-markets, weather alerts, and digital credit platforms, the very tools the AgriTech strategy seeks to expand.

While the document does identify the need to “onboard women on programs and activities,” it stops short of offering a robust framework for gender equity in AgriTech deployment. There is no clear commitment to gender-disaggregated targets, funding mechanisms for women-led startups, or training programs tailored to the realities of rural women farmers.

This omission has implications beyond equity. It undermines the viability of the blueprint’s central promise, to boost agricultural productivity continent-wide. Excluding women from the digital transformation of agriculture risks leaving behind the very demographic that sustains it.

In contrast, countries such as Rwanda, also cited in the blueprint, have made gender-sensitive digital farming part of national policy, offering potential models for wider adoption. Rwanda’s inclusion of women and youth in its Strategic Plan for Agricultural Transformation (PSTA4) stands out as a more integrated approach.

Concrete, measurable policies that enable women farmers to access, adopt, and benefit from AgriTech must be adopted. That means closing the digital divide, increasing access to finance, ensuring representation in AgriTech policymaking, and embedding gender into the design of national and regional pilots.

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