Data-Driven Solutions for African Agriculture
Agriculture employs over 60% of Africa's workforce and is the backbone of rural livelihoods. D4Act provides the evidence to boost productivity, strengthen value chains, and build climate resilience for smallholder farmers across the continent.
Transforming Smallholder Agriculture With Evidence
Sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural productivity per worker is roughly one-third of the developing-world average (FAO, 2024). Yet the continent holds 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land. Closing this productivity gap requires evidence on which interventions - improved seeds, irrigation, extension services, market linkages - deliver the greatest returns for smallholder farmers.
D4Act's agriculture practice specializes in evaluating programs that support smallholder farmers and poultry value chains, using a mix of randomized evaluations, satellite-based crop monitoring, and farmer surveys conducted in local languages.
"Smallholder farmers are the backbone of African food systems. They deserve the same quality of evidence-based support that large commercial farms receive in other regions."
- D4Act Agriculture PracticeKey Focus Areas
Crop Productivity & Input Programs
Evaluating seed subsidy programs, fertilizer distribution schemes, and irrigation investments. Evidence from our RCTs has shown that bundled input packages (seeds + fertilizer + training) can increase yields by 40-60% when accompanied by weather-indexed insurance.
Climate Resilience & Adaptation
Assessing climate-smart agriculture practices, drought-resistant crop adoption, and weather information services. Africa's agricultural sector faces temperature increases of 2-4°C by 2050 that could reduce crop yields by 20-30% without proactive adaptation strategies.
Market Access & Value Chains
Evaluating aggregation models, mobile-enabled market information systems, and value chain financing for poultry, cassava, maize, and other key crops. Post-harvest losses in SSA reach 30-40% - our evidence helps target interventions to reduce this waste.
Satellite & GIS-Based Monitoring
Using remote sensing and geospatial tools to monitor crop health, track land use changes, and verify agricultural program implementation at scale - reducing the cost and time of traditional field monitoring while expanding coverage to remote areas.
Our Agriculture Approach
Our end-to-end methodology - from initial assessment to sustainable impact.
Frequently asked questions
What kinds of agriculture programmes do you evaluate?
Smallholder productivity, climate-smart agriculture, value-chain interventions (cocoa, coffee, cashew, cotton, rice, dairy, poultry), digital extension services, input subsidies and agricultural finance products. We design household-level outcome measurement (yield, income, food security, asset accumulation) anchored in a written theory of change, paired with geospatial data where the inference benefits.
Do you use satellite data, and on which platforms?
Yes. Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 (Copernicus), Landsat, Planet Labs imagery (under licence) and the NICFI tropical-forest mosaics, processed via Google Earth Engine or local GeoPandas pipelines. Common applications: crop-area estimation, yield modelling, drought-stress indices and EUDR-grade deforestation verification.
Can you support EUDR or sustainability-compliance reporting?
Yes. We design data systems that produce parcel-level traceability and deforestation-risk evidence aligned with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and major voluntary standards (Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, RSPO, Bonsucro). Our DPI-style approach reuses one geometry-plus-evidence base across multiple compliance regimes rather than building a separate system per buyer.
How do you measure climate adaptation and resilience?
We combine objective exposure indices (drought, flood, temperature, NDVI anomalies) with self-reported coping behaviour and asset-based resilience indicators (FAO RIMA-II, FSIN). For adaptation impact we benchmark against the regional chapters of the IPCC AR6 and the AGRA / CGIAR practice-based literature. Findings are reported as resilience-capacity changes, not just survey averages.