Sudan E-Agriculture Strategy and Action Plan (2018-2022).

This E-agriculture Strategy and Action Plan is a nationwide crosssectoral document built on SUDNAIP 2016-2020, the 5-year investment plan, which maps the investments needed to achieve the Sudan Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) target of 6% annual growth in Agriculture Domestic Product (GDP). It lays down a roadmap by which ICT developments can significantly contribute towards achievement of the country’s agricultural Vision of "excellence in adopting e-solutions to transform agriculture for national prosperity capable of rapid and sustainable growth, inclusive of smallholders and with strong linkages to agricultural industrialization". The cross-sectoral nature of ICTs propels growth in other sectors that can be further leveraged by the Agriculture sector. More specifically, e- agriculture has the potential to meet the agricultural goals of Sudan by contributing in the following areas (i) improving national agricultural research and information systems; (ii) facilitating trade and domestic market access; (iii) improving agricultural extension and advisory services; (iv) promoting sustainable farming practices; (v) improving postharvest handling and logistics; (vi) enhancing disaster management and early warning systems; (vii) facilitating financial inclusion, credit, insurance and risk management schemes; (viii) advising policies and monitoring effective implementation; (ix) improving data availability and analysis for food safety and traceability; (x) enhancing linkage between government, researchers and producers which in turn facilitates effective policies; (xi) improving farmers’ incomes and productivity on a sustainable basis; (xii) enhancing knowledge management and access to information; (xiii) improve Forest Governance; (xiv) using ICT for Remote Sensing, Crowdsourcing, and Big Data to Unlock the Potential of Agricultural Data; and (xv) using ICT for Land Administration and Management. The Action Plan is envisioned to be implemented in three phases. A detailed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) plan would need to be developed after adoption of the Strategy for the expected outcomes and the Action Plan for each phase.
To help eliminate hunger and malnutrition, e-agriculture ensuring access to the right information at the right time gives the farmers the capacity to make informed decisions that would improve their livelihoods ensuring food security. Furthermore, it helps to strengthen the value chain in agriculture to avoid overproduction or scarcity of food crop production.
In order to make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the document envisages the following (i) pesticide testing and registration process monitored through an information system, which may increase awareness to pesticide companies, administrators, and policymakers; (ii) pesticide recommendations with relevant information transferred through an e-service; (iii) pest and disease diagnostic tools introduced as mobile and web-based applications; (iv) an increased availability and accuracy of agricultural information by creating, updating, analyzing and linking critical databases; (v) improved awareness, education and skills of farmers, extension staff, livestock herders and other sector end-users; (vi) improved financing, investing and banking outreach to agriculture sector leveraging on electronic and mobile technologies; and (vii) an effective partnership — public and private — to promote ICT access and innovation for agriculture.
Enhancement of more inclusive agricultural and food systems can be achieved through (i) reduction of the demand-supply gap, and enhancement of outreach and profitability of Sudan products and services through e-agriculture market places and efficient logistics; (ii) increasing of traceability, certification, verification, and monitoring capability to improve food safety and quality; (iii) development of an e-agriculture market place for sharing information on supply and demand, promoting e-agriculture product and advising on international trading norms and practices; (iv) promotion of e-services that can enhance the efficiency of logistics linked with transportation, storage, farm machinery, etc. as well as workforce; and (v) introduction of new risk management services, while improving the efficiency of existing services, such as micro-insurance and government subsidy.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, a daily weather forecasting and advisory service (especially location-specific services) will be very useful to farmers considering the huge impact that climate change has on them.
As for Governance, ICT shall (i) develop technical guidelines and an institutional framework for interoperability, privacy, and security of connected databases; (ii) create and update various government and private databases, as well as have the linkage and integration of databases, wherever feasible; (iii) develop guidelines for sharing of data amongst governments, private sector and academia; and (iv) align the e-agriculture services with the e-Government services.