# Agriculture 4.0: Is Sub-Saharan Africa Ready?
## 3 Going Forward: Opportunities for SSA to Tap into the Agriculture 4.0 Revolution  
### Reasons for Optimism  
The surge in food demand in SSA due to the rise in population and the demand for more nutritious food by an increasing number of middle-income families is leading to greater opportunities for smallholder farmers in SSA to improve their production and incomes through the diversification and enhancement of their production systems using agriculture 4.0 technologies [12]. More broadly, agriculture 4.0 technologies have the potential to increase job creation, improve the revenues of farmers, and increase self-sufficiency and food exports [75]. However, if this fourth revolution bypasses Africa's farmers, African countries are likely to increasingly deplete their available natural habitats or rely on food imports, to the detriment of valuable biodiversity, long-term food security status, rural livelihoods, and poverty reduction. Smallholder farmers in SSA tend to operate on small patches of land, making use of family labour or 'community work parties' to cultivate their lands, with little access to credit or insurance, and with high uncertainty of weather around agro-climatic conditions, prices, and access to markets. Despite these challenges, there seems to be considerable scope for the adoption of agriculture 4.0 technologies in SSA. Already the continent has demonstrated leadership with regards to mobile banking and the use of mobile telephony for increasing market efficiency; and access to 4G networks is relatively good and growing. Also, funding for tech start-ups has received boosts recently from foreign investors and multinational organisations to bridge the funding gaps. Extension information is currently accessible to an increasing number of farmers through mobile applications [25]. However, more training to harness the benefits of ICT education is needed to consolidate these gains [72]. One overarching constraint for Africa's farmers is that many must deal with the multiple constraints of scale, finance, and poorly functioning institutions. Innovative approaches that deal with multiple constraints include the Hello Tractor application that addresses scale and lumpy investments associated with mechanisation, access to credit and rental markets for machinery, and takes advantage of mobile supported technologies. Similarly, African farmers are benefiting from access to soil mapping, aerial chemical and fertiliser applications, that combine large and small-scale technology, and that increase the productivity and income of smallholder farmers. Yet overall technology adoption is still very limited across the continent, for example, the use of tractors remains low, leading to poor productivity and low yields [7]. As such, it is imperative to consider the potential of site-specific technology adoption to fill the low yield gap experienced in SSA [44]. Agriculture 4.0 suites of technologies may find application in an SSA context when smallholder farmers organise themselves into clusters. Clustering can promote interaction with stakeholders along agricultural value chains and has been shown to enhance the adoption of technology [76]. Clustering can also ensure that technology companies can be profitable when they deploy the agriculture 4.0 technologies for the benefit of smallholder farmers due to the advantage of scale, compared to dealing with individual farmers working on less than a hectare on average [25]. Such clusters are also likely to enhance access to more profitable markets by farmers, thereby increasing farmers' bargaining power to secure the best deals for their clusters. There is evidence that SSA as a whole is already embracing agriculture 4.0-associated technology systems as part of the new wave of the fourth industrial revolution [61] and this offers the continent an opportunity to advance in diverse areas such as climate insurance services provision, agritech-financing, agricultural advisory services provision and farmer-supply chain linkages using blockchain technologies [25; 77].