Land has never been far from South Africa’s hot topics list. But inject President Donald Trump, superstar billionaires, Julius Malema and a couple of golf legends into the mix and the issue leads the global news cycle for 36 hours. What you don’t necessarily have is a sober analysis of the topic.
Putting politics aside and focusing on economics, agriculture is in good health. Maize production continues a gradual, decades-long growth path, with all of the highs and lows expected of this industry. All indicators are that 2025 will be a bumper crop for grapes after a tough 2024.
And believe it or not, sentiment among agribusiness insiders is pretty good too. The Agbiz/IDC agribusiness confidence index increased 11 points from the fourth quarter in 2024 to 70 in Q1 2025. This marks the third consecutive improvement and the highest score since Q4 2021.
Tech’s tailwind
One reason for success in the industry is the uptake of technology. Gone are the days of farmers who feel the rains coming in their bones. Modern farms have to be hi-tech operations to compete. Winning farmers these days are equal parts crop whisperer, businessperson and tech entrepreneur.
This is borne out in the data. Globally, employment in agriculture is declining as the capital stock and output grow. As if thumbing their nose at Thomas Malthus, cereal yields are growing across the planet in tons per hectare.
Nonetheless, African agriculture has a two-part riddle to solve. First, farms on the continent are by far the most labour-intensive. That may be good for job figures, but it’s an obstacle to productivity. Second, Africa’s population is booming. More than half of the projected global increase of 2-billion people between 2020 and 2050 is likely to be in Sub-Saharan Africa alone.
If we want to turn this into a demographic dividend, we need to produce more from each acre of land with fewer inputs. That is the sort of thing technology does. And it is. We recently scoured the continent for interesting ways agritech is leading farming into the future.
Morning on an African farm
Before breakfast, a farmer in Africa could easily have made use of a dozen pieces of tech that would have seemed futuristic just a few years ago. For starters, AI-enabled cameras on towers strategically placed across the valley might provide comfort that fire risk is low.
Winning farmers these days are equal parts crop whisperer, businessperson and tech entrepreneur
Probes buried at multiple depths across the fields will also be sending moisture and temperature data to our farmer’s cellphone via algorithms in the cloud for guidance on watering needs. Similar tools apply for sap, pH, magnesium levels and myriad other data points.
Drones are now widely used too, and becoming increasingly advanced. Applying the burgeoning field of biocontrol, where natural interventions return tired soil, animals and plants to better health, a drone might deliver good bugs to kill bad bugs with per-tree levels of accuracy. It’ll do this 25 times faster than we could do it manually.
Our farmer may even have time to send out the drones to check for blemishes on his naartjies or for a precision strike of pesticide on weeds.
Uber for tractors
Technology is also marrying business models. Wandile Sihlobo, agricultural economist and co-author of our paper “African Agritech: The state of play and potential for prosperity” , highlights the rise of tractor-leasing platforms. Think Uber for tractors. These models vastly cut the barriers to entry by enabling smallholder farmers to book tractors and the like on apps. These businesses “create a demand pull by linking equipment owners, operators and smallholder farmers through community-based booking agents using an app”, says Sihlobo.
Tech-enabled business models are also democratising capital-raising in agriculture. Firms such as SV Capital let investors participate in a fractional share of a herd of livestock through a defined period of their life cycle, using an online platform with stakes as low as R500.
Tanzania offers a compelling case study for generating an export market for fish. DHL has partnered with small-scale fish farmers, local markets and distributors to transform a stuck industry into a global export hub on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. This time it was low tech and high engagement that got the job done. Vacuum-packing machines, scales and appropriate packaging, coupled with the intricate work of export and import compliance, have expanded a small local market to include buyers in the US, Australia, Canada and more.
None of this is to suggest that all is fine in African agriculture — rather, it shows what is at risk. If policy and politics can match technology, African agriculture will thrive.
Read “African Agritech: The state of play and potential for prosperity” here.
* The Centre for African Management & Markets at the Gordon Institute of Business Science conducts academic and practitioner research and provides strategic insight on African markets. Macleod is a founding member
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