AGRICULTURE

Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture

Strengthening data supply to increase fertilizer affordability, availability and quality.

Why Fertilizer Usage Data Matters for Agricultural Productivity

Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest fertilizer usage in the world – insufficient to replace soil nutrients lost every year to crop production. To maintain agricultural productivity and sustain farmers, both the government and the private sector in Africa need to better collect, analyze, and use relevant data to encourage fertilizer use. All stakeholders will increasingly require reliable, high-quality fertilizer data to inform their planning and strategy, but data use is currently limited by both insufficient supply and understanding of the needs and priorities of key decision-makers.

about vifaa

Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) was a six-year program (2018-2024) designed to provide vital fertilizer data and information to governments, civil society organizations, and private sector players across Sub-Saharan Africa. We worked with partners on dashboards and tools to improve, manage, and visualize fertilizer data in Africa. VIFAA was led by DG in partnership with the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), Wallace & Associates, and with support from the Gates Foundation.

A Holistic Approach to Increasing the Use of Fertilizer Data

VIFAA is one project that solidified DG’s expertise in digital agriculture and in building agricultural systems interoperability. It was designed to increase the availability and use of fertilizer data at country and regional levels. The program took a holistic look at the supply, demand, and use of fertilizer data across Sub-Saharan Africa.

As part of the project, DG developed and expanded AfricaFertilizer.org, one of VIFAA’s main platforms and products. The platform provides data on fertilizer trade, production, consumption, and prices for 13 fertilizer products across more than nine countries, along with cross-country comparison features and downloadable datasets. The website also includes an interactive map showing fertilizer plants across the region. VIFAA initially supported fertilizer-market dashboards for Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, before expanding its geographic coverage to Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. Following fertilizer-market disruptions caused by COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, DG also developed Africa Fertilizer Watch, a monitoring tool providing information on market risks, fertilizer affordability and availability, and distribution channels.

In addition, VIFAA’s Data Innovation Fund made investments to increase the data supply that provides the intelligence needed to support decisions prioritized by key public and private sector stakeholders. These data investments have been done in collaboration with Quantitative Engineering Design (QED) to map croplands in Nigeria and Ghana as well as support the upscaling of fertilizer retail price collection methodology in Kenya.

IMPACT

VIFAA’s impact has already been felt in helping countries save costs and increase access to fertilizer. In 2023, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) revised its 20-year-old fertilizer procurement directive, which had previously restricted purchases to international channels. This limitation led to delays, high costs, and a procurement process that often failed to align with market realities. The revised directive now allows the MoA and the Ethiopian Agricultural Business Corporation (EABC) to negotiate directly with suppliers, secure early procurement, and establish direct relationships with manufacturers. These reforms have already saved Ethiopia 20 billion ETB (approximately $152M) in fertilizer purchases, reducing the government’s subsidy burden while ensuring that farmers can access fertilizer at more affordable prices.

A key enabler of this transformation was the VIFAA dashboard, which provided real-time market intelligence to inform Ethiopia’s procurement strategy. With insights from VIFAA, the MoA, and EABC were able to time purchases strategically, securing fertilizer at the lowest prices in two years. For instance, EABC leveraged global price trends from the dashboard to procure Urea from China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia before prices surged. Additionally, data from VIFAA strengthened Ethiopia’s bargaining power, particularly in negotiations with OCP, the country’s primary supplier of NP fertilizers, leading to a price reduction of $5-10 per metric ton.

Even after the program’s close in 2024, because of its connected data systems, VIFAA equipped decision-makers with timely, reliable insights to improve planning, and continues to inform how fertilizer reaches farmers in the right place. Since the launch of AfricaFertilizer.org in October 2022, thousands of new users access the website each month. The website was co-designed and data validated with input from more than 300 stakeholders in order to carefully serve the needs of those working in the fertilizer value chain. The program has collected more than 50 use cases showing how private and public sector decision-makers use our fertilizer data for pricing fertilizer, business decisions, and public policy.

DASHBOARDS

VIFAA Kenya Dashboard

VIFAA Nigeria Dashboard

VIFAA Ghana Dashboard

VIFAA Senegal Dashboard

VIFAA Zambia Dashboard