Announcing: The VIFAA Accelerator

Since 2017, Development Gateway and partners have been working on the Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) Program to support development partners and the private sector to respond to changes in the fertilizer market, ensuring that sufficient quantities and appropriate fertilizers reach farmers at the right time for planting. Recently, DG received funding to expand the program to include four to six additional countries through 2023.

What We Know So Far: Best Practices in Developing Data Governance Frameworks

Data governance frameworks are essential as data and technology continue to become increasingly central to how governments, institutions, groups, and individuals all interact with one another and among themselves. Here are the best practices DG has learned in creating data governance frameworks so far.

New Crisis Monitoring Tool Provides Insight into Sub-Saharan Africa’s Fertilizer Sector

Fertilizer Watch Dashboard Screenshot

In an effort to minimize the effects of an imminent food crisis in Africa, Development Gateway and partners, Fertilizer Development Center and AfricaFertilizer.org, updated the Africa Fertilizer Watch Dashboard. The Dashboard tracks regional and country-specific impacts from elevated global fertilizer prices, limited supplier inventory, and decreased affordability at the farmer level, which includes data from ten countries in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Nigeria’s Changing NPK Market (Part 2)

In their second blog exploring Nigeria’s changing fertilizer market, Vinisha Bhatia-Murdach and Scott Wallace dive deep into the details of the NPK fertilizer market and explore how Nigeria became a leader in this space. They also discuss why the VIFAA Nigeria dashboard is an important part of ensuring access to information at each point in fertilizer supply chain.

Improving Land and Crop Use Data in Nigeria – The VIFAA Innovation Fund

Our Visualizing Insights for Fertilizer in African Agriculture (VIFAA) Program launched an Innovation Fund to address data shortages relating to total crop production. Building on its track record of mapping land cover, Quantitative Engineering Design (QED) was selected to tackle the challenge of mapping Nigeria’s croplands. Through the Innovation Fund, DG and partners will use the resulting data and maps to answer two questions: (a) what is the total cropland under production in Nigeria and (b) what is the cropland under production by crop type.

Nigeria’s Changing Fertilizer Sector (Part 1)

Photo by Markus Winkler via Unsplash

In the past decade, there has been over $7 billion worth of private-sector investments into Nigeria’s agriculture sector. Why, and what is the impact of these investments? What does it mean for Nigerian farmers? In this blog, we explore these and other changes happening in the Nigerian fertilizer market.

DG at the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF)

Photo by Adrian Infernus via Unsplash

Representatives from Development Gateway: an IREX Venture (DG) will be attending the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) from September 5-9 in Kigali, Rwanda to highlight two projects: the Visualizing Insights on African Agriculture (VIFAA) project and the Farmer-Centric Data Governance Models project.