Scaling Agro-met Advisories in Ethiopia
Most smallholder farmers currently lack access to science-based agricultural information. In Ethiopia, nearly all of the country's 17 million farming households practice rain-fed agriculture, making them dependent on timely, accurate weather and agronomic advice to make planting and input decisions.
Digital agriculture offers an opportunity to improve the efficiency, reach, and responsiveness of Ethiopia's extensive public extension system at low cost. Multiple randomized trials find that farmers adjust their behavior in response to accurate weather forecasts, generating benefits that can exceed $100 USD per farmer. Digital tools can complement traditional in-person extension services by increasing farmer reach and facilitating communication. The provision of weather forecasts can also serve as an entry point for delivering digital agricultural advisories at scale.
This policy pilot will disseminate agrometeorological advisories digitally to farmers, leveraging advances in AI for weather forecasting. In partnership with the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute and UChicago's Human-Centered Weather Forecast Initiative (HCWF), we are generating and rigorously benchmarking different models that produce farmer-relevant forecasts, such as the onset and cessation of the long rainy season. Forecast messages will be developed through focus groups and A/B tests to improve farmer comprehension. Delivery will leverage existing government channels to disseminate advisories directly to farmers at scale, as well as through extension services.
IGI funding will support technical assistance to develop monitoring and evaluation systems for this policy pilot and embed A/B testing to increase effectiveness and reach. The A/B testing design will assess the cost-effectiveness of delivering advisories through extension agents compared with direct digital dissemination to farmers, while evaluating different strategies to increase farmer reach. Understanding this tradeoff will be critical for informing how the program expands. A/B tests will also assess the added value of providing agronomic advice alongside weather advisories.
We plan to work with the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) to strengthen monitoring systems and incorporate findings into the broader digital extension strategy and planned rollout of the program. Precision Development (PxD) is currently coordinating the Programme Management Unit (PMU) within the Ministry of Agriculture to implement the GoE's Digital Agriculture Roadmap. IGI funding will complement implementation funding expected from the Arab Gulf Fund for Development (AGFUND) and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA). These additional funds would support ATI and PxD in delivering digital agricultural advisory messages to 1–3 million farmers by 2027 and tens of millions by 2030. IGI funding will support monitoring, evaluation, and research activities throughout the rollout.