Agrilinks is an online hub for development professionals to provide resources on agriculture and food security. It is one of the main online resources borne from the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative – an organization dedicated to addressing the root causes of hunger, poverty and undernutrition. As TIV has a similar mission to foster innovation and sustainable growth in developing countries, TIV’s Vice President of Emerging Technologies and Intellectual Property, Dr. Stankovic, and IP researcher, Nikola Neftenov, published an article on how innovation can help improve agriculture in Africa. The publication, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and its Potential Applications in Agriculture in Africa” highlights the room for reform in agribusiness, which compromises the occupational efforts of 60 percent of the African population  and nearly a third of the continent’s GDP.

In the piece, TIV leverages its expertise with 4th Industrial Revolution technologies towards brainstorming potential use cases in Africa. For example, the authors demonstrate how Big Data and AI can utilize complex information that can inform farming decisions in a dynamic manner. Furthermore, the agricultural application of Blockchain is explored, as a means to improve traceability, increase producer’s earnings and secure contracts and transactions in agricultural endeavors. The article is part of an overarching effort by TIV to bring innovation to Africa, as evidenced in a report co-authored with the African Development Bank (AfDB) titled, “Potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa,” which identifies the potential opportunities and obstacles for the application of 4IR technologies across a range of sectors, including agriculture.