Microsoft South Africa has announced that The Awareness Company has been chosen as the beneficiary of its local AgriTech Programme.

This will see the firm, which has worked previously with Microsoft on its 4Afrika initiative, feature as part of a multi-million Rand investment into SA’s agriculture sector.

“The Awareness Company will develop and roll out three high-impact solutions in the agriculture sector within the next year – positively impacting one of the country’s critical sectors, helping to drive growth and job creation,” explains Microsoft in a press release sent to Hypertext.

“The AgriTech Programme’s main objective is to drive digital transformation in the agriculture sector by collaborating with a technology company that will develop high impact solutions and empower smallholder farmers,” it adds.

As for the solutions that The Awareness Company will be rolling out, all three have already been detailed:

• “HYDRA FarmSecurity: combining Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics and sensors through an easily accessible integrated mobile platform that allows tracking of livestock, detection of perimeters, movements and workforce monitoring, as well as providing alerts about suspicious activities. It reduces risk, acts as an early warning system and provides a safe living and operating environment – ultimately increasing productivity and reducing production costs through real-time insights.
• HYDRA FarmAwareness: allowing farmers to digitise their farms to improve overall capability management of livestock, crops, people and assets. It enables tracking of livestock health and weight, logging of genecology information, real-time task logging for personnel, analysis of rainfall and planting/harvesting, scheduling of jobs, and quality checks and pest scouting. This improves yields and quality, competitiveness and compliance with regulations, as well as reduces production costs.
• HYDRA AgriInsights: providing data-driven insights and innovation using AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics to improve the services of agri organisations. This is done by using insights from new and existing data which provide real-time understanding of everything happening on the farm – helping reduce risk, get more value from data and products, and provide value-added services based on these insights. This improves the value chain, and access to local and international markets.”

“We want to help unlock the potential of one of South Africa’s core industries and its smallholder farmers by tapping into the capabilities of agritech. By investing in local businesses and technologies that are truly disruptive, we will be able to build on our commitment to support the competitiveness of key sectors through innovation and drive economic growth in South Africa,” adds Microsoft South Africa MD, Lilian Barnard.

With the issue of land, and agricultural land in particular being a highly contentious issue in SA, hopefully the rollout of innovative technology solutions to assist smallholder farmers will be of some benefit.

Either way, we’ll wait to see what next’s year rollouts yield.

[Image – Provided]