Kenya: Diageo partners with tech innovators to strengthen agricultural resilience

British multinational alcoholic beverage company Diageo has announced three new partnerships with AquaSpy, Clean Crop Technologies, and SmartCloud Farming through its innovation accelerator, Diageo Sustainable Solutions (DSS).

These partnerships aim to enhance resilience in the agriculture sector of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Diageo highlighted that unpredictable weather patterns, including increasing droughts and floods, combined with limited agricultural monitoring capabilities, pose significant challenges to smallholder farmers in Africa.

Access to vital soil and crop insights is becoming crucial, enabling farmers to adapt their practices to better address the impacts of water and climate crises.

Through its DSS programme, Diageo launched a competition to identify innovators with technologies capable of addressing these challenges facing farmers.

As part of DSS, Diageo has committed £450,000 (Sh76.3 million) to support the development of three potentially transformative innovations.

Launched four years ago, DSS focuses on investing in new technologies and partnerships with innovators to create pioneering sustainability solutions.

Diageo invests time, resources, and funding for pilots, enabling innovators to unlock new ideas that can help adapt the company’s supply chain and promote more sustainable growth for its brands. The programme seeks future innovations that can reduce Diageo’s environmental impact while benefiting its business.

The three selected partners provide unique solutions that align with Diageo’s pilot initiatives and contribute to building resilience in smallholder farming communities.

AquaSpy offers a cloud-based IoT agriculture platform that gives growers deeper insights into seasonal crop roots and soil conditions, leading to more informed decisions about planting and resource management.

Clean Crop Technologies has developed and commercialized technology for treating seed surfaces.

This proprietary treatment accelerates germination and enhances resistance to stressful abiotic growing conditions, such as droughts or floods.

This groundbreaking technology is particularly valuable for farmers operating in regions disproportionately impacted by climate change.

Smart Cloud Farming on the other hand provides precision soil maps, created through soil monitoring and scanning.

This provides the foundation for accurate crop yield forecasting, empowering farmers to make data-driven decisions for a more productive and sustainable future.

John Cant, Head of Diageo Sustainable Solutions, said: “One of the key challenges for smallholder farmers in Africa is their exposure to climate change and water scarcity. We are working with partners to find new solutions that can help to ensure they get the very best from their farms.”

Cant added that the technology has the potential to increase yield and remove uncertainty for the farmers, helping them to earn more from their farms, while giving Diageo the product it needs to make great products.