I just watched a recording of an online webinar entitled "Launch of the Digital Agriculture Roadmaps (DARs) Playbook and Lessons Learned" organized by The World Bank, The Gates Foundation, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
I learned about how the DARs Playbook would have a role as a main reference for all countries around the world, especially the Developing Countries, to build their roadmaps on Digital Agriculture. I learned the lessons learned of the implementation in Ethiopia and also the future roadmaps in Kenya. I hope my beloved country, Indonesia, will follow the steps. Here are the summaries and materials from the online webinar. Happy learning!
The Summaries
The webinar “Launch of the Digital Agriculture Roadmaps (DARs) Playbook
and Lessons Learned” showcased how the Digital Agriculture Roadmap
approach can accelerate agricultural transformation. The event was
organized jointly by the World Bank’s Data and Digital
Agriculture Team (WB-DDA), the Gates Foundation (GF), and Boston
Consulting Group (BCG).
Presenters emphasized that while digital holds great promise for driving
transformation across the agricultural value chain, uptake and impact
has been limited to date due in part to fragmented initiatives, a lack
of coordination, and inadequate funding.
DARs – country-led strategy, investment, and implementation plans – can
help overcome these challenges and align governments, donors, and
private sector actors and funding behind shared priorities.
The DAR approach, through analysis and deep stakeholder engagement,
assesses the digital agriculture ecosystem, establishes a country’s
vision, prioritizes digital agriculture use cases, and outlines
specific, fundable initiatives and a plan to deliver. The
approach ensures scarce public and donor resources are directed to
solutions with the greatest potential for scale and farmer benefit.
The DAR Playbook was introduced as a practical guide that countries,
funders, and development partners can use to design, finance, and
implement their own roadmaps, linking policy, investment planning, and
implementation support into one integrated process.
Country experiences from Ethiopia and Kenya illustrated how the DAR
model is being applied in practice. Ethiopia’s roadmap, which was
recently launched and officially adopted by the Ethiopia government,
resulted from a comprehensive diagnostic and consultative
process that engaged more than 150 actors and now guides investments
aimed at reaching up to 30 million farmers and unlocking around US$90
million for digital agriculture. The country is establishing a Project
Management Unit to coordinate implementation and
to ensure that solutions, such as digital advisory services, data hubs,
and climate-smart tools, are scalable, interoperable, and aligned with
national policies.
In Kenya, a DAR is being developed building on initiatives like the One
Million Farmer Platform, with PMU and partners such as PxD helping
structure a roadmap that can support an agriculture sector employing
over half the population and contributing roughly
one third of GDP.
Across both examples, speakers stressed that digital technologies can
boost productivity, strengthen market linkages, and provide real-time
information to farmers and pastoralists, but only when embedded in
inclusive, well-governed ecosystems.
The DAR Playbook, therefore, puts strong emphasis on public-private
collaboration, mobilizing agritech innovators, telecom operators,
financial institutions, and civil society alongside government agencies.
A broad consultative process engaging more than 90 organizations in
Kenya and similarly wide coalitions in Ethiopia was presented as a key
lesson for designing roadmaps that are country-owned, investment-ready,
and capable of guiding digital transformation
at scale.
The Presentation Slides
The Digital Agriculture Roadmap Playbook
Ethiopia's Digital Agriculture Roadmap 2025-2032
The Recording
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