A strategic look at the decisions facing governments, funders, and system architects as digital systems rapidly expand. Why aligning Agile Data and Digital Public Infrastructure can unlock impact at scale – and why timing matters.

Digital agriculture is no longer a pilot conversation – it is a balance sheet conversation.

As compliance tightens, traceability deepens, and markets demand proof, data and infrastructure are no longer operational back-office functions. They are strategic assets.

This keynote examines why Agile Data and Digital Public Infrastructure are not optional innovations, but core enablers of competitiveness, risk management, and long-term value creation.

When farmer-level insight is credible, standardised, and interoperable, it moves beyond reporting — it becomes advantage.

The question is no longer whether to invest in data systems.
It is whether your systems are built to deliver decisions that hold up at scale.

Farmers and frontline actors reflect on when data actually helps decisions — and when systems add burden or risk. Their experience becomes the test of system value: if it doesn’t work at the farm level, it won’t work at scale.

What is Agile Data and What is DPI?
A focused conversation on how Agile Data and DPI complement each other — what each solves, what neither can solve alone, and the unique opportunity in bringing them together for farmer-centred outcomes

Voice, Messaging & Human Connection

How do we design farmer engagement that people actually respond to—and trust?

Reaching farmers at scale is not just a technical challenge; it is a question of voice, messaging, and human connection. This lab explores how engagement channels such as IVR, CATI, and WhatsApp shape who is reached, who is left out, and how farmers experience being contacted.

Participants will examine where engagement succeeds or breaks down—how consent and agency are established, where fatigue or mistrust enters, and what makes communication usable rather than extractive. The discussion will also look at how these design choices affect the reliability of self-reported information and whether engagement produces insights that hold up in real-world conditions.

Grounded in practical experience, the lab focuses on designing farmer engagement approaches that are inclusive, trusted, and capable of supporting decisions at scale.

Can farmer self-reporting tools (like apps) produce valid field data — and when do they fall short?

This lab looks at the exact moment data is captured in the field – comparing enumerator-led methods (like CAPI) with farmer-led self-reporting (like mobile apps). We explore how data quality is shaped not only by technology, but by real human factors: trust, effort, incentives, and ease of use.

Participants will discuss what drives farmers to use (or abandon) app-based reporting – and how peer learning and “learning by doing” can improve participation over time.

The lab will surface practical trade-offs between speed, cost, and data quality, including where errors tend to enter under different collection modes. The aim is to identify what enables data that is accurate, consistent, and timely enough to support real decisions – not just pass a technical check.

Farmer Data Democracy — From Data Collection to Farmer Value

System question:
When does farmer data become farmer value?

Farm-level data is being collected at unprecedented speed—for reporting, compliance, and research—yet farmers often remain data providers rather than data beneficiaries. This lab focuses on farmer data democracy: ensuring farmers can access their own data, understand how it is used, and apply it to make better day-to-day decisions on costs, inputs, practices, and resilience.

Using a participation and validity lens, participants will explore how different return pathways—apps, printed summaries, dashboards, advisory sessions, facilitated group discussions, and hybrid digital + human models—shape who can engage, who benefits, and whether information is understandable and actionable in real farming contexts. The session will surface how gender, age, and literacy influence access and value, and how peer insights can strengthen learning and adoption whether delivered digitally or through facilitation.

Grounded in diverse experiences (including non-app approaches), the lab will compare what works, what doesn’t, and the trade-offs involved—moving from “data collection” toward systems where farmer data reliably produces farmer value.

How do fragmented efforts become usable systems?

Interoperability is often promised—but rarely delivered in practice. This lab starts from a fundamental reality: systems cannot interoperate unless they first align on what is being measured. Metrics and measurement frameworks form the foundation of standardisation, and without them, technical interoperability remains superficial or brittle.

Participants will explore where data breaks as it moves across actors, how metrics and standards are defined and governed, and whose perspectives shape what is considered “valid” or “comparable” across contexts. The discussion will examine how participation, validity, and comparability are built—or undermined—through measurement choices.

Grounded in real-world experience, the lab considers how agile, farmer-centred measurement can be integrated into broader digital public infrastructure, enabling systems to connect in ways that are not only technically compatible, but also meaningful, credible, and usable at scale.

This closing reflection surfaces early synergies across participants, regions, and disciplines — highlighting common challenges, complementary efforts, and emerging opportunities. The session helps align perspectives before moving into leverage points on Day 2.

What are data collection incentives for farmers and farmer organisations. How to avoid mere data extraction? How can farmers benefit from the data they produce? Which gender aspects need to be considered?

What role can shared registries play in data sharing? What are the efficiency gains? How do they enable standardization and interoperability? What are the benefits e.g. for national governments to deploy and maintain registries? How can they be governed at national and international level?

How can consensus and trust be achieved between competitors and public sectors for digital collaboration? What are the key elements of this consensus? How to enable “pre-competitive” digital collaboration in competitive environments?

What are the benefits of national data infrastructures? How to enable permissioned data sharing between stakeholders and across national borders? How can these infrastructures be fed by agile data collection?

A deep dive into the current obstacles and challenges to success e.g. Identifying leverage points for transformation

Participants map the barriers clearly so leverage points can be found, not assumed.

Even well-designed digital platforms and data systems can break down at the farm level — not because the tech is “bad,” but because trust, incentives, usability, and governance don’t hold under real conditions. This talk offers a candid look at where systems fail farmers in practice, and what Agile Data and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) must do differently if adoption, inclusion, and impact are to scale.

A fast, visual tour of the “invisible layer” behind farmer-centred AI: compute, connectivity, and local infrastructure. While the spotlight is often on apps and algorithms, this talk reframes AI as a systems question — showing how cloud capacity, data centres, and digital rails determine who benefits, how fast learning can happen, and whether trust can be sustained.

Drawing on Cassava’s regional AI compute investments, the talk explores what Africa-based infrastructure makes possible: shorter feedback loops, stronger data governance, and inclusive services that can reach the last mile. The core message is simple: if we want AI to deliver real value for farmers, we must build the foundations that let intelligence move locally, decisions happen faster, and innovation scale responsibly.

A fast, visual perspective on how global regulations and standards — including EUDR — are not just compliance mechanisms, but powerful design forces for digital systems. This talk explores how policy choices influence interoperability, investment, and innovation at the farm level, and what it takes to move from regulation-as-burden to regulation-as-enabler. The focus is on aligning market requirements with Digital Public Infrastructure and Agile Data so that accountability strengthens inclusion rather than undermines it.

What changes when intelligence no longer stops at dashboards and headquarters — but reaches farmers directly? This talk explores how AI advisory, agile data, and digital public infrastructure can shift decision-making closer to the field. Drawing on real-world experience, it looks at what it takes to deliver timely, trusted guidance at scale — and how systems must be designed differently when farmers are treated not as data sources, but as end users of intelligence.

Building on the morning’s insights, participants propose challenge topics they believe matter most. In an open-space format, groups self-organise around these themes to explore solutions collaboratively.

Teams rapidly develop early concepts and candidate interventions — intentionally rough, bold, and solution-oriented. The goal is not polish, but momentum: a first step toward prototypes that can be refined on Day 3.

In this session we share the strongest signals from the day – the moments that shifted thinking, the leverage points that stood out, and the ideas worth carrying into Day 3.

Participants work within to identify which interventions truly matter, where collective effort has the greatest leverage, and what should be carried forward into concrete action planning.

Thematic leads present the roadmaps.

This moderated policy dialogue brings together policy representatives to reflect on the Summit’s collective insights and explore what they mean for policy in practice.

Positioned at the close of the Summit, the session creates space for policymakers to respond directly to evidence and experiences shared across the three days — from farmer realities and system design challenges to emerging leverage points and proposed roadmaps. Rather than formal presentations, panellists engage in guided reflection on how agile, farmer-centred data and Digital Public Infrastructure can be translated into enabling policies that support resilience, inclusion, and sustainable agricultural transformation.

The discussion emphasises regional perspective and practical alignment, considering how governance, interoperability, innovation, and farmer inclusion can be advanced coherently across countries. The goal is to connect learning to action — helping shape policy environments that allow digital agriculture to move from promising ideas to real-world impact.

As the Summit closes, this session brings the focus to what will carry beyond the room.

Participants briefly share the priorities, commitments, and next steps they are prepared to take forward — individually and collectively — based on the work of the previous days. Rather than formal pledges, the emphasis is on clarity: what has shifted, what will be acted on, and how momentum will be sustained.

This session is designed to ensure the Summit concludes not with conclusions, but with direction — making visible what has moved from insight to intent, and where responsibility now sits as the work continues.