Our Digital Transformation Approach

Our digital transformation philosophy employs a bottom-up town-down synergy approach.  We do digital actions in two domains : [1] digital science to accelerate research in various disciplines and [2] digital extension to disseminate new technologies across geographies and people.  Digital extension is more challenging because several social challenges have to be encountered (digital literacy, enabling environments, tools etc). This employs two types of digital tools to enable the digital transformation of the target countries, engaging with stakeholders at different scales. At the grass-roots level, we have the GeoAgro smartphone application that provides bespoke agronomic and other advisories and services to the small holder farmers in the local language. This digital platform is developed using a human-centric approach considering the digital literacy divide and  other challenges faced by stakeholders. It also provides a mechanism where the grass-root level user can contribute to a centralized database by which citizen science can be fostered. 

At the policy/governance scale we have the GeoAgro web-based tool which will be used by policy makers and high-level stakeholders to shape national agricultural interventions, policies and priorities. It will also have various type of decision support systems and possibilities to update information in the grass-root level app and also send early warning messages or announcements. Thus, the vision is a top-down bottom-up synergy. This digital transformation approach works with a strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement.