ABSTRACT
The digital revolution spanning across African agriculture has been increasingly present for decades and raises critical questions surrounding its development impact and its effects on governance structures in the agri-business industry. Especially, the accumulation of big data by multinational companies in the distribution of chemical fertiliser may have large impacts on the directions of African agricultural knowledge and farming methods. As such, global production networks (GPNs) as a theoretical underpinning can be useful in the study of sustainable transitions of agriculture, but they remain immature in their understanding of how digital innovation augments power structures and creates new markets. Consequently, this chapter will use the “digital farming” strategy by Norwegian-based fertiliser producer Yara International to understand how in-house developed digital technologies and big data derived from these technologies are used to expand their African market share, specifically in East Africa and Kenya.
