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Precision Agriculture Education in Africa: Perceptions, Opportunities and Challenges, and the Way Forward
K. A. Frimpong
University of Cape Coast

Precision Agriculture is critical for accelerated transformation of the agrifood systems in Africa for shared prosperity and enhanced livelihoods. The paper presents an overview of the perceptions of faculty, undergraduate and postgraduate students from Ghanaian universities about PA education, and its opportunities and challenges. The study involves a case study of two public universities, the University of Cape Coast and the Technical University of Cape Coast, respectively a and a desk review of available literature. The study shows that Precision agriculture education is not widespread in Africa, but the impact of PA on African agriculture will grow as new ideas and opportunities spread. The study also shows that in there is a lack of PA skilled faculty and facilities in most African universities. There is limited financial commitments and regulatory policies towards integrating PA into existing programmes. Moreover, existing extension services in most African countries lack the capacity, skill and competencies to promote PA services. This is exacerbated by the lack of equipment and logistics to stimulate outreach. The existing media is interested and adequately psyched to promote PA education and outreach but there appears to be a disjoint between academic, industry and the media. The study further confirmed that the success of PA in Africa is highly dependent on curriculum re-engineering, outreach and education. Sustainable PA education and outreach requires skilled faculty, appropriate curriculum, and ICT and digital solutions.  The study revealed that PA education and outreach are very necessary for the growth of PA in the African agricultural systems for improved agricultural productivity. We propose that existing undergraduate and postgraduate programmes should be redesigned to include courses such as data science, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, artificial intelligence and digital agriculture courses related to specific disciplines. We further suggest that government policies should include training and re-training of faculty, building the capacity of support staff, and provision of the needed infrastructure and funds for agricultural universities to successfully run PA programmes.

Keyword: Africa, University, Education, Outreach, Capacity Building, Curiculum