Interview: Airtel Business Africa's Luc Serviant on agritech trends

Airtel Business Africa's Group Enterprise Director, Luc Serviant, joined Connecting Africa for a video interview in Nairobi, Kenya, to talk about how agritech is growing in Africa and how telecoms operators can partner with startups to help the agricultural value chain to flourish.

He spoke about the four main challenges for agriculture in Africa: climate change; low productivity; access to resources; and limited or poor infrastructure, and how agritech can help mitigate these risks to food security.

He shared his views on the emerging technologies that are making a key difference including precision farming using GPS, drones and sensors, and how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are helping provide data for farmers to make more informed decisions.

Serviant shared some case studies of successful programs in Uganda and Niger where Airtel Business Africa is partnering with local agritech startups.

He also spoke about how telcos like Airtel can help make connectivity more affordable for the agriculture sector so farmers can afford to access these evolving technologies.