Posts by Seember Ali

For over a decade, Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) has been at the forefront of digital agriculture, leveraging agricultural data to support input monitoring, value chain analysis, and farmer-centric governance models. With funding from the Gates Foundation, DG is launching the Soil Nutrient Roadmap (SNR), a cutting-edge initiative using geospatial data to estimate current and future soil and crop nutrient requirements.

Over the last six years, DG, together with its partners AfricaFertilizer (AFO) and Wallace & Associates, collaborated to implement the Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) Program. In the program’s final year (2024), the team undertook a “program learning process” to reflect on outcomes, challenges, and successes through internal interviews. This blog captures five key learnings, which we hope will guide similar programs aiming to bridge data gaps in agricultural development.

Through DG’s Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) program, we recently published a case study titled “Fostering Sustainable Agriculture through Data-Driven Collaboration and Partnership: Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Nigeria.” It dives deep into how the VIFAA program has impacted the fertilizer data and markets in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Nigeria. In this blog, we explore the overall impact that the VIFAA program is making, why the program was needed, and offer some key highlights from the case study.

From June 2021 to September 2022, Development Gateway: An IREX Venture’s (DG’s) Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) program convened 12 Fertilizer Technical Working Groups in 14 countries which have yielded essential information on Africa’s fertilizer sector, including insights on how geopolitical events have impacted the fertilizer sector and what is needed to mitigate resulting threats to food security throughout Africa.

Representatives from Development Gateway: an IREX Venture (DG) will be attending the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) from September 5-9 in Kigali, Rwanda to highlight two projects: the Visualizing Insights on African Agriculture (VIFAA) project and the Farmer-Centric Data Governance Models project.

Development Gateway’s Aminata Camara Badji and Seember Ali discuss the Nigeria’s Tobacco Control Data Initiative Dashboard, which launched June 28, 2022.

In June 2022, Development Gateway launched the Nigeria - Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) Dashboard. The TCDI website creates a “one-stop-shop” to access the relevant data that Nigeria’s policymakers need to advance tobacco control legislation and was created in response to the impending threat of increased tobacco use in Nigeria and the various dangers that accompany it.

Mr. Gideon Negedu, the Executive Secretary of The Fertilizer Producers & Suppliers Association of Nigeria (FEPSAN,) describes using rumors for planning and the importance of the VIFAA Nigeria Dashboard in evidence-based advocacy.

Professor Victor O. Chude is the Registrar/CEO of Nigeria Institute of Soil Science (NISS), where his work centers around efforts to produce and use more region and crop-specific fertilizers to increase crop yields and food security. Professor Chude describes how the newly launched VIFAA Dashboard supports his work and feeds into decision-making.

In place of unwieldy spreadsheets and dozens of sources, the VIFAA Fertilizer Dashboard introduces a “one-stop-shop” for trustworthy, visually appealing information that is key to understanding Nigeria’s fertilizer sector.