IBM to Trial Blockchain Agricultural System for sub-Saharan Africa

[Leonardo]

US technology giant IBM announced on Tuesday its latest blockchain initiative that aims to expand the company’s customer base outside of its traditional PC hardware and software markets. The company teamed up with Nigeria’s agricultural startup Hello Tractor with the goal to test a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-driven crop management system, IBM said in a press release.

The US firm would develop a DLT-driven application, called Digital Wallet, that would help sub-Saharan farmers reduce the higher percent of post-harvest losses. Blockchain solutions can help agriculturalists plan their crop harvest easily by receiving information about weather conditions, fertilizers, and cultivation-related data, IBM explained.

The system would reward users with loan credit scores by predicting the value of the harvest with the help of blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The blockchain technology can track all farmer activity and thus give credible and 24-hour-updated information to banks and other financial institutions. Neither IBM nor Hello Tractor disclosed whether the test had received support from any of the largest African banks.

The trial version would also match farmers with companies that offer tractors and would create a rating system of the vehicles.

“More specifically, the blockchain will provide a tamper-proof definition of demand-side and supply-side workflows from tractor request to fulfillment, payment for services, and distribution of proceeds, authorized access to services and documents within the workflow, logging of all workflow-related approvals including booking, invoicing, etc.),” IBM explained in the press release.

IBM will conduct the test in the first half of next year. At the moment, the project is slated only for Nigeria with plans for expansion in Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Source: https://cryptovest.com/news/ibm-to-trial-blockchain-agricultural-system-for-sub-saharan-africa/