#5 Hamza Chaham - on how SOWIT is bringing digital technology to African farmers and what it takes to get AI powered tools into the hands of smallholder farmers, the real hope for food security on the continent
18 February 2024
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1 Guest Bio
2 Episode Description
3 Show Notes
4 Time Stamps
5 Transcript
1 Guest Bio
Moroccan Hamza Chaham is the young co-founder of SOWIT, an agritech company offering real-life data to farmers and key decision-makers along the agri value chain. The SOWIT tech platforms power mobile apps that provide farmers with actionable insights regarding their land, to help them efficiently manage their farms and optimize their productions. The company also provides data to help mitigate risk, manage investments, and influence performance.
Chaham is pushing ‘precision agriculture’, farming based on actionable data that can reduce waste on inputs and increase yields through improved data-driven decision-making. The data is drawn from an array of AI powered 'tools' and offers data via subscriptions to mobile apps with a fee based on the amount of hectares under review. SOWIT also provides a bundle of services that go beyond the AI info delivered daily to farmer's phones via WhatsApp and voice messages, to include the credit orchestration and real-life support from agents trained in Agritech but living in the communities that are part of SOWIT's areas of operation. SOWIT’s overall mission relies on modelling tailored decision support tools to achieve the highest value in order to fit African farmers' needs and local conditions. SOWIT is currently incorporated in Morocco, France and Senegal.
Notably, Hamza is co-author of the landmark report published by the African Union entitled “Drones on the horizon: Transforming Africa’s Agriculture”. The report forms the basis upon which the AU Executive Council issued the Decision EX. CL/Dec. 986-1007 (XXXII), recommending all Member States harness the opportunities offered by drones for precision agriculture. In 2018, he was recognised as the Marshall German Fund and Policy Centre for the New South Emerging Leader. Chaham was also the former head of international development at AIRINOV.
In 2006,Chaham enrolled at Lycée Lyautey au Maroc, where he pursued a Baccalauréat degree in scientific specialization in mathematics, which he completed in 2009. Hamza completed this program in 2009. In 2012 Hamza enrolled at HEC Paris and pursued a degree in Grande Ecole, where he completed his studies in Management in 2016. During his time at HEC Paris, in 2013, Hamza participated in an exchange programme at the University of Texas in Austin, where he studied Business Administration. In 2015 he also took part in another exchange programme at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa where he focused on his Master of Business Administration (MBA).
2 Episode Description
In this episode, we could have focused on the tech side of agriculture with agripreneur Hamza Chaham, because it is digital technology that is really turning agriculture into an exciting scientifically based business. And his company, SOWIT, is using AI powered tools like sensors and probes, trackers and drones, in their work with farmers, government and food producers to successfully help optimize yields.
For Hamza, however, this is not where the hope for food security lies.
Agritech involves powerful tools, but it is the farmer who ultimately needs to use them. And given that the majority of smallholder farmers grow their crops on a mere 12% of the worlds farmland, yet feed 80% of people in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, it is with these smallholder farmers, where tech can have the biggest impact in the future.
But how to get this tech into the hands of farmers, who often are not digitally savvy and rely on traditional methods to grow their food?
That is the focus of today’s insightful conversation with Hamza as he shares his journey to understanding that the farmer, is at the centre of the push for innovation and food security, not technology.
3 Show Notes
[00:01:24] SOWIT - bridging the information gap across the agri value chain
[00:05:29] ‘Parrot pulls plug on airinov’, Future Farming, July 2019
[00:23:42] Social Media: 84% of Moroccans Use WhatsApp in 2021 (Survey)
[00:24:34] The general adult literacy rate in Morocco was 77% in 2022, compared to the estimated 40% literacy rate among Moroccan farmers.
[00:31:40] World Bank - some interesting reading
[00:31:42] IFC
4 Time Stamps
[00:00:47] Podcast intro
[00:02:24] Interview begins - About SOWIT
[00:03:16] SOWIT’s intangible offer: information, not inputs and equipment
[00:05:18] Increase in demand for data-driven agri info in the last 10 years
[00:09:58] Daily problems that farmers face
[00:11:58] How Hamza made the transition from being a drone tech man to farming
[00:14:11] At which point Hamza realised he was going to focus on smaller farmers
[00:16:02] What SOWIT does when it arrives on a farm
[00:20:05] Reactions to the tech by farmers
[00:21:46] How farmers interact with technology
[00:25:01] SOWIT’s business model
[00:28:59] SOWIT’s subscriptions and bundles
[00:29:31] How does the subscription model work
[00:31:29] Who is funding the whole bundle?
[00:32:57] Long-term funding solution - de-risking farmers to bankers
[00:34:59] How Hamza sees risk
[00:38:04] Farmers within the value chain - how others in the value chain must share the burden of farmers if they want to benefit from their labour
[00:42:33] Give an example of where SOWIT has had an impact
[00:46:59] What difference has SOWIT made on the ground
[00:50:10] What does the increase in knowledge do for the farmer
[00:52:28] Where SOWIT operates in Africa
[00:53:46] The challenge with scaling up and plans to head south
[00:56:13] The low moments in Hamza’s entrepreneurial journey
[00:57:40] Why people should be excited about what SOWIT is doing
[00:58:37] What Hamza would tell people who say 'nobody wants to go into farming anymore’
[00:59:40] What are stereotypes or prejudices that people have about Morocco that Hamza wants to put to rest
[01:01:48] Interview ends
5 Transcript
More on Hamza Chaham and SOWIT:
Publication (contributing research by Hamza Chaham)
Videos by SOWIT
Press coverage of SOWIT and Hamza Chaham