With a population of 108 million people, Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Africa.  Agriculture employs 80% of the population and contributes to 45% of the nation’s economy.  However, because of the rapid population growth, limited access to fertilizers, small farm plots, and the need for most farmers to grow food just to feed themselves, the industry is in a constant state of struggle.  51 year old Khalid Bomba, head of the Agriculture Transformation Agency, hopes to change that.

Bomba comes to his new government position after having spent a decade working for JP Morgan in London and on Wall Street, followed by time developing and managing agricultural grants for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  He has the background needed to meet the Agriculture Transformation Agency’s goal of establishing food and commercial farming stability within the next 20 years.  “The reason Ethiopia’s agricultural sector has not developed is because we have not leveraged technology,” Bomba said.  So he plans to implement an easy to use, highly successful technology to change that, drones.

Drones have been proven to be vital farming tools recently.  They allow farmers to better observe and maintain their crops.  Jobs that would have previously take days to complete can now be finished in a matter of hours.  Tasks like inspecting crops for hydration levels, pest management, and fertilization can now be done rapidly without compromising quality or causing employment decline.  Currently farmers have their fields clustered together with neighboring farmers.  This helps them work together to grown complimenting crops.  The farmers produce things like sesame, corn, wheat, barley, and fruit.  The biggest farms grow coffee and oil seeds (like peanut and rape seed), the country’s largest exports, followed by roses.

But now, not only will drones and satellite soil maps be helping farmers to increase production, they will also help draw in perspective buyers.  The drones will be able to create detailed videos of land available for sale as well as crops for sale.  Bomba’s plan is to increase the income of 5 million farmers by double within the next five years.  With this income increase farmers will have more funds to purchase adequate amounts of fertilizer to increase food growth and sales.  Bomba went on to say, “We want to make sure that people’s perceptions that persist from the 1980s of drought and famine is replaced by a perception of an Ethiopia that is food secure. A country that feeds itself and feeds other parts of Africa.”

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