Deadline: Unspecified
The Innovate Africa Challenge (3rd Edition), organized jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Smart Africa Secretariat, is a continental initiative aimed at accelerating the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to address climate and agricultural challenges in Africa. The 2026 edition is themed “From Ideation to Deployment”, emphasizing the transition from innovative concepts to practical, scalable solutions that deliver measurable benefits to farmers.
Why the Challenge Matters
Africa’s agrifood systems face significant challenges, including:
- Climate variability and increasing climate shocks
- Food insecurity and declining natural resources
- Limited access to timely agricultural information
- Low adoption of digital technologies.
- Fragmented agricultural data systems and skills gaps.
- Persistent inequalities affecting smallholder farmers and rural communities.
What This Edition Aims to Achieve
The Third Edition seeks to identify and support a proven AI-driven solution for Climate-Smart Agriculture and deploy it within a Smart Africa Member State. The selected solution will be implemented in partnership with:
- National ministries responsible for Agriculture, ICT, and Innovation
- The Smart Africa Secretariat
- FAO country offices and technical experts
The challenge aims to demonstrate real-world impact for farmers while generating lessons and evidence that can support replication and scaling across Africa. The initiative envisions an Africa where agrifood systems are resilient, adaptive, and prosperous, with digital technologies and AI delivering tangible benefits to farmers, communities, and ecosystems across the continent.
Objective
The primary objective is to identify, support, and deploy one proven AI-based solution that strengthens climate resilience and improves productivity within African agrifood systems. The challenge also seeks to foster collaboration among governments, innovators, development partners, and agricultural stakeholders to ensure that successful innovations can scale and create lasting impact
Specifically, the challenge seeks to:
- Surface and validate mature AI solutions addressing climate-smart agriculture using African agricultural and climate data, while promoting responsible AI, data governance, and data sovereignty principles;
- Support a leading solution through deployment in a Smart Africa Member State, in collaboration with the host ministry and FAO;
- Demonstrate measurable improvements in farmer decision-making, productivity, or climate resilience;
- Strengthen collaboration and ecosystem linkages among innovators, ministries, FAO country offices, the private sector, and other key stakeholders across Member States, to ensure sustainability and long-term partnerships,
- Generate evidence and a replicable model to inform the scale-up of AI for climate-smart agriculture across the continent, including pathways for scale-up, sustainability and long–term sustainability and long–term or continued capacity development.
Expected outcome
- Deployment of a Scalable and Context-Validated AI Solution One (1) Proven AI-driven solution customized to African agricultural realities will be deployed, validated, and demonstrated in real-world settings. This will result in measurable improvements in farmers’ decision-making, productivity, and climate resilience, laying a clear foundation for wider adoption across Member States.
- Strengthened Ecosystem and Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration The initiative will catalyze stronger partnerships among innovators, government ministries, FAO country offices, the private sector, research institutions, and farmer organizations. By fostering an enabling environment and ecosystem linkages, the collaboration will help break down silos, promote knowledge exchange, and build capacity for sustained digital transformation in agriculture.
- Evidence Generation and a Replicable Model for Scale-Up The challenge will generate robust evidence and lessons learned from the deployment process, creating a replicable model for scaling AI innovations in climate-smart agriculture across the continent. This will inform policy, guide investment, and accelerate the adoption of responsible AI solutions, amplifying impact for African farmers and food systems.
Primary Focus Areas
The challenge will place particular emphasis on solutions addressing:
- Precision agriculture and input optimization; to improve resource efficiency and reduce. environmental impact;
- Crop yield prediction and forecasting; to support proactive planning and food security;
- Pest and disease surveillance, detection, and early warning; enabling timely responses and minimizing losses;
- Climate risk modeling and adaptive decision support, to strengthen resilience to climate variability and shocks; and
- Water and natural resource optimization.
Eligibility Criteria
The challenge is open to startups, innovators, and solution developers actively developing or deploying AI-driven solutions for climate-smart agriculture. Applicants must demonstrate not only technological maturity but also a strong commitment to strengthening the innovation ecosystem, contributing to measurable impact, and showcasing viable pathways to scaling and financial sustainability.
Applicants must meet the following criteria:
- Be a legally registered entity or an individual/team with a proven track record of developing or deploying relevant AI solutions (minimum team size of two people, with at least 50% of their working hours dedicated to the solution).
- Possess a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) between 3 and 6 (from proof of concept to validated technology).
- Be at minimum pre-seed funded and at most Series A funded,
- Have a working, deployed, or deployment-ready AI solution relevant to climate-smart agriculture.
- Demonstrate operational experience, including existing deployments, paying customers, or validated pilots.
- Show technical capacity to deploy and support their solution in a new country context.
- Comply with data protection, privacy, and responsible AI requirements.
Additional preference will be given to applicants who:
- Are registered and operating in one or more Smart Africa Member States or have demonstrated experience across these countries.
- Reach or serve smallholder farmers , including youth and women farmers.
- Have established data partnerships with ministries, research institutions, or farmer organizations.
- Have experience integrating solutions into national agricultural or extension systems.
- Present a clear pathway to financial sustainability, scaling, and generating measurable impact evidence.
- Demonstrate a commitment to ecosystem collaboration, knowledge exchange, and strengthening the broader agricultural innovation landscape.
For more information and application.