Industry News

02/06/26

India announces multilingual AI Bharat-VISTAAR for farm advisory

The Government of India plans to launch Bharat-VISTAAR, a multilingual, AI-driven agriadvisory platform designed to consolidate multiple state-level and central agritech services into a single interface. The platform will deliver weather, soil, pest and information on government schemes in regional languages, and will tailor recommendations to farmers’ local contexts.

Announced in the Union Budget 2026–27, Bharat-VISTAAR is positioned as a national digital utility aimed at making government-backed advisory services more accessible and reducing informational friction for smallholder farmers.

Bharat-VISTAAR is designed as an agricultural digital public infrastrcture (DPI) layer integrating AgriStack digital records with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) package of recommended agricultural practices. It will use AI to support productivity, improve farm-level decision-making and reduce risk through customised advisory support. Initial rollout is expected in major Indian languages, with expansion to additional regional languages over time. Funding for the initiative has been allocated in the 2026–27 financial year as part of a broader technology push in agriculture.

The announcement aligns with a wider agritech focus in the budget 2026, which emphasises the role of digital agriculture and AI adoption to strengthen agricultural advisory systems and support farm incomes across India.

Why it matters
Bharat-VISTAAR is an important step in the development of agri DPIs, but its impact will hinge on whether it prioritises interoperability and reinforcement of existing agritech solutions rather than duplicating them. For example, Syngenta recently expanded its Cropwise Grower app with additional AI-driven, multilingual features and signalled intent to integrate with the VISTAAR platform, underscoring how private platforms are aligning around public infrastructure.

04/02/26

Ethiopia launches OpenAgriNet platform for advisory, markets and finance

The Government of Ethiopia has launched OpenAgriNet (OAN Ethiopia), a national DPI intended to serve as a digital backbone for agricultural advisory services, market access, financial services and government programmes. The platform has been developed by the Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) in collaboration with the Center for Open Societal Systems (COSS), an Indian non-profit working on stimulating DPI adoption globally.

OAN Ethiopia is designed as an AI-enabled, interoperable digital layer linking farmer and farm identifiers with extension services, markets, climate information and financial services. According to ATI, the platform is built on open standards and consent-based data governance, with voice-first access, local-language advisory, and location-specific AI recommendations tailored to crop, soil and climate conditions. ATI will serve as the first implementing partner, with integration planned across national digital systems.

The launch operationalises Ethiopia’s Digital Agriculture Roadmap (2025–2032), which prioritises the creation of shared digital infrastructure such as farmer profiles, unique IDs and interoperable data systems.

Why it matters

OpenAgriNet highlights the growing role of South–South collaboration (in this case between Ethiopia’s ATI and India’s COSS) in building agricultural DPIs, with its impact hinging on whether a single digital backbone can effectively coordinate advisory, market and financial services at scale.

05/02/26

Koltiva pilots AI-powered food supply chain traceability in Indonesia

Indonesian agritech Koltiva is piloting an AI-powered traceability and sustainability solution for agricultural supply chains, starting with a coffee and cocoa agribusiness in Indonesia. The pilot is implemented under AI Singapore’s AIAP for Industry programme, a government-backed initiative supporting the deployment of applied AI in real-world business operations. The project integrates AI into Koltiva’s KoltiTrace platform to automate ESG and regulatory reporting.

The solution uses AI to validate field and transaction data, monitor data quality, and generate sustainability and compliance reports, reducing reliance on manual reporting processes. Koltiva positions the pilot as a response to tightening global regulations, including the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

Founded in 2013, Koltiva reports operations in 94 countries, supporting more than 19,000 businesses and reaching over 2 million producers. In 2023 the company completed a seven-figure Series A funding round led by AC Ventures.

06/02/26

StarAgri reports FY25 growth as it scales digital agri-commerce infrastructure

India’s StarAgri Group has reported consolidated revenue of USD 170 million in FY25 (55% growth) and set a target of USD 240 million in revenue for FY26, pointing to continued expansion of its digital agri-commerce and post-harvest infrastructure across India.

In practical terms, StarAgri runs digital systems that help move crops from warehouses to buyers. It works mainly with Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), traders, and agribusinesses, using technology to track stored crops, match them with buyers, and support access to loans and insurance linked to warehouse receipts. Farmers typically interact with the platform indirectly, through cooperatives or aggregators that use StarAgri’s storage, trading, and financing services.

Why it matters
StarAgri’s model highlights how a growing share of digital agriculture activity happens through back-end market, storage, and finance systems rather than farmer-facing apps. For small and medium farmers, access to organised markets and credit increasingly depends on participation in these digitally enabled value chains, even when the technology is not directly visible on the farm.

04/02/26

Zowasel and Fluna join Afreximbank accelerator with pre-seed and seed backing

Two Nigerian agritechs, Zowaselv and Fluna, have been selected into the inaugural cohort of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) Flagship Accelerator Programme. The eight participating startups will receive tailored technical support, mentorship, and access to Afreximbank’s pan-African trade networks, with the opportunity to secure pre-seed or seed investment of up to USD 250,000 through the bank’s impact investment arm, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA).

Founded in 2019, Zowasel operates an agritech and finance marketplace connecting farmer cooperatives and agribusinesses with buyers. In 2024, as reported by ArisTechia, the company launched the Alternative Credit Evaluation Scoring System (ACESS), an AI-enabled credit assessment tool designed to estimate farmers’ working capital needs by predicting yields and income, enabling financial service providers to set loan limits aligned with farmers’ production capacity and repayment ability. In 2025, Zowasel integrated as a non-financial institution with Afreximbank’s Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and the bank’s digital due diligence and compliance platform MANSA, enabling cross-border payments and compliance verification.

Founded in 2021, Fluna operates a B2B digital trade infrastructure platform connecting African producers with verified buyers and embedding financing directly into trade flows. The platform integrates trade execution and financing to address persistent market access and liquidity gaps in regional and export trade.

Good reads (what ArisTechia is reading..)

05/02/26

AI in agriculture in LMICs: Evidence and limits from new GSMA report

The new GSMA report AI for Impact at Scale: Case Studies from Innovators in Low- and Middle-Income Countries examines how AI is being deployed across development sectors, with agriculture emerging as one of the most advanced application areas.

Drawing on case studies from Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, the report shows that AI in agriculture in LMICs has moved beyond experimentation, with solutions increasingly used to improve yields, detect pests and diseases earlier, and support climate-smart farming practices linked to food security and undernutrition reduction.

In agriculture, the report highlights four initiatives. Digital Green’s FarmerChat operates in India, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, delivering AI-generated agricultural advice via mobile phones. Designed for low-literacy contexts, it supports voice, text, and image inputs and builds on Digital Green’s broader reach of more than 8 million farmers.

Among active users, around 60% report adopting at least one new farming practice, while the cost of delivering advisory services has fallen by up to 100 times compared with traditional extension.

Lersha, based in Ethiopia, applies AI to link agronomic advice with climate risk management and access to finance, while Varaha, operating mainly in India and South Asia, uses AI and satellite data to automate carbon measurement and verification, enabling smallholders to access carbon markets. The report also highlights the World Bank’s Geo-AI and data-driven agriculture initiatives, which embed AI within national data systems for crop monitoring, climate risk analysis, and policy planning.

Key findings

Across these cases, the evidence suggests AI delivers the greatest impact when it is localised, multimodal (supporting voice, text, and image-based interaction), affordable, and embedded in existing agricultural institutions with humans in the loop. Where these conditions are absent, AI tends to expose deeper structural constraints, underscoring that agricultural transformation through AI remains a socio-technical challenge rather than a purely computational one.

Why it matters
The report shows that AI can work in smallholder agriculture, but only under specific conditions: impact depends less on model performance than on data quality, local grounding, and sustained human involvement. Where these elements are missing, AI does not compensate for structural weaknesses in agricultural systems, it makes them more visible.