Digital Solutions Strengthen Green Growth and Resilience

Digital solutions hold tremendous potential to enhance global economic development and resilience. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are enabling businesses to streamline and automate processes, while smartphones, drones, and remote technologies provide unprecedented access to information and services on a global scale. 

However, many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face unique complexities in making these digital solutions—ranging from AI and drones to less flashy technologies like digitizing paper records and documenting processes and procedures—available, useful, and applicable. RTI helps LMICs navigate these complexities to harness the potential and benefits of digital solutions.

In this blog post, we explore four use cases of digital solutions in LMICs, how they are driving more sustainable and resilient development, and what is needed to further their potential. 

Digital Solutions Enable Transitions to Clean Energy 

In the energy sector, digital solutions are helping countries and communities transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Utilities are using AI to assess the reliability and true costs of generating electricity from various sources. Other digital tools support optimal management of the electrical grid when power is supplied by intermittent sources like solar and wind. Families are using digital tools to monitor their electricity usage and make payments.

Mini-grids powered by renewable sources and optimized with digital tools are a great example. In Uganda, the development of solar mini-grids is helping provide affordable and reliable electricity to communities not served by the national power grid, like refugee settlements and their host communities. In Somalia, we’re exploring how to attract private investment in more reliable mini-grids that use mixed technologies like batteries and diesel along with digital platforms for optimizing placement, remote monitoring, and payments. This lowers the cost for customers and expands access to capital 

Digitizing Agriculture Enhances Resilience 

In agriculture, digital tools help producers, from small-scale farmers to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), make more informed decisions. With a cell phone, farmers can access advanced platforms that provide localized weather forecasts, disease and pest diagnostic services, and other advice. 

In Rwanda, RTI researchers used climate modeling to understand how climate change will impact crops like maize, bush beans, and Irish potatoes. The researchers used drones to collect images of farmland and correlate them with satellite images to understand how healthy the crops were and how quickly they were growing. They layered this with other national and international data to help enhance agricultural resilience in a changing climate.

Producer networks are using digital solutions to get more accurate, actionable information on their members and their agricultural activities and use this data to extend more finance to them and tailor input distribution based on local insights. In Senegal, through the Feed the Future Naatal Mbay project, we supported digital solutions that fostered trust among partners, producer networks, and banks based on accurate data. This led to an over 130% increase in financing for irrigated-rice production, from $8 million in 2015 to $19 million in 2018. Through platforms like WhatsApp, digital communication and education are also expanding across agriculture networks through text, video, and audio messages, conveying important messages around climate-smart and conservation agriculture practices.

In Kenya, through the USAID Kenya Crops and Dairy Market Systems project, we supported Cherehani Africa to introduce an app for dairy cooperatives that enables extension workers to schedule farm visits and sends reminders to farmers of these visits and other cooperative events, leading to more frequent visits and more efficiency and productivity for dairy farmers. 

Digital Technology Expands Access to New Markets for Trade  

Digital solutions also play a pivotal role in enabling and facilitating more efficient trade. Digitizing customs processes, logistics, and payments can help bring transparency to trade and speed up the movement of goods, all while enabling inspectors to focus on the areas of biggest risk and enabling ports and borders to better plan. 

New tools like AI have the potential to expand trade, from translating information in a range of local languages to tracking purchasing trends in real time. Automating processes like exporter licensing and certification can simplify and streamline operations. Through the Feed the Future Rwanda Kungahara Wagura Amasoko project, we’re working with Rwanda’s National Agricultural Export Board to establish an online system with these features. 

We also partnered with MoneyPhone in Rwanda to expand digital financial solutions to help three cooperatives export products like chili and tea, leading to almost 200 loans providing over $135,000 to producers. User-friendly digital solutions are helping export businesses like Aubin Produce International, a youth-owned organic honey export company in Rwanda, grow. They are using IT-based traceability tools to hold their bee farmers accountable for the quantity and quality of supplied honey. Consumers can then scan their barcode to find out the origin of their honey. 

Promoting Inclusive Growth with Digital Tools

Digital tools and e-commerce, which tend to support remote and in-home employment, can expand economic options for women and other marginalized groups. By building their information technology sector and creating demand for new skill sets in digital jobs—many in the growing green sector—countries can engage the tremendous creativity of all their people and discourage the brain drain that has their best and brightest seeking better opportunities elsewhere. Academic institutions in LMICs are advancing green growth by offering more courses in data science, computer skills, and basic English, and we’re already seeing a shift toward using digital platforms for youth workforce education.

Rwanda, for example, is fulfilling its aspirations of becoming a knowledge-based economy that provides services regionally and internationally by building the technical and soft skills—including digital skills— of its workforce through the Feed the Future Hanga Akazi (“Create Jobs”) activity. This includes partnering with the Musanze Employment Service Center to facilitate digital inclusion training for members of a cooperative of persons with disabilities to enhance the cooperative's ability to access information, communicate effectively, and compete in the market.

Overcoming Barriers to Digital Adoption in LMICs

While the benefits of digital solutions are clear, the opportunities to leverage them don’t come naturally. LMICs have specific challenges to adopting digital solutions that must be addressed, including outdated policy and regulatory environments that struggle to keep pace with innovation, investment costs that limit use and growth, and data privacy and security implications. At an even more basic level, many LMICs still lack reliable internet access and need to digitize information and services as a step toward making more high-tech digital solutions possible.

At RTI, we’re bringing together our expertise in data science, artificial intelligence, and international development to help LMICs understand which digital solutions are applicable to their needs, what it takes to adopt and use them, and how to put in place the right policy environment and infrastructure for fostering digital growth. By helping LMICs thoughtfully apply localized digital solutions, we're helping them turn potential into progress for more green growth and resilience in the years ahead.