AI in Agriculture Co-Creation and Planning Event

On 3 April, PxD Ethiopia co-hosted a day-long co-creation and planning event in Addis Ababa with the Ministry of Agriculture, ATI, EAII, and the Gates Foundation — bringing together government, development partners, research, and private sector partners to co-create and prioritise AI-enabled agricultural advisory in Ethiopia.

The Gates Foundation keynote framed the stakes simply: coordination among stakeholders matters, because without it, “AI delivers impact rather than deepening inequality.”

The day moved through presentations of landscape-mapping and into design work. A Project Management Unit responsible for delivering the Digital Agriculture Roadmap (DAR-PMU) progress update covered ecosystem coordination, use case landscaping, and the need for stronger strategic alignment across initiatives. An AI ecosystem overview mapped existing initiatives, key actors, and critical gaps. ATI showcased three major initiatives underway with partners: an AI-powered agricultural knowledge base, farmer profiling systems, and the Ethiopian Open AgriNet Program. Ethiopia’s national AI strategy was also presented, with agriculture identified as a priority sector, alongside governance frameworks and capacity-building priorities. Language technology partners demonstrated TTS, STT, and ASR systems in local languages — the kind of infrastructure that determines whether advisory services are actually accessible to farmers or just technically available to them.

Partners also shared practical experience: Digital Green presented Farmer.Chat, highlighting experiences in advisory service delivery. AIM for Scale, the Human-Centered Forecasting initiative at the University of Chicago, the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute, and PxD then presented progress on AI-driven weather forecasting.

In the afternoon, participants split into working groups across three domains — content and scientific readiness; models, language, and delivery; and governance and data systems — to identify where Ethiopia should concentrate its AI-for-agriculture efforts. Groups then moved into design sprints to propose use cases and clarify next steps and roles.

Stewart Collis from the Gates Foundation closed the event by commending PxD and all partners for the depth of engagement and collaboration, reiterating the urgency of improving the quality and timeliness of information reaching farmers, and thanking PxD for hosting and convening the dialogue.

A lot of what was surfaced on Friday will shape what gets prioritised next. The DAR-PMU will be central to translating that into action.

Special thanks to the PxD Ethiopia team for making this possible.