Background

The Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) project, supported by the World Bank and in collaboration with Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS), Federal Ministry of Environment (FMoE), and Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation (FMWR&S), seeks to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria to the impacts of climate change. Northern Nigeria faces significant challenges related to climate variability, including changing rainfall patterns and increased frequency of droughts and floods, which affect agricultural productivity and food security. To address these challenges, PxD partnered with ACReSAL to develop a Digital Precision Agricultural Extension (DPAE) platform tailored to the specific needs of smallholder farmers in the region. The DPAE platform will improve farmers’ access to timely, relevant, and actionable information. This initiative aims to equip farmers with the knowledge needed to adapt to the changing climate, enhance agricultural productivity, and promote sustainable farming practices.

The Service 

Through the DPAE platform, farmers receive one to two automated voice calls per week in Hausa language at no cost, customized to their location, crop, and seasonal stage. The service supports smallholder farmers to make informed decisions on planting, weather-responsive farming, pest and disease management, improved agricultural practices, and post-harvest handling. PxD develops these messages using a structured process to ensure they are well designed for farmers’ needs. Technical agronomic content is first converted into short, practical, and actionable messages. The messages are then translated into Hausa and field-tested with farmers to improve clarity and usability. After incorporating feedback, the final message scripts are professionally voice-recorded in Hausa language, and delivered to farmers at scale through PxD’s in-house Paddy platform. In addition, farmers can access the same advisories on demand by calling an inbound hotline.

Coverage and Reach 

For the 2025-26 dry season, implementation focused on eight states – Kano, Niger, Adamawa, Sokoto, Bauchi, Gombe, FCT, and Kaduna. PxD plans to expand to all 19 ACReSAL supported states in northern Nigeria in the coming years. These states were selected through a demand-driven process, where states expressed interest in participating and were evaluated based on a set of objective criteria, including the availability of a verified list of farmers, with at least 40% being women. As the service expands into the rainy season in 2026, additional states will be gradually added, prioritizing those with large populations of smallholder farmers, such as Kogi and Benue.

The service currently supports ten priority value chains: maize, rice, tomato, onion, pepper, okra, sorghum, groundnut, soybean, and cowpea.These crops were selected in consultation with our key stakeholders and informed by farmer feedback. The list of supported crops will continue to expand over time, based on seasonal priorities and the states in which the service is rolled out.

The service was launched in 2025 and in the initial 2025-26 dry season reached approximately 20,000 farmers with localized, timely digital agricultural advisories for the dry season. As the service expands into the rainy season, it aims to reach at least 100,000 farmers in 2026.

Monitoring and Service Improvements 

Through our monitoring dashboard, we observe farmers’ engagement with the DPAE platform in real-time, and the early results have been promising. Data show that on average 72% of farmers answer each call (pick-up rate). Among those who pick up the calls, farmers listen to 82% of message duration (listening rate). 

PxD has a strong tradition of embedding research within service delivery to understand how farmers interact with digital agricultural advisory services and to continuously improve program design. We are implementing a series of A/B tests on the DPAE platform, randomly assigning users to different versions of the service  to determine which design features best drive engagement. For example, in the 2025-26 dry season, we tested how the gender of the narrator influences farmer engagement with voice-based advisories.

Long-term sustainability of DPAE

PxD operates this service through a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model, working closely with the FMAFS Extension Department to jointly manage and deliver the service. The long-term vision is to transfer full ownership and operation of the platform to the Extension Department and build its capacity to operate the service independently, with PxD remaining as a learning partner, providing technical support, generating evidence and insights, and strengthening the system’s effectiveness while the government leads implementation independently.

Looking ahead

DPAE’s early results show that voice-based, Hausa-language advisories can effectively engage smallholder farmers at scale, with high levels of farmer demand, trust, and satisfaction. The service will continue to expand to additional crops, states, and farmers, with a longer-term goal of covering all 19 ACReSAL-supported states. PxD will continue to embed research within delivery to refine the service, working alongside the FMAFS Extension Department toward full government ownership — so that timely, localized agricultural guidance becomes a lasting public good for Nigerian farmers.