The impacts of environmental change on agricultural production, food security, and water resources will progressively inhibit sustainable development in Africa over the next few decades.

While home to 15 percent of the world's populace, Africa is liable for just four percent of carbon emissions around the world. Of the seven nations on the planet that produce 66 percent of all greenhouse gases, none are African, as per the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions. In the meantime, due to climate change, Africa faces dry seasons, floods, declining farming efficiency, deforestation, trouble accessing clean water, rising oceans, growing deserts, and a spate of rural-urban migration.

As indicated by the UN Environmental Programme, a warming of two degrees Celsius would diminish farming yields in sub-Saharan Africa by 10 percent, and in case warming goes over three degrees, the environment would be unacceptable to develop maize, millet, and sorghum across the continent. This would be devastating since the aforementioned crops form the foundation of the African cash crop economy.

In regions such as Eastern Africa, adaptation options are varied, including improving the use of climate information or taking action in the agriculture, livestock, and water sectors. Making better use of climate and weather data enables timely information and preparedness of people most affected by climate change.

Innovative solutions and coping mechanisms are being derived from new ecological tools developed in the era of the digital economy. Firms such as Apollo Agriculture, a Kenya based agritech firm, are leveraging the use of modern technology to provide their customers on the African continent with solutions tailored to not only meet their financial needs, but also assist them to build climate change resilience as an added bonus through the improvement of overall financial health. 

Such firms build credit profiles for their small-scale farmers using machine learning models. They also verify farmers’ identities and crop yields by taking satellite coordinates of their fields. The data obtained is then used to build automated digital processes for each step in a farmer’s lifecycle from customer acquisition to training to collecting the payment. Over time, the farmers can access new products and services, thereby enhancing their climate change resilience.

There are very few commercially viable approaches to small-scale agriculture financing in sub-Saharan Africa. To get it right, a company must have a unique combination of skills such as: on the ground customer acquisition, adept data science, and strong technological products, to name a few. All this must be done in a challenging environment where farmers have no financial records like bank statements or credit history.

The use of tools such as embedded finance can add to a slew of tech based innovations that help African farmers and the whole continent at large build their climate change resilience in a sustainable manner, making the continent more financially healthy, more socially inclusive as well as more prepared to adapt and deal with the vagaries of climate change, whose effects are felt marginally more on the continent than in other developed areas of the world today.

Efayomi Carr is the principal, Flourish Ventures, a Silicon-Valley based venture capital firm