GoviLab Agritech Accelerator

GoviLab Agritech Accelerator is a digital initiative to elevate and modernise Sri Lanka's agriculture sector, adopting a holistic approach. It was launched as a key part of Sri Lanka's Inclusive Digital Agriculture Transformation (IDAT) strategy, a one-of-a-kind national initiative by the Sri Lankan Government together with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and PwC India. GoviLab identifies and prioritise key challenges within Sri Lanka’s agriculture sector like ensuring food security and address them through the support of smallholder farmers by cultivating a digitised agricultural ecosystem that contributes significantly to the IDAT project. The initiative has 3 main areas of focus which are 1) Agricultural inputs and practices: including mechanization of input (fertilizers, seeds, agrochemicals) application; timely fertilizer application/farm management; and pest and disease (timely detection and management) 2) Water management: including timely dissemination of information regarding water needs of different crops; mechanization that ensures accurate water provision for crops, reducing water wastage and 3) Post harvest management: including providing smallholder farmers with direct access to market and providing with information regarding specific crop demand (market price/quantity needed); value addition and storage.

Lead (category)

Multi-partners

Name of initiative lead (and partners)

Sri Lankan Government together with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and PwC India

Categories of Digital initiative deliverables

Agritech, startup or SMEs capacity and enabling services

Technology-neutral supporting services (incubation, finance, training, etc)

Agritech ecosystem regulatory and insitutional support

ICT products/solutions and services by category

Digital Agriculture

Non ICT products and services (deliverables)

Business and governance structure

Being implemented by the Sri Lankan Government together with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and PwC India

DI ICT-deliverables format

Interactive data exchanges

Digital education

Precision agriculture

Primary stakeholders (beneficiaries, actors, enablers)

Startups

Agribusiness / private organization

Farmers

SMEs / agreprenuers

Size, scale or scope of primary stakeholders

Digital Initiative development Stage

Fully operational - Growing and expanding stage

Measurable impacts on primary stakeholders and target beneficiaries

Initiative geographic scope (or coverage) (national, regional, sector specific, specific user co-horts etc)

National

All over Sri Lanka

On-line resource links (Web-page links, links to videos, links to reports, etc)

Main DI webpage

Other useful link

Other useful link

Link to Digital village

Link to Digital solution