"This way, our knowledge is not lost." Technology Assessment report, Kenya

Siaya County, Kenya
September 2026

Siaya County, on the Kenyan shores of Lake Victoria, is a place where agriculture, forestry and fishing sustain most households, and where digital access has historically lagged far behind the national average. Yet digital agricultural tools are now arriving rapidly, through company field agents going door to door, NGO trainings, agro-dealers, neighbours, social media and app stores.

This report presents the findings of a participatory Technology Assessment in Siaya that engaged smallholder farmers, representatives of NGOs, CBOs, cooperatives and peasant movements, and officers of the Siaya County Government. It examines which digital tools are reaching farmers, what they advise, who benefits, what harms they create, and how communities and the county can take greater control over which technologies are adopted.

The assessment found a county with meaningful institutional safeguards, including a vetting process for new technologies and a strict permission chain for data collection, alongside farming communities that experience digital agriculture as a mix of genuine convenience and growing dependence, debt and loss of control over their data and knowledge.

Digital agriculture in Siaya is delivering speed, market access, and cheaper advice, while shifting costs, risks, data, and decision-making power away from farming households. Neither the community based organizations consulted nor most farmers have any structured way to assess technologies before adopting them, although communities informally rely on trusted gatekeepers and the County Government expressed clear appetite for community-led assessment.

This report recommends closing the post-collection data gap through formal coordination with the ODPC and a Siaya Agriculture Data Protection Strategy; embedding community-led assessment criteria in the CIDP, extension guidance, and the Youth in Agribusiness Strategy; enforcing fair digital lending; strengthening accountable farmer movements; and rebuilding community seed systems with agroecological support.

“The youth know how to use apps, but the elders know the land. Together, we can do better.” Siaya’s farmers already see the way forward: technology that strengthens, rather than replaces, the knowledge their communities have built over generations.

The assessment was undertaken by the Africa Technology Assessment Platform (AfriTAP) and the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative (GODAN).