Fertilize by drone, till by text: Making tech work for Africa's farmers

Daniel Asherow eyes a large white drone as it buzzes above his rows of pineapple plants, methodically spraying fertilizer into green stems that will soon produce juicy fruits for export. The drone hovers a few feet in the air, covering in 15 minutes the same ground that usually takes five workers an hour.

Around the world, agriculture is becoming ever-more mechanized: from robot-run farms in Japan, to artificial intelligence-tracked pigs in China, to strawberry-picking machines in the United States. Here in Ghana, in rolling plains of pineapples a few hours northeast of Accra, high-tech farming innovations are still in their early days. The potential long-term gains are especially crucial for sub-Saharan Africa – but also, the prospect of