USAID and partners award $450,000 to top digital solutions to combat an invasive agricultural pest in Africa

The U.S. Agency for International Development, Land O’Lakes International Development, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research announced the six winners of the Feed the Future Fall Armyworm Tech Prize at the AfricaCom conference in South Africa today.

The prize, launched in March 2018, sought digital innovations that could help farmers manage the recent spread of fall armyworm — a voracious agricultural pest — in Africa. Fall armyworm has the potential to cause an estimated $2-6 billion (USD) in maize losses alone over three years.

Following a competitive co-creation and evaluation process and the field-testing of prototypes, USAID and its partners awarded prizes worth $450,000 to six organizations with digital solutions that will provide information to smallholder farmers and those who support them to identify, treat and track the incidence of fall armyworm.