STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Cameroon is using digital innovation to transform agriculture, helping farmers gain better access to markets, information, inputs, and modern tools through the World Bank-supported PATNUC project.
- The Agritech Innovation Challenge is connecting startups with farmers, enabling practical, locally tested solutions that boost productivity, expand sales, and strengthen resilience across agricultural value chains.
- Smart financing and digital tools are driving jobs and growth, lowering adoption barriers for farmer groups, supporting agritech entrepreneurs, and making agriculture more productive, inclusive, and sustainable.
In Cameroon, where agriculture employs nearly 60% of the population, farmers have long faced limited access to markets, information, and modern tools. Today, a digital revolution is reshaping the sector -- driven by a new generation of innovators and a World Bank-supported initiative accelerating change across the agricultural landscape.
The Acceleration of the Digital Transformation of Cameroon Project (PATNUC) aims to expand digital inclusion while increasing the use of digital agricultural solutions. By investing in connectivity, digital literacy, and data systems, the project is helping farmers overcome structural barriers that have long constrained productivity and market access.
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Beyond infrastructure, PATNUC delivers tangible support to farmers. Through an e-voucher system, 35,000 smallholders access improved inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, while digital tools provide real-time insights into soil health and farming conditions. The result is stronger productivity and resilience, with projected yield increases of up to 100% for key crops.
Central to this transformation is a flagship initiative: the Agritech Innovation Challenge.
We assist farmers with marketing -- they don't only register their products on our website; we also help promote them so they can reach more buyers.
Bang Pamela Ncho, Director General, Efarm.cm
A Platform for Innovation and Impact
The Agritech Innovation Challenge operates as a national platform to identify and support startups developing digital solutions for agriculture. From market access and productivity to climate resilience, entrepreneurs are encouraged to design tools that respond directly to farmers' needs.
Selected startups benefit from acceleration programs, mentorship, and access to technical and financial support. Critically, they are paired with farmer groups, ensuring that innovations are tested in real conditions and adapted to local realities.
For one entrepreneur behind a digital marketplace platform, this connection is key:
"We assist farmers with marketing -- they don't only register their products on our website; we also help promote them so they can reach more buyers." -- Bang Pamela Ncho, Director General, Efarm.cm
By bridging the gap between farmers and buyers, digital platforms are expanding market opportunities and reducing post-harvest losses.
The impact of these innovations is already visible across value chains. For a poultry producer, digital marketing has transformed both sales and production capacity:
"E-marketing has really impacted our business. We've been able to sell across our entire production zone." -- Feteh Clarence, Eliboy Fortune Farms
What was once a major constraint -- finding buyers -- has become a driver of growth:
"We used to produce 5,000 chicks per week but selling them was very challenging. Now we sell at least 15,000 chicks every week -- and even produce up to 20,000."
These gains illustrate how digital solutions can unlock scale, improve incomes, and strengthen resilience for agribusinesses and farmers alike.
Scaling Adoption Through Smart Financing
To move from innovation to large-scale adoption, PATNUC provides $4.4 million in matching grants, covering up to two-thirds of the cost for farmer groups to adopt digital solutions.
This approach reduces financial barriers while encouraging real demand for digital services. It also ensures continuous feedback between farmers and innovators, strengthening the relevance and sustainability of solutions.
The ambition is significant: tens of thousands of farmers adopting digital tools through structured partnerships with agritech startups, including solutions tailored to climate-smart agriculture.
At the same time, the initiative is catalyzing youth employment by supporting startups, incubators, and innovation ecosystems, positioning agriculture as a dynamic and attractive sector for a new generation.
Connecting the Dots with AgriConnect
PATNUC's approach aligns with the AgriConnect Initiative, a global effort to improve the livelihoods of 300 million farmers and scale up agribusiness investment by 2030.
Through the Agritech Innovation Challenge, Cameroon is contributing directly to this agenda by advancing digital agriculture and building an ecosystem that connects innovation to real-world use.
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In this sense, the country is not only benefiting from global solutions -- it is helping test and refine them. The experience of linking startups with farmers, reducing adoption barriers, and scaling digital tools offers valuable lessons for other countries working to modernize agriculture.
Driving More, Better, and Inclusive Jobs
What is unfolding in Cameroon is more than digital transformation -- it is a pathway to more productive, inclusive, and sustainable jobs. By supporting agritech startups, lowering barriers to technology adoption, and helping farmers and agribusinesses scale their activities, the Agritech Innovation Challenge is contributing to job creation across the agricultural ecosystem.
This is the World Bank Group's Jobs agenda in practice: opening space for young entrepreneurs to build viable businesses, for producers to expand their market reach, and for rural communities to participate more fully in a modernizing economy.
In a context where jobs remain a central development challenge, PATNUC demonstrates that digital solutions can do more than improve efficiency: they can help turn agriculture into a stronger engine of opportunity, income generation, and inclusive growth.
