A problematisation of inclusion and exclusion

The use of digital technologies with the aim to improve African smallholder agriculture is a trend today, and expectations of the benefits and transformative capacity of these technologies are high. In practice, digitalisation comes with trade-offs, and benefits, and potential harm are not equally distributed. This chapter unravels how processes of digitalisation in smallholder agriculture may lead to inclusion and exclusion of people in the present or future. A broad variety of inclusion and exclusion factors are discussed across three levels: specific digital technologies; digital innovation packages; and the digital innovation system. This shows how a complex interplay between access conditions, design choices, and system complexity determine if and how inclusion and exclusion takes place, at what level, for whom, and with what impact. In doing so, the chapter breaks with the normative assumption that inclusion is always positive and exclusion always negative. Instead, when it comes to the use of digital technologies in smallholder agriculture, inclusion and exclusion are more than a binary distinction between ‘who is in’ and ‘who is out,’ or what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad.’