Digital communities of trust to support smallholder livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa
Lee, Nicole Mae
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116101
Description
Title
Digital communities of trust to support smallholder livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa
Author(s)
Lee, Nicole Mae
Issue Date
2022-07-14
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Davis, Adam S
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Davis, Adam S
Committee Member(s)
Michelson, Hope C
Goldsmith, Peter
Williams II, Martin M
Department of Study
Crop Sciences
Discipline
Crop Sciences
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
blockchain
smallholder agriculture
Sub-Saharan Africa
supply chain management
Abstract
Trust forms the basis of collaboration and cooperation, including in the smallholder agricultural sector. Establishing trust between actors is complex and time consuming, which increases costs. Distributed ledger technologies, such as blockchain, can be used as a scaffolding to augment (and in some cases, substitute) trust and increase transparency and accountability. This dissertation presents a combination of theoretical and real-world applications of blockchain technology to determine the suitability of blockchain for supporting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, a description of blockchain’s role as a potential trust substituting technology in smallholder value chains is presented. This study includes a theoretical and real-world application of blockchain technology to increase transparency at multiple steps along the dairy and brewing crop value chains, respectively. The second study presents the findings from the analysis of a dataset, aggregated within a blockchain-driven finance and supply chain management mobile application, containing transactional information from smallholder barley farmers in Uganda and discusses the suitability of such blockchain-derived datasets for statistical analysis. The third, and final, study describes a theoretical application of blockchain technology to assist smallholder farmers wishing to aggregate their landholdings under a single land manager. The characteristics and stipulations of a virtual land aggregation project are described, and a pilot project proposal is outlined. The conclusion of this dissertation presents a research agenda for addressing a number of salient questions regarding the use of blockchain in smallholder agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. While blockchain offers a number of potential avenues for supporting smallholder livelihoods, the applications of this technology must be studied empirically to determine the benefits and challenges of incorporating distributed ledger technologies into smallholder systems.
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