AfricaFertilizer, an initiative of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), launched the much-awaited fertilizer dashboard for Mozambique on May 22, heralding a new era of real-time statistics, a streamlined workflow, and enhanced data-driven decision-making among fertilizer industry players in the country.
The event took place during an exercise to validate fertilizer statistics for 2023, bringing together fertilizer industry stakeholders from the Mozambique Association for the Promotion of Fertilizer Use (AMOFERT), the government, the private sector, development partners, and research institutions.
This is the eighth dashboard deployed by AfricaFertilizer, in partnership with Development Gateway, an IREX Venture. Similar dashboards for Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zambia are already up and running.
With access to fertilizer data being a major challenge in many countries across sub-Saharan Africa, the Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) dashboards have been developed to provide easy and quick access to vital fertilizer statistics and critical information to stakeholders at all levels for various purposes, including business and policy decision-making.
“The launch of the Mozambique dashboard marks a transformative milestone for the fertilizer industry. By providing stakeholders, such as suppliers, importers, distributors, and government officials, with invaluable insights and strategic tools, we are empowering informed decision-making, which is crucial for industry growth.”
Sebastian Nduva, AfricaFertilizer Program Manager
Nduva noted that the launch of the Mozambique dashboard signifies a shift toward a future where data-driven approaches can revolutionize the sector. With a clearer understanding of market and trade dynamics and policy landscapes, a catalytic transformation that will lead to sustainable development of the sector is anticipated.
The VIFAA dashboard is an innovative one-stop shop that provides access to fertilizer data in a visual format. The information includes national fertilizer trade statistics, apparent consumption, prices, and subsidies, as well as a map of the fertilizer plants across participating countries, to incentivize investments in the sector.
AfricaFertilizer and its partners believe that providing easy access to essential trustworthy data will promote data-driven decisions that will improve activities in the fertilizer industry in sub-Saharan Africa, enhance the quality of business and policy decision-making, and promote the agricultural industry and the food systems on a large scale to benefit millions of African agriculture value chain actors.
Like the other country dashboards, the Mozambique dashboard was co-designed through a consultative process involving public, private, and civil society organizations in the fertilizer sector to ensure the needs of targeted users are met. Several workshops were held during the development process, and potential beneficiaries were given the opportunity to provide input, which was then integrated into the final product.
AfricaFertilizer is the premier source of fertilizer statistics and information in Africa. The initiative is hosted by IFDC and supported by several partners, including the International Fertilizer Association, Argus Media, USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through Development Gateway.
