Many economic, social, and environmental problems in Africa come from a lack of transparency within supply chains. Contaminated food, counterfeit medications and product shortages caused by supply chain disruptions can damage public health, brand reputation and the availability of natural resources.
The intense and wide-ranging effects of supply chain failures can be aptly demonstrated by the ongoing pandemic. When Covid-19 spread globally in March 2020, national lockdowns decimated many organizations’ operations, stopping the regular flow within the supply chains. However, this severe disruption of global operations didn’t cause any new problems; it just highlighted existing ones.
Blockchain, artificial intelligence, collaborative platforms, and the Internet of Things (IoT) have all been adopted to solve traceability problems. In particular, blockchain technology has the ability to record digital transactions or interactions in a “secure, transparent, highly resistant to outages, audible, and efficient” manner.
Kdhi-agriculture.com reports that, in a post-Covid world, it’s essential to build more resilient supply chains to ensure disruptions won’t have impacts as severe. As expected, traceability technology can be an invaluable tool for farmers and agro-processors.
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