The problem with assumptions is that by the time you realise they are wrong, the consequences are already unfolding. I once believed low digital penetration was the biggest barrier to Africa's digital progress - until the farm disproved me.

We had many field workers and supervisors, so we needed a reporting system that stayed accurate without stealing minutes from real work. Anyone who has run a farm knows that the more you type, the less you produce. A suggestion came up: use WhatsApp as the reporting tool. We adopted it immediately.

It made something clear: digitisation is not the obstacle. The real challenge is explaining why adoption matters and how it strengthens you inside a competitive economy. Many farm owners prefer the comfort of a naive farm hand, imagining fewer distractions and less temptation, only to shut down later and join the "farming is not easy" choir instead of confronting their own operational gaps.

Yet I watched a podcast with ranchers lamenting rapid soil loss. They had moved from needing 10 hectares of grazing land per animal per annum to 18. After removing a particular invasive weed and allowing the soil to breathe again, they dropped back to eight.

The real danger is not a lack of technology but a lack of memory. If we fail to document what works on our soils, with our animals, and within our climates, we keep discarding proven local wisdom and importing solutions designed for somewhere else. Digitisation is not a luxury; it protects knowledge already paid for through generations of trial and error. When we align traditional practices with modern data, we stop guessing, stop repeating mistakes, and finally give our farms a chance to thrive.

“Digitisation is not the obstacle. The real danger is a lack of memory.”