Co-design workshop report: Development of digital technologies for agriculture in Djibouti

This report presents the results of co-design workshops conducted on 6–7 October 2025 in Djibouti City as part of the BREFONS project, with technical assistance from Alliance Bioversity International & CIAT and financial support from the African Development Bank. The objective of the workshops was to translate the project’s launch orientations into an operational, inclusive, and immediately testable package of digital agricultural advisory services adapted to the contexts of Ali-Sabieh and Tadjourah.

Using a participatory and geographically anchored methodology, the workshops brought together producers, extension agents, technical services, community radios, associations, and private-sector actors to co-produce content, delivery strategies, and governance mechanisms. The process emphasized frugality and accessibility, favoring short, actionable messages delivered through channels suited to uneven connectivity and heterogeneous literacy levels, including interactive voice response (IVR), SMS/WhatsApp, micro-videos, and community radio, in Somali and Afar.

The workshops resulted in five main outputs: (i) an impact–effort matrix identifying priority advisory themes; (ii) ten multilingual IVR scripts with defined sending windows and calls to action; (iii) five micro-video storyboards designed to demonstrate key agricultural and livestock practices; (iv) agro-meteorological bulletin templates and a differentiated targets–channels–languages dissemination matrix; and (v) an editorial and data governance framework ensuring content quality, traceability, user feedback, and data protection. A 0–90 day implementation plan was defined, including iterative user testing and a streamlined monitoring and evaluation framework focused on reach, adoption of practices, and animal health outcomes.

The report provides a concrete foundation for piloting and scaling an inclusive digital public agricultural advisory service in Djibouti, aligned with local realities and institutional capacities.