Agri-food Knowledge Management and digitalisation for system change: Cross-regional evidence from deployed innovations

The digital revolution has been accepted as transformative innovations bringing benefits to all. However, after at least two decades of digital technology deployment in the global south, the implications of digital transformation for greater agri-food systems dynamics have received limited attention (Ingram & Maye, 2020). Parallelly, research on AKM is also limited, fragmented and highly interdisciplinary (Tumwebaze et al., 2022). Specifically, AKM as a discipline has not been explored enough when supported by digital alternatives. Isolated impact pathways have been identified (e.g. Impact of Artificial Intelligence in productivity, or robotics for enhanced management and advisory services), where digital tools are not interconnected to achieve intended innovation or knowledge outcomes at a system level. In that sense, this research work expects to contribute to the understanding of how AKM could leverage the potential of digital tools to systematically organize, structure, and channel knowledge towards system change. We will build upon AKM theory and methods, problematizing how digital solutions relate to its research and practice and how those processes can or cannot drive it toward inclusiveness, responsible innovation, and collective system level goals within AKIS (Klerkx & Begemann, 2020; Klerkx & Rose, 2020). The above will be done by exploring three main challenges of AKIS where AKM processes supported by digital could have a disruptive role: a) Inclusive data integration supported by digital for actionable knowledge, b) Data ownership and data as an asset intending to disrupt existing balance of power, and c) Reciprocal relationships at the local level to drive system change toward common goals. To address this, the following questions are proposed: Can Agricultural Knowledge Management (AKM) supported by digital solutions lead to system transformation related to inclusiveness and responsible innovation? Can digital solutions supporting AKM processes (integration, extraction, transformation of data) ease the generation of inclusive and context-specific content? Under which circumstances can the actionability of knowledge increase? Are digital solutions for data privacy (e.g. self-sovereign identity) able to disrupt existing power dynamics by handing farmers the ownership of their data as an asset? If so, under which circumstances would that disruption be possible? And finally, what are key factors hindering and favouring public-private multilevel collaboration and reciprocal relationships among agri-food system-level actors? How do digital alternatives relate to these processes? Can they improve dynamic communication and knowledge sharing toward responsible innovation?