By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Co-founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

In the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and beyond, as many as 40% of farmers continue to use hand tools and face immense challenges against middlemen networks that have dominated trade for over a hundred years¹. The outcome is grim: farmers in countries such as India, Egypt, and Nigeria earn barely enough to subsist. Equally disturbing is that end consumers are left paying exorbitant prices. The system’s design leads to untold stress in the farming community, often resulting in farmer suicides and perpetuating poverty^{2 3}. This crisis is so pervasive that words fail to convey its depth. For a majority of the estimated 624 million farmers worldwide^4, the unyielding uncertainty inflicted by the traditional agricultural and trade system turns life's simplest hopes—to provide, to endure, to dream—into distant possibilities. To me and a handful of close associates, this didn’t look like mere poverty; it was a painful and relentless erosion of dignity and possibility. The world cannot look away from such heartbreak. We could not, especially in an age when technology can create solutions to this unforgiving system.

Is technology the real answer?

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