From April 14–17, 2025, the AgriPath project convened a high-impact training workshop titled "Capacity Building for Sustainable Development" at icipe Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. The event attracted 25 in-person participants (45% women) and 950 virtual participants (259 women) from across Africa and Asia, reflecting a strong interest in the intersection of digital innovation and sustainable agriculture. 

The workshop was designed to strengthen institutional and individual capacities in anticipation of AgriPath’s upcoming field trials and scaling activities in Burkina Faso, Uganda, Tanzania, and India. It also responded to growing global demand for data-driven, inclusive agricultural solutions, particularly in the face of climate variability, gender inequality in extension access, and the persistent digital divide.

Participants engaged with five interconnected themes: Digital Advisory Services (DAS), intersection of gender and DAS, impact evaluation methods for sustainable agricultural practices and DAS, geospatial technologies for tracking technology adoption, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Sessions blended lectures with hands-on exercises, demonstrations, and interactive discussions, promoting both conceptual understanding and practical application.

The theme on Digital Advisory Services explored scalable delivery models, self-service, agent-based, and hybrid, focusing on how DAS can fill information gaps for smallholders, especially where conventional extension services fall short. Participants worked with mobile platforms that deliver tailored farm-level recommendations and learned about real-time decision support systems built on GPS and agroecological data.

The gender and social norms theme examined the structural and socio-cultural barriers that restrict women's and youth’s access to digital tools. Strategies for inclusive design, digital literacy programming, and the use of gender-disaggregated data in project monitoring were emphasized. Participants were encouraged to integrate these considerations into their ongoing work to ensure equitable outcomes from digital innovations.

Impact evaluation was a major component, with sessions covering randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental methods, and non-experimental frameworks such as Theory of Change. Participants learned how to design evaluations that measure causal impacts of DAS interventions across diverse farming contexts. The integration of behavioral insights and spillover analysis was highlighted as a way to track long-term changes in farmer behavior and knowledge sharing across communities.

Geospatial technologies such as remote sensing and GIS were introduced through tools like QGIS, KoBo Toolbox, and Google Earth Engine. These sessions focused on mapping land use, monitoring sustainable agricultural practice adoption, and using satellite imagery to assess environmental change over time. Participants learned how spatial data can support evidence-based decision-making and targeted intervention planning.

The final theme showcased the role of AI and ML in agricultural research and advisory service personalization. Participants were introduced to practical model development using Python, R, Stata, and Google Colab, exploring how predictive analytics, natural language processing, and real-time data integration can enhance the effectiveness of DAS.