Some West African farmers turn to TikTok as part of agriculture's changing image

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — When Senegalese farmer Pape Fall first downloaded TikTok, it was to watch football and funny videos. In the last two years, however, he's experimented with it to promote his produce and now sells most of it via the platform.

A looped video on his TikTok profile shows a pile of cucumbers with slow-paced Senegalese rap playing in the background. A caption reads: “1.5 tonnes, available tomorrow, god willing.” It includes his phone number.

Fall is one of millions of farmers in West Africa believed to be using TikTok and other social media to do business, share ideas and change the perception of agriculture as the work of poor people in this part of the world.

They and experts acknowledge the region is plagued by high levels of hunger and poverty that have been worsened by the loss of foreign funding from the U.S. and other donors. But they say the improved knowledge and market access that come with social media has resulted in better yields.

The average farm in Senegal income is $1,000 a year, according to a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute published in 2017, but successful farming entrepreneurs can make up to $3,000-$4,500.

“Social media is democratizing access to information for farmers,” said Abbie Phatty-Jobe, a specialist in digital agriculture for Caribou, a U.K.-based private research company that is the first to look into regional farmers' use of TikTok.

Caribou has helped to establish a network of 24 agri-influencers across 11 countries in Africa whose content reaches a combined 5 million people. They help to turn scientific research into information more accessible for farmers.

Fall recalled watching a Moroccan farmer on TikTok talk about a common cucumber mistake: cutting the lower stems of the plant. But you should leave them to ensure higher yields, the video said.

“I’ve followed that advice ever since. It works,” Fall said. He said he watches videos from farmers around the world, from North Africa to Asia.

African farmers' use of social media differs by region, language and type of business.

In West Africa, farmers prefer TikTok because of the video content and use of local languages, Phatty-Jobe said. In East Africa, the preference is for Facebook's written posts because of the higher levels of literacy, she said.

Among the agri-influencers who create educational content and sell consultancy services is Nogaye Sene, who manages farmland for clients with little farming knowledge or for the Senegalese diaspora eager to invest back home.

“The success of my business is thanks to social media,” said the 29-year-old, who has 40 staffers and credits Instagram and TikTok for 70% of her clients.

She said she wants to change how young people see agriculture. Her videos teach a wide range of subjects including how to cultivate chili plants, drive a tractor and use modern technology. Low levels of mechanization in the region are a reason why farm productivity and profitability are low, experts say.

“We’re not used to seeing this type of modern production in Senegal, but social media is helping to change the perspective of agriculture, that it’s profitable,” Sene said.

To encourage more young female farmers, she helped organize a training in December for 50 women on farming and social media. Most farming is still done by men.

Sene warned, however, that the majority of her clients say they have been scammed online by people posing as farming consultants and influencers.

Phatty-Jobe encouraged partnerships with research institutions and government extension services as one way to prevent scams and misinformation.

There is still a significant divide among farmers that's rooted in access to technology and financial backing.

Nicolas Paget, a researcher on digital agriculture at French research institute CIRAD, said some 80% of the farmers he has met don’t have smartphones with access to apps like TikTok and Instagram, and internet data is expensive for those who do. Data packages in West Africa are more costly than they are in Europe, Paget said.

“There is a very high risk of excluding farmers if governments and development agencies focus on this type of technology,” Paget said of social media.

In 2023, the World Bank invested $57.4 million in a digital agriculture platform in Ivory Coast, aiming to increase access to markets and purchases of agricultural inputs.

However, “most people didn’t really care about specific or tailor-made platforms,” Paget said. “Farmers are using (existing apps) in very creative ways and adapting them to their needs.”

Marketing cucumbers on TikTok may seem simple, but Phatty-Jobe said it’s a way to break free of middlemen who control prices.

For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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A farmer, one of the 40 workers employed by Nogaye Sene on her farm, rakes hay on the outskirts of Joal Fadiout, Senegal, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Cows are moved through fields on the outskirts of Joal Fadiout, Senegal, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Pape Fall, a West African farmer who turned to Tiktok as part of agriculture's changing image, shows his account in Thies, Senegal, Thursday Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Nogaye Sene, a West African farmer who turned to Tiktok as part of agriculture's changing image, checks a plant on her farm in Joal Fadiout, Senegal, Thursday Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

Nogaye Sene, a West African farmer who turned to Tiktok as part of agriculture's changing image, films herself on her farm in Joal Fadiout, Senegal, Thursday Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Caitlin Kelly)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Explosions sounded in Iran's capital on Wednesday as the war with the United States and Israel entered its fifth day, with Israel targeting the Iranian leadership and security forces and the Islamic Republic responding with missile barrages and drone attacks on Israel and across the Persian Gulf region.

The blasts in Tehran came at dawn, according to Iran state television. Israel's military said its air defenses had been activated to intercept Iranian missiles targeting Israel and explosions were heard around Jerusalem.

With Iran's stranglehold on tanker movement through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of the world's oil is shipped, Brent crude prices rose to more than $82 a barrel, up more than 13% since the start of the conflict and at its highest price since July 2024. Global stock markets have been hammered over worries that the spike in oil prices may grind down the world economy and sap corporate profits.

The American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Consulate in the United Arab Emirates came under drone attacks Tuesday, and the U.S. State Department said Wednesday it had authorized non-emergency government personnel to evacuate the kingdom.

U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran has launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones so far. He described the American strikes in the opening hours of the campaign as “nearly double the scale” of the initial attacks during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

“We’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets, with more than 2,000 munitions. We have severely degraded Iran’s air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers and drones,” Cooper said in a prerecorded message shared online Wednesday.

“In simple terms, we are focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us,” he added.

Five days into a war that U.S. President Donald Trump suggested could last a month or longer, nearly 800 people have been killed in Iran, including some Trump said he had considered as possible future leaders of the country.

Israel on Wednesday said it was conducting a series of strikes across Tehran targeting Iranian security forces, the day after it hit a building associated with the clerical panel that will pick Iran’s next supreme leader in the city of Qom.

Air sirens sounded in the morning across the island kingdom of Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Qatar’s Ministry of Defense said Iran launched two ballistic missiles against it and one hit Al-Udeid Qatari Base, but didn’t cause casualties.

Lebanon was hit in multiple strikes, where Israel said it is retaliating against Hezbollah militants after the Iran-backed group fired on Israel. Lebanon's state-run media reported that at least five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a residential complex in the city of Baalbeck. More than 50 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 300 wounded, according to the Health Ministry.

In addition to Hezbollah, Iranian-linked militant groups in Iraq have been launching attacks, with Saraya Awliya al-Dam claiming responsibility for a drone attack Wednesday on Jordan, where air raid sirens sounded across the country. The Shiite militia group one of several operating in Iraq, and claimed responsibility for attacks in the past days on American targets in Baghdad and Irbil.

Iran has fired regular salvoes of missiles and drones missiles at Israel, though most of the incoming fire has been intercepted. Eleven people in Israel have been killed since the conflict began.

The spiraling nature of the war raised questions about when and how it would end.

Trump's administration has offered various objectives, including destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, wiping out its navy, preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon and ensuring it cannot continue to support allied armed groups.

While the initial U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Trump urged Iranians to overthrow their government, senior administration officials have since said regime change was not the goal.

Trump on Tuesday seemed to downplay the chances of the war ending Iran's theocratic rule, saying that “someone from within” the Iranian regime might be the best choice to take power once the U.S.-Israel campaign is finished.

Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday on X that whoever Iran picks to be the country’s next supreme leader, he will be “a target for elimination.”

“Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people — will be a target for elimination,” Israel Katz wrote.

The Israeli military also said it hit buildings in Tehran associated with the Basij, the all-volunteer force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that conducted the bloody crackdown on protesters in January that killed thousands and saw tens of thousands detained in the country.

Israel and the U.S. have said they want to see the Iranian public overthrow its theocracy.

Iran’s leaders are scrambling to replace Khamenei, who ruled the country for 37 years. It’s only the second time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that a new supreme leader is being chosen. Potential candidates range from hard-liners committed to confrontation with the West to reformists who seek diplomatic engagement.

Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the Israeli military on Tuesday struck a building in the Iranian city of Qom where clerics were expected to meet to discuss selecting a new supreme leader. He said the army was still assessing whether anyone was hit.

The semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, linked the building to Iran’s Assembly of Experts and said Wednesday there was no meeting ongoing there at the time of the attack. Fars said that the assembly was meeting remotely, without elaborating.

The U.S.-Israeli strikes have killed at least 787 people in Iran, according to the Red Crescent Society.

Kuwait, which had previously reported a single death, said Wednesday that an 11-year-old girl was killed by falling shrapnel as Kuwaiti forces were intercepting “hostile aerial targets.” In addition, three people were killed in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain.

Six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were killed by a drone strike Sunday on a command center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait.

Rising reported from Bangkok, and Magdy from Cairo. Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Giovanna Dell'Orto in Miami contributed to this report.

Andrew Coady and his daughter Keira, right, talk about his son, Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, outside their home, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in West Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

This image provided by U.S. Central Command shows aircraft on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) that are operating in support of the war in Iran, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (U.S. Navy via AP)

A police car blocks a street leading to the U.S. consulate after an Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the compound, sparking a small fire in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, early Wednesday, March 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)