Smallholder farmers contribute significantly to food security and rural livelihoods in Africa, but their yields are often low due to declining soil fertility, high input costs, and decreased availability of land for cultivation among other factors.  These challenges are exacerbated by climate change. Furthermore, soil physicochemical and biological properties are heterogeneous among farms within same or different agro-ecological zones, with obvious consequences for yields. This variability is also associated with labour, income, production orientation, cultural norms and wealth distribution.  Given the challenges and variability, smallholder farmers in Africa must adopt precision agriculture (PA) systems that ensure low input use, high efficiency and sustainable productivity.  PA adoption is still low in Africa due to low awareness levels of PA technology, limited access to sources of information and data, insufficient and low quality of information and data, lack of technical knowledge and high cost of the technology. PA methods and tools can be leveraged to provide benefits to both farmers and society through increasing production efficiency and environmental stewardship in smallholder farming systems. However, as easy as it sounds, the reality is that the digital transformation of SSA agriculture is still a few years away.  Therefore, the path forward is increased awareness, education and research driven by pragmatic national policy, capacity building and financial commitments