Stopwatch in hand, dozens of Ivory Coast students raced against the clock to design robots for the farms of the future in the world's top cocoa-producing nation.

With each team facing off to draw up the best bot blueprint, the competition is part of a broader push to tempt the west African nation's large population of young people, disillusioned with farming life, back to the plough.

Though farming has long been the pillar of Ivory Coast's economy, many young Ivorians have turned their backs on fruit-picking and tree-felling, discouraged by the hard labour and the slow pace of progress.

"I come from a family of farmers," 20-year-old student Pele Ouattara told AFP at the event in Abidjan, Ivory Coast's largest city.

"My passion for robotics grew out of my desire to improve the conditions in which my parents used to farm," he added.

On a rival team several metres away, fellow student Urielle Diaidh, 24, feared that Ivorian farming "risks dying out with time if modern technologies aren't adopted".

Dominated by the cultivation of cocoa, rubber and cashew nuts, nearly half of Ivorians with jobs work in agriculture in one way or another.

Yet the country's farms have been slow to modernise. Less than 30 percent of farms are mechanised, according to the National........

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