E-Agriculture

e-Forum discussion on availability and access to data and information (content) for digital agriculture

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e-Forum discussion on availability and access to data and information (content) for digital agriculture

In the past five years there has been an avalanche of software and apps developed within the agricultural sector. The need to provide solutions in agriculture, increase in apps usage in other fields and the wider availability of agricultural data accounts for the growth in apps usage and development in agriculture. Furthermore, agricultural data and information availability has increased due to the following reasons. Firstly, the wider prevalence of precision agriculture and the production of smart agricultural implements (which produces usage data) have increased the production of farm-level data.

Secondly, the open data movement in agriculture has made agricultural data and information held (collected and produced) by public bodies to be freely accessed by anyone. Developers have been able to access more agricultural data than ever before. Thirdly, since 2012 the G-8 Summit leaders placed a commitment to make agricultural data available. The leaders agreed to,

“share relevant agricultural data available from G-8 countries with African partners and convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture, to develop options for the establishment of a global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems.”

That commitment has been acted upon by governments, public bodies, international organizations and the civic society.

In Africa, there has also been a surge in mobile applications in agriculture, largely due to the reasons above but also due to the mobile penetration in Africa – where mobile phones have reached outlying agricultural areas. Coincidentally, there has been increased calls to young people and to developers to use digital technologies to solve Africa’s developmental challenge. There has been an increase in innovation calls, hackathons and development challenge – calling on the African developer to utilise digital technologies as a spring board for innovation for agro-solutions.

However, the African developer has been faced by a number of issues when it comes to accessing local data and information, some of which include:-

  • Unstructured data
  • Data that is not comprehensive enough (some geographic areas are not covered)
  • Unavailable data, especially from public institutions, i.e. governments and ministries, academic and research institutions
  • Untrustworthy data sources

 

Furthermore, there arise ethical and legal issues where data obtained freely from public bodies is consumed by private entities for a profit (absence of proper licensing and policy framework for fair use).

It is against this background that the e-Agriculture Team is holding the e-Forum discussion on availability and access to data and information (content) for digital agriculture to further explore these issues.

The forum focuses on the issues related to the availability of agricultural data and information for developers.The objectives of this e-forum discussion are to:-

a) uncover the issues faced by agricultural software developers in accessing locally produced data and information for their app based agriculture services.

b) understand what models are being employed by existing developers to find or generate data and information content for their apps.

c) explore policy issues that should be addressed to create a conducive environment for digital data sharing to enhance digital innovation in Africa.

Organisation and participation

The discussion will be organized around these three objectives, with each week dedicated to one question. The forum is open to individuals interested in this subject and who wish to participate.

To contribute

kindly follow this page This forum will be moderated by

  • Thembani Malapela, Partnerships, and South-South Cooperation Division (DPS), FAO of the United Nations
  • Justin Chisenga, Partnerships, and South-South Cooperation Division (DPS), FAO of the United Nations

Proposed Subject Matter Experts