Vision The vision of the Ministry is a modernised agriculture culminating in a structurally transformed economy and evident in food security, employment opportunities and reduced poverty. read more at www.mofa.gov.gh Mission MOFA’s Mission is to promote sustainable agriculture and thriving agribusiness through research and technology development, effective extension and other support services to farmers, processors and traders for improved livelihood. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) Information Communication and Technology Unit has implemented the E-Agriculture Programme which is...
The G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Declaration 2017 "Towards food and water security: Fostering sustainability, advancing innovation" published after the meeting held on January 22nd 2017 in Berlin, acknowledges the importance of ICTs for agricultural development, following the discussion on ICT in agriculture initiated at the G20 Agriculture Ministers’ Meeting in Xi’an in 2016. The Agriculture Ministers acknowledged the potential of ICTs for improved food chain efficiency, productivity and sustainability of agriculture, improved animal husbandry practices and for adaptation and mitigation...
Join the HSRC Annual innovation and development lecture: Interrogating agricultural innovation systems from a small farmer perspective. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) over 1.3 billion people, or about 40% of the global work force is employed by agriculture. About 90 percent of the world’s 570 million farms are owned and operated by families. Most of these farms are small and are found in the rural areas of the developing world, where 75% of the population is employed in agriculture. But with the increase of the world's population and the advent of climate...
The Plantwise Knowledge bank developed by CABI is an online and offline platform and app on plant health information and services. The website provides three different tools: search tool to identify pest problems, a search tool to find factsheets on pest problems, a map of pest distribution and a customized alert on pest news. The "Identify a Pest Problem" search tool invites you to select your location by country or region, then select a crop, and finally select the plant part affected. The results page shows the user a photo of the pest problem on one side and the symptoms on the other side...
Vodacom is leading a three-part ICT development initiative in Kaduna State in Nigeria focused on education, health and agriculture. Kaduna State and Nigeria are only a part of wider plan of similar initiatives throughout the whole of Africa. Similar initiatives have already started in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, and other countries will be reached during 2017. The first part of the project is centered on education and will be implemented in 4 000 schools across Kaduna State by June 2017. It is a solution that allows the State to monitor feeding programmes mobile phone and tablets...
Nano Ganesh - a mobile based remote control for water pumps and water tanks - developed by the Ossian Agro Automation , will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress , Barcelona, Spain, taking place from February 27th to March 2nd 2017. The electronic device will be part of the Mobile for Development in the Innovation City in the Mobile World Congress. GSMA has constructed a small grass plot irrigated by sprinklers controlled live by visitors with a mobile phone with the help of Nano Ganesh device. Nano Ganesh is a GSM Mobile based remote control system exclusively for the use with water...
One of the main issues farmers face is the lack of data on their land and crops, and the same thing could be said of the national level. One solution for this are ICT toold which provide cheap, fast and reliable information on crops and yelds both to farmers and researchers or governements. AgriNeTT is an e-agriculture project that focuses on empowering the agriculture sector through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). AgriNeTT built an Agriculture Open Data Repository that houses different data sets from institutions and associations, including farm level production...
In Summary ICTs are very useful in agricultural extension and advisory services and in facilitating reaching out to family farmers Extension and Advisory services play a crucial role in promoting agricultural productivity, increasing food security, improving rural livelihoods How have ICTs been applied in extension services M ost of the family farmers in developing countries live rural areas and are in most cases divorced from technology and vital agricultural support services needed to carry out farming activities. Extension and advisory services are relevant to smallholder farmers, who...
After a two-year ban of unmanned aereal vehicles for non-military reasons in Kenya, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) has approved draft regulations on the commercial use of drones in the country. The law will be released soon, according to governemnt officials. Kenya is the second African nation after Rwanda to grant the permission to fly drones for commercial use. An article released in May 2016 by the Daily Nation newspaper, Kenya's largest, reported that more than 1,000 applicants were already seeking regulatory approvals to operate drone-based transport services in Kenya. Among...
Agricultural insurance is essential for smallholder farmers, as plots of land are small and the consequences of crop diseases and climate change effects can be disastrous. Yeld loss and damage monitoring and verification can be long and laborious task, causing huge delays in settlements. Although new technologies have been applied, drones, micro-satellites, digital photography can help improve the monitoring of crops and yelds for smallholders and insurance companies. Remote sensing can be a key tool for farmers to prove their crop and harvest loss to insurance companies. At the same time,...
