The Palawija Forum article reports on the implementation of ICTs to support agriculture in Indonesia. Agriculture is a key sector which accounts for 31.7% the country’s labour-force. Therefore, the investment in ICT in the agricultural sector supports the economic development and poverty reduction as well as a strategy for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The article notes that ICTs play a role in crop production within the following stages, (i) pre-cultivation; (ii) crop cultivation and harvesting; and (iii) post-harvest. This is particularly important for Indonesian...
Mobile World Congress is an annual event gathering the world's largest gathering for the mobile industry, it is organised by the GSMA and held in the Mobile World Capital, Barcelona
Nano Ganesh (developed by the engineer Santosh Ostwal) is a device that uses mobile phones to remotely monitor and switch on irrigation pumps for watering crops. Nano Ganesh continues to be internationally getting visibility and mostly due to its life changing potential to farmers. Recently, the story of Nano Ganesh was covered by the Pune Mirror newspaper where they chronicled the history and development of this technology. Started in 2004, the development community still continues to recognise and appreciate Nano Ganesh- for example in 2011 Santosh was honoured as the Tech Award Laureate ,...
Highlights: Why do we need the digital principles? What are these principles? How have they been implemented? The developmental world has seen an investment into platforms and infrastructure to support information and knowledge sharing, and lately hackathons, contest and apps galore have mushroomed. While these efforts are commendable and justifiable, there is an obvious result, systems and platforms are developed in silos. In some cases even duplicating efforts. The situation l just described above explains why the donor agencies and multilateral organisation thought of best practices in the...
The 6th International Conference on Sustainable Development (6th ICSD 2018) will be held in Rome,Congress Center, Piazza della Pilotta, 4, Rome, Italy Wednesday 12 to Thursday 13 September, 2018. The conference is organized by the European Center of Sustainable Development in collaboration with CIT...
In 2015, many countries adopted the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , there by committing to a vision of a low- carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable future for all. The world events leading to and after the signing of the agreement have shown that climate issues are becoming a reality; for instance, 2016 was the hottest year on record with the average global temperature at almost 1 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have developed nationally determined contributions (NDCs), national adaptation plans and mid-...
The ITU-T Focus Group on Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G was established by ITU-T Study Group 13 at its meeting in Geneva, 6-17 November 2017. The Focus Group will draft technical reports and specifications for machine learning (ML) for future networks, including interfaces,...
Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) and Vegetalia , an ICT startup, have joined forces to provide solutions for the Japanese agricultural sector. This is an example where private sector investing in agriculture. The challenge in Japan is that the Japanese farming population is ageing and decreasing. ICT solutions, hence, could be leveraged to help modernize the sector. Therefore, to help solve this Mitsubishi invested in Vegetalia which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) to solve agriculture’s problems. An extract from the press statement states , ‘Vegetalia is a next-...
If you have worked and lived on the farm you will agree that farm labour is one of the key inputs and cost center in the farming system. In most countries farm labour is controlled, that is their condition of service and earnings. Can technology halve or eliminate labour costs? As l was reading the blog by AgFunder News , which noted that harvesting robotics market is on the rise and to reach US$5.5 bn. The reality is that despite the rising cost of labour amidst unpredictability in farm profitability, farm robotics is still immature. Another factor is that while many farming aspects have...
Do you have a practical case study or a presentation on the cutting-edge applications and innovations in the use of ICT for agriculture and environment? Then you can be a speaker at the 10th ICT4D conference taking place May 8-10 , 2018 in Lusaka, Zambia. To submit your speaker application, follow this link http://www.ict4dconference.org/speaker/call-for-speakers/ . The closing date for the submissions is January 15th 2018 Successful applicants will be notified by February the 9th 2018 . Agriculture and Environment Track CRS, CTA and ICRISAT are sponsoring the Agriculture and Environment...
Mobile World Congress is an annual event gathering the world's largest gathering for the mobile industry, it is organised by the GSMA and held in the Mobile World Capital, Barcelona