Most farmers in developing countries face the challenge of marketing their produce and most often meet the unpredictable market prices. How can technology help these farmers? We came across the innovative The Maano- Virtual Farmers’ Market (VFM) which is an app-based e-commerce platform designed with farmers needs in mind. This app is the product of World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator, an initiative to support potential innovative solutions to solve hunger. In this case, the VFM seeks to provide a transparent, open and trustworthy space for smallholder farmers and buyers to...
The Indian Economic Times reports that Indian agriculture is set to benefit from adopting Israeli technology. In India, agriculture is facing various challenges such as lower productivity, erratic weather patterns amongst the many ills. The most critical issue is the critical shortage of fresh water, yet the agricultural sector accounts for nearly 84-85 percent of water drawn from fresh water sources. The news reports that the ‘India – Israel Agriculture Project”, Centre of Excellences were established to help Indian farmers to adopt the latest technologies which includes micro irrigation...
Drones are being used in various fields and agriculture is not an exception. Drones are also known as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and in agriculture there have been used initially in pest control and land use monitoring. T he World Food Progamme (WFP) has been using drones and satellites within the context of food emergency situation. A recent publication on WFP VAM, a SoundCloud of audio recordings, discusses how drones and satellites help in WFP’s work. Two experts are on the interview Sarah Muir, VAM remote sensing analyst, Haidar Baqir, IT engineer, and Ariona Aubrey from WFP's legal...
In the sidelines of the 6th EU-Africa Business Forum , held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) panel led by CTA Director Michael Hailu affirmed that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are key to attracting African youth to agriculture. CTA held a business forum whose theme was, “ Creating Jobs for Africa’s Youth ” which saw policymakers and civil society leaders from across Africa and Europe attending. The CTA Director highlighted the importance of access to finance to agriculture and that lack of it still remains an...
Digital Technologies for Resilience was the theme of a workshop organized by FHI 360 in Bangkok with funding and support from Rockefeller Foundation and USAID . The workshop intended to create a space and exchange mat for professionals who are using digital technologies to enhance resilience. The other objective was to help participants to scale up the digital technology for resilience efforts. “The workshop enabled actual collaboration… several actual project collaborations took place –with exchanging of MoUs and project proposals” noted one participant. The programme in retrospect The two...
The Digitalisation in Agriculture session will discuss how to successfully integrate innovative digital technologies into agriculture and agribusiness. In this session, young ICT4Ag innovators, service providers, representatives of farmer organizations and policy makers will share their...
Technology has been applied in various fields and new concepts are emerging in some areas to accommodate this infusion. The concept of digital agriculture is a fairly new one; what does this mean? According to the Project Breakthrough , Digital Agriculture is defined as “the use of new and advanced technologies, integrated into one system, to enable farmers and other stakeholders within the agriculture value chain to improve food production” In their discussion of this concept, they noted that with a digital agriculture system is one that gathers data periodically and accurately which is...
The European Union avails 100 million euros funding for digital research and innovation that is made available under The Horizon 2020 work programme 2018-2020 which ( inter alia ) seeks to advance the development and uptake of digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas. Digital technologies in agriculture pitch very high on the European Union’s agenda, for example the European policy makers recently at the Digitising agriculture and food value chains conference outlined policy developments in agricultural research and innovation and stated how digital technologies can bring forward...
What has ICTs to do with climate change? Malcolm Johnson the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Deputy Secretary General, answers this question in the published news items coinciding with the COP23 that was discussing The Paris Agreement . He positions ICTs as a solution to the current world climate challenges. These include the (i) reported increase in the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, (ii) extreme weather induced events happening with increasing frequency. These disasters are estimated to have cost the global economy $520 billion a year and have pushed more...
The historical developmental path runs from the agricultural to the industrial revolution. When it comes to Africa, the question raised is Run or walk first? In essence, will technology leap frog Africa’s development? The Economist Special Report delves into this debate in-depth. Technology and innovation are a bedrock of development in richer countries and the GDP per person between countries is influenced by productivity. Asian countries – with Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and China embraced the world’s largest technologies to build stronger manufacturing economies. However, African countries...
The Digitalisation in Agriculture session will discuss how to successfully integrate innovative digital technologies into agriculture and agribusiness. In this session, young ICT4Ag innovators, service providers, representatives of farmer organizations and policy makers will share their...