e-Agriculture Newsletter Issue #7,2018

Focus on the e-Consultation on Youth Employment in Agriculture... through ICTs and Entrepreneurship  (Online version)

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Government of Rwanda and the African Union (AU), are co-organizing a regional conference on “Youth Employment in Agriculture as a Solid Solution to ending Hunger and Poverty in Africa: Engaging through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Entrepreneurship” on 20 and 21 August 2018 to be held in Kigali, Rwanda. The conference will focus on three major cross-cutting themes related to youth issues.

As part of the preparations for the conference, the partners have organised a pre-conference e-consultation that will enable the youths not able to attend physically to air their views on the conference themes.

The ‘Youth Employment in Africa as a Solid Solution to ending Hunger and Poverty in Africa’ online discussion hosted on FSN Forum Africa platform. The specific focus areas are

1. Experience as a Youth in the Agriculture Sector - How would you describe your experience as an Africa youth engaged in the agriculture sector in your country? What motivated you to engage into the agriculture sector?
2. Major Achievements and Success Stories - What have been your major achievements? Do you have any experience or innovative ways that have helped you in your work that you would want to share? Do you have a success story – either your own or any other that you are aware of - of youth engaged in agriculture in your country? What is the story?
3. What the Rwanda Youth Conference Should Address - If given an opportunity, what question would you ask the experts at the Rwanda Youth conference on each of the three sub-themes – a). Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship, b). Digital Innovation to Overcome Agriculture Value-Chain Constraints, and c). Future of Work in Rural Economy - of the conference?

Summary highlights of the e-consultation on "Ethical, legal and policy aspects of data sharing affecting farmers"

In June, 2018 the e-Agriculture hosted the e-consultation on ethical, legal and policy aspects of data sharing affecting farmers on behalf of the partners. While the full summary report will be available later, we published a snippet summary for your perusal.  Read more

News and highlights

High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation launched by the UN Secretary General

The United Nations Secretary General António announced the launch of a High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, with members representing a cross-section of expertise. Read more

The future of Africa's Agriculture rests with youths

This article presents the recent findings by young researchers at Mastercard Foundation. Amongst many other findings the study established that agricultural technologies should be tailored to optimise opportunities for young people-particularly rural young people. Read more

KARLO launches 14 mobile apps to transform agriculture

During the East African Farmers Digital Conference, Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KARLO) launched 14 agribusiness apps to help farmers in making farming choices and decisions. Read more

Selected FAO ICT or Digital Innovation related projects

The Digital Innovation to tackle Climate Change Project

This project was initiated in Senegal and Rwanda in December, 2017 after the FAO and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). Through this project FAO and WMO are joining forces to enhance capacity for the countries to provide meteorological and climatological forecasts for agriculture. Furthermore, strengthening existing agro-meteorological services. Read more

FAO African Roots and Tubers (ART) Project

The FAO Africa Roots and Tubers (ART) project and the Agricultural Services and digital inclusion project are sharing the objective of improving access to market prices and climate risk information for small actors in Rwanda. The collaboration will see the inclusion of mobile services (both SMS and progressive web-app) related to "AgriMarketplace" and "Weather and Crop calender". Read more

FAO Ag-Lab innovation incubation event launched in Beijing

FAO China reports the launch of an Innovation lab that gives the youth the chance to unlock and accelerate social and economic potential of traditional agriculture sector. Read more

e-Agriculture related funding calls

The Inspire Challenge

The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture has announced “The Inspire Challenge” which calls upon stakeholders to create innovative pilot projects that can be scaled up. The winning teams will receive $100,000 to put their ideas into practice. Read more

Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation Fund

The application for the mobile for humanitarian innovation fund for Round 2 opened on the 16th of July 2018 and will close on the 10th of August 2018. Eligible projects are encouraged to apply. Read more

#WSIS Prize 2019

The WSIS Process has announced the opening of submissions for the #WSISPrizes2019. All eligible projects are invited to submit their #WSISrelated projects during the period 2 July to the 30th of November 2018. Read more

e-Agriculture Webinars

e-Agriculture webinar on Transformative Digital Extension delivery and smallholder farm marketing in Zimbabwe through the KurimaMari Mobile App

This webinar was jointly presented by Welthungerhilfe and the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement and showcased the KurimaMari Mobile App.The digital Innovation KurimaMari app seeks to mitigate challenges associated with traditional extension delivery. This mobile app works also offline and is designed to provide farmers with the latest extension information. Read more

e-Agriculture Webinar on Talking Books for Audio-Based Agriculture Extension

This webinar was organised with AMPLIO on Talking Books for Audio-Based Agriculture Extension. The Talking Book is an audio device designed to share knowledge on-demand with people who are cut off from traditional sources of information. AMPLIO designed the Talking Book and has collaborated with dozens of partners to develop and deliver engaging audio lessons and to evaluate their impact. Read more