The e-Agriculture Team announces the 2nd Newsletter in 2017 . This issue provides a quick update of the planned e-Agriculture Capacity Development activities. In the coming months the e-Agriculture team will develop several capacity development activities mearnt to increase the knowledge of ICTs to its members, track new and emerging trends. To kick start the activities, FAO and CTA have launched the " Call for good and/or promising practices on the use of ICTs in Agriculture ". Read more Browse the newsletter for further ICTs news round up from e-Agriculture, its partners and the broader...
Yara ImageIT is a smartphone app designed to measure nitrogen uptake in a crop and generate a nitrogen recommendation based on photographs of the crop. ImageIT calculates nitrogen uptake based on leaf cover, leaf green color and estimated fraction of brown leaves. The app also generates an intelligent recommendation for adjusting the fertilization program based on measurements. ImageIT is user-friendly and flexible in terms of technical requirements: it works with low resolution images with a file size as small as 50 – 200 KB. If internet coverage is poor, ImageIT can save the photos on the...
ICTs are pivotal for the future of agriculture. As they are finding an ever important space in most sectors of everyday life, agriculture should't be an exeption. ICTs can help in many ways producers and particularly smallholders in their livelihoods and development. In particular, ICTs can be an essential tool for young people aspiring to create their own agricultural business. As most of them have grown with these tools, they are more eager to use them in their worklife as well. This handbook published by the CTA is a guide designed for aspiring ICT entrepreneurs to instruct them with the...
Today marks the International Girls in ICT Day 2017, which is celebrated yearly on the 4th Thursday in April. The day is organised by ITU ; the UN Women has also issued a commemoration statement. What is Girls in ICT Day? This is an initiative that was backed by all International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Member States in 2014. The the aim was to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider careers in the growing field of ICTs, enabling both girls and technology companies to reap the benefits of greater female participation in the ICT sector...
Youth, Agripreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals Workshop Date 8 May, 2017. 09:00-16:00 Location Sida Headquarters, Valhallavägen 199, Stockholm, Sweden Description The aim of this workshop organized jointly by SIANI and SLU Global is to develop ideas and tools to engage the african...
By the year 2050, the world population is expected to grow to 9.7 billion: demand for food will grow dramatically. Following a present trend, 2/3 of this population will be concetrated in big cities. In sub-saharan Africa, the number of 15-24 year olds will dramatically increase. The challenge at this point is to engage the youth in Africa to work in agriculture and develop its potential. The problem is that young generations living in rural areas prefer to migrate to big cities in search for a stable job instead of trying to develop the rural areas in which they grew up. The aim of this...
Preliminary results of a study shows that using drone technology could cut labour and costs spent in collecting data for maize breeding by at least 10% . The SciDevNEt reported that The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center ( CIMMYT ) in Southern Africa has adopted the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) also known as drones to collect data as a critical part of a breeding programme. The article quotes Mainassara Abdou Zaman-Allah, a maize physiologist at CIMMYT who noted that UAVs facilitated the collection of instant data gathering and that drones are able to collect data from...
The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) is set to launch a new book entitled, ICT Agripreneurship Guide – A Path to Success for Young ACP Entrepreneurs. This books relays CTA's experience of working with young people in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector The book is set to be launched at the African Agripreneurs Youth Forum (AYA Forum) in Ibadan, Nigeria. The AYA Forum is organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB), in collaboration with CTA, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the African Agribusiness Incubation...
Nigeria has one of the largest inventories of uncultivated farmland on earth, but they are losing crops in volumes because of labor shortages and lack of mechanization.” according to Jehiel Oliver, CEO of Hello Tractor. Many smallholder farmers cannot afford to pay someone else for high-season help. Owning a tractor would solve many of those problems. The first part of the business is the small, 15 horsepower tractor itself that Hello Tractor sells at $4,000, 10 times cheaper than the average tractor found in Africa. Each tractor comes with a GPS tracking device, so that its position can be...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has developed a publicly accessible near real time database (WaPOR) using satellite data that allows monitoring of agricultural water productivity . The WaPOR monitors and reports on agriculture water productivity over Africa and the Near East. The database uses satellite data to help farmers achieve more reliable agricultural yields. This tool provides open access to the water database over underlying maps - the tool allows quering of data; time series analyses, area statistics related to water and land use assessments. The...
Youth, Agripreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals Workshop Date 8 May, 2017. 09:00-16:00 Location Sida Headquarters, Valhallavägen 199, Stockholm, Sweden Description The aim of this workshop organized jointly by SIANI and SLU Global is to develop ideas and tools to engage the african...