The European Commission presented on Thursay, May 4th, "Digital4Development", a strategy to mainstream digital technologies into European Union development policy, contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The EU lacks an appropriate framework for mainstreaming and ensuring an effective delivery of digital technologies and services. Digital technologies can be very useful in key areas for development, such as agriculture, job creation, access to micro-finance, education and health. The Digital4Development project is intended to be part of overall development...
The GSMA mAgri Programme forges partnerships between mobile operators, technology providers and agricultural organisations. Although it has enourmous potential, Mexico seems to have been left out by ICT for agriculture initiatives. This article presents seven reasons for which Mexican agriculture should invest in ICT related projects to lift farmers out of poverty and into the 21st century. 1. The needs of Mexican farmers are huge 3.9 million farmers out of 5.3 million in Mexico earn of less than USD 1,000 per year. 61 per cent of Mexican farmers live in poverty. The reasons for this...
The Youth for Africa and SDGs YAS ! Portal is an online portal created by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to support the development and growth of youth entrepreneurship in Africa. The portal aims to help entrepreneurs by providing them advice on enterprise development, serve as an African hub for support services concerning African youth entrepreneurship and run challenges and award financing to youth to develop SDG related business ideas. UNDP is seeking advice and help through an online challenge to develop the online portal and keeping it sustainable. The challenge is open...
By 2050, there will be 9.6 billion people in the planet. Feeding the whole worldwide population will be a central challenge for the next generations. Farmers will have to think of ways to reduce the inputs, for example water and pesticides, while maintaining the outputs. Drones can be of great help to farmers in reducing the inputs while trying to provide the same production, or even increase it. This article presents six ways in which drones can be central in agricultural productivity and sustainability. 1. Soil and field analysis: Drones produce precise 3-D maps for early soil analysis for...
The UNESCO Chair in ICT4D is convening a workshop on Friday the 16th of June at the 2017 WSIS Forum which will be held in Geneva. This workshop will coincide with the recent publication of a new book entitled Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development This workshop is held under the premise that the global spread of ICTs has increased inequality, and that the poorest and the most marginalised have failed to sufficiently to benefit. The workshop objectives and purpose are aptly stated in the announcement:- The workshop will explore whether the continued focus on the...
Information and Communication Technologies for Evaluation (ICT4Eval): Using Innovative Approaches to Development Evaluation International conference Date 6-7 June 2017 Location Rome, Italy Description The international conference on Information and Communication Technologies for Evaluation (...
The proliferation of mobile phones across the world has enabled financial institutions to take advantage and introduce services accessible through mobile handsets. A scoping study has explored the challenges of implementing mobile-finance in low-income communities and also evaluated secondary data from online discussion and webinars. The study was done by two researchers at the University of Machester and raises very interesting questions into the application of mobile finance for low income countries. The following questions are answered in the paper:- What are the potential benefits of m-...
In India’s southern state of Kerala, because of overfishing and climate change, fish stocks are rapidly decreasing. In order to catch more fish, fishermen are forced to go out into the open sea with their small boats, risking life especially during the monsoon season. Radio Monsoon radio station provides a low-tech forecast service to encourage 30,000 families to fish more safely. Radio Monsoon’s forecasts are disseminated through social media, loudspeakers placed in harbours and through a phone line supported by an internet server. The weather data is based on India’s Meteorological...
The AGRIS team will like to inform the broader community that the AGRIS Network discussion group has been set up on Dgroups. This group will be operative as of 2 May 2017 at https://dgroups.org/fao/agris This is part of the efforts to dynamize and consolidate the AGRIS activities and networks. This group will be the formal communication channel and a discussion pad for issues related to AGRIS and similarly related news of interests to AGRIS users. ABOUT AGRIS AGRIS is the International System for Agricultural Science and Technology , a network of more than 364 institutions from 144 countries...
AIMS@Webinars series : How much data is enough in precision agricolture? Date May 10th, 2017 at 15.00 CET / 16.00 CEST Description The Niagara College (NC) Agriculture & Environmental Technologies Innovation Centre team is led by Dr. Mike Duncan. The team is providing a webinar to discuss its...