The curtain came down for the FAO Digital Agriculture Transformation Semina r on the 13th of June at FAO headquarters. The seminar was attended by several hundred participants and included government ministers, representatives of civil society and the private sector, non-governmental organizations and others. The FAO Director General had the pleasure to invite Mr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, CEO, Korea Telecom (KT) who opened the seminar with an impressive summary of the possibilities that digital technologies have for agriculture, and what KT has done and is doing. The two day event saw the first day...
The African Development Bank and its partners on the 13th of June, 2019 launched the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI) , designed to aid safety and expansion of digital financial transactions in Africa. The Fund, launched at the Bank’s Annual Meetings in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Government of Luxembourg, as initial contributors. The fund will deploy $100 million in grants and $300 million in the form of debt from the Bank’s ordinary capital resources by 2030, to...
Farmers, researchers, advisors, enterprises, associations, decision-makers ... between 300 and 400 participants are expected in Normandy on 25 and 26 June 2019 for the second Agri Innovation Summit 2019 (AIS 2019). The event is dedicated to the contribution of the European Innovation Partnership on...
The FAO Digital Services Portfolio is a project that was started in November 2016 in Rulindo, Rwanda and Tambacounda, Senegal.The project included the development and distribution of 4 mobile applications to smallholder farmers. This project comes as a realisation that digital services are changing how farmers work and also from the understanding that ICTs can maximise various social support services for farmers – such services include rural advisory services, financial services and social protection programmes, access to market information and disease control. The four apps were the Cure and...
Not so long ago the UN Secretary General instituted The High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation in July 2018 to identify good examples and propose modalities for working cooperatively across sectors, disciplines and borders to address challenges in the digital age. On the 10th of June 2019, the Panel launched its report, The Age of Digital Interdependence and presented it to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The report describes a world more deeply interconnected than ever before as a result of digital technology, yet struggling to manage the economic, social, cultural and political...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and partners will hold the Digital Agriculture Transformation Seminar: The challenges to be addressed . The seminar will be held in Rome, Italy on the 12th and 13th of June, 2019. The seminar aims to foster an exchange among stakeholders(...
The two-day International forum “Agroteh-2019 – Steps beyond the horizon,” was organized by the National Research University Higher School of Economics together with FAO and the Russian Ministry of Agriculture in Moscow, and it focused on innovation as the central driving force to transform food systems, lift family farmers out of poverty and help the world to achieve food security, sustainable agriculture and the SDGs. Global digital networks and smart farms, the latest achievements of genetics and breeding, molecular biology and biotechnology – all this comes en masse to the agricultural...
The GSMA has announced GSMA Innovation Fund for eight grants of £220,000 each to support projects for 24 months duration. The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains aims to scale digital solutions for the agricultural last mile and improve smallholders’ financial inclusion, livelihood and climate resilience. Grants are available across two categories of application Applications for funding across both categories are assessed through a two-stage application process. Concept Note: The first step will be to submit a Concept Note, which outlines the project objectives...
The Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA) is launching a Call for Rural Innovative Solutions in agriculture to invite the submission of write-ups for known existing solutions applicable to rural agriculture. These solutions should enable smallholder farmers to increase their production, incomes and generate employment for youth and women. The focus would be on solutions generated or piloted by the private sector for up scaling and adoption by smallholder farmers. The shortlisted solutions will be documented, packaged into knowledge products and promoted at global showcasing events for AGRA,...
Cover photo: Irrigating rice fields in Sirajganj, Bangladesh. Photo: Haseeb Md. Irfanullah. This post was originally published by I NASP blog and is reposted here for information sharing purposes A research system is basically made up of four components: accessing, conducting, communicating, and utilizing research. While we often talk about the first three, use of our research in policy and practice is less frequently discussed in developing countries. Discussions at a recent workshop in Bangladesh about recent agricultural and biological science research projects revealed opportunities to...
Farmers, researchers, advisors, enterprises, associations, decision-makers ... between 300 and 400 participants are expected in Normandy on 25 and 26 June 2019 for the second Agri Innovation Summit 2019 (AIS 2019). The event is dedicated to the contribution of the European Innovation Partnership on...
