The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) sponsored the WSIS Forum Session entitled, ‘ Building a Framework for Digital Innovation in Agriculture ’ under the WSIS Action Line C7-ICT Applications (e-Agriculture). The session advocated for the enhancement of digital innovation for the poorest within agriculture through developing a framework of application to support them. Digital innovation and ICTs have a great potential to transform the approach in 17 SDGs, yet within FAO scope also particularly 1, 2, 8, and 13. Meeting highlights Mr...
This year’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum was held on the 19-23rd of March 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland under the theme “ Leveraging ICTs to Build Information and Knowledge Societies for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ”. While each WSIS Forum is different, each edition is preceded by the Open Consultation Process that enable members to come up with an agenda. The final WSIS meetings is comprised of, Best Practices, WSIS Prizes, Special Tracks and High level panels. In 2018, the WSIS debate focused on how to achieve the sustainable development goals (...
The ICT4D conference agenda has been published and with a number of presentation and talks in ICTs for Agriculture and the environment, browse the full programme here . The conference has more than 200 panels, keynotes, case studies, and workshops in core ICT4D disciplines. The agenda is rich with a variety of topics, some of the exciting topics for e-Agriculture CoP include:- Digital Agriculture: Scale and Sustainability through Government Partnership and Ownership Driving Digital and Financial Inclusion that leaves no one behind From Satellites to stalk borers: using earth observation to...
It is widely believed that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will change the world, but how much are those innovations already contributing to improving the world? This webinar (part of an ongoing series around ICT4D) will explore how AI and machine learning tools can be applied and...
Today the 29th of March to the 30th of March begins the UNESCO/ITU annual flagship ICT in education event surnamed ‘Mobile Learning Week’. The 2018 edition is held under the theme, “ Skills for a connected world ” and will examine the skills needed in and for a connected economy and would also focus on digital skills and competencies. Mobile learning week brings together "experts practitioners and policy-makers from around the world to share ideas and best practices on ways to use ubiquitous mobile technology to support learning for all, particularly disadvantaged communities"- UNESCO news ...
WSIS Prizes 2018 winners have been published by WSIS. These winners represent the respective 18 WSIS Action lines, as outlined in the Geneva Plan of Action. The specific category winners can be read here The E-Agriculture Category In the E-Agriculture projects are covered by the Action Line C7: E-Agriculture and 27 projects were nominated. From the 27 projects, 5 were nominated as Champions in the E-Agriculture Category. These are, Hushu Smart Agricultural Center IoT project , Jiangsu post & telecommunications planning and designing institute Co, Ltd CHINA eSAP: a complete ICT Solution...
In developing countries, there is little smallholder farmers can do to protect themselves from shock. When faced with unexpected volatility, they often turn to negative coping mechanisms like selling assets, reducing meals, or pulling children out of school. To address this, Digital Development for...
The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has published a policy brief that emphasize the importance of weather data, and its derived services for agriculture and nutrition and challenges in dealing with weather data value chain. Farmers need access to accurate and localized weather information to make evidence based farm management decisions which includes when to plant or to apply fertilizer. The Policy brief outlines the benefits of open data and specifically offer example where open data is useful within the farming practices. However, for weather data to be of...
The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) headquarters was a busy location with more than 2,500 ICT experts from around the world arriving for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The theme of WSIS Forum 2018 is ‘Leveraging ICTs to Build Information and Knowledge Societies for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ’ and seeks to explore ways and possibilities that can help meet the sustainable development challenge. The UN Secretary General Mr. António Guterre set the meeting tone when he said, ‘in today’s digital world Internet access is imperative,...
It is widely believed that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will change the world, but how much are those innovations already contributing to improving the world? This webinar (part of an ongoing series around ICT4D) will explore how AI and machine learning tools can be applied and...
