Challenge Call on the ‘Desert Locust’ at the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020

The ‘desert locust’ is one of the challenge calls at the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020. The Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020 is one of the satellite INSPIRE hackathons. The hackathon is organised in the frame of the IST Africa 2020 Conference.

There are 9 challenges in this Kampala edition. The desert locust challenge comes when some parts of Eastern Africa are experiencing locust infestation since the end of 2019. The locusts have posed a great threat to the East African Societies, which largely dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Therefore, the team is inviting innovative solutions for the control of the spread, breeding, as well as innovative early warnings solutions for the locusts outbreaks while preserving human, animal and soil life.

The Desert Locust Challenge

Smallholder farmers are on the frontline when a pest outbreak takes hold. A small swarm of desert locusts can eat the equivalent food of 35,000 people per day, for example, while crop losses resulting from the spread of fall armyworm across sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to cost up to $6.1 billion a year.

Yet while their livelihoods are most at risk, smallholders can also play a significant part in tackling crop pests like the desert locust.By giving farmers access to better surveillance technology that enables them to monitor pests and forecast potential outbreaks, infestations can be tracked and managed effectively.

Therefore, we invite innovative solutions for the control of the spread, breeding, as well as innovative early warnings solutions for the locusts outbreaks while preserving human, animal and soil life.

To support local initiatives to monitor and control the locusts, this challenge will work towards developing a geospatial risk of outbreak model for the timely location of desert locust development and gregarization risk zones in Uganda.

The challenge will take into account the presence or absence of transient phases of the desert locust species, biotope conditions, and gregarization thresholds for juveniles as well as flying adults. Part of the challenge will involve collating, summarizing and analysing field data (e.g., vegetation, rainfall, locust and control information) in order to assess the current situation and forecast the scale, timing and location of locust breeding and migration.

Interested click here

The lead team for the Desert Challenge.The team led by Paul Kasoma, Kizito Odhiambo, Lilian Ndungu. For more information about mentors see the link.

Related Challenges in the Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon 2020The list of challenges include

• Transportation related aspects of Urban Planning - use case of Kampala
• SmartAfriHub
• OpenLandUse for Africa
• Desert Locust
• IoT 4 Africa
• Climate Change Trends for Africa
• EO4FoodSecurity
• Text Mining and Metadata
• Ethical and legal aspects of open data affecting farmers

For more information here