The Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information and Communication Technologies (FACET) program, an associate award under the FIELD-Support LWA and managed by FHI 360, was funded by USAID/AFR/SD/EGEA––the partnership that oversees the design and implementation of USAID’s Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative for sub-Saharan Africa.
Designed to be interactive and collaborative, FACET provided technical assistance to improve competitiveness and productivity across agriculture sub-sectors through the use of ICTs as tools to enhance the functioning and competitiveness of agricultural value chains and facilitate trade in agricultural products across sub-Saharan Africa.
In line with USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah’s call for an increased focus on evidence-based interventions, documentation and learning dissemination, FACET incorporated lessons learned and best practices to build collaborative relationships. To achieve its objectives, FACET had two key program components:
- Knowledge sharing across Missions regarding sustainable and scalable approaches using ICT; and
- Short-term technical assistance to projects to help them improve their uses of ICT
The knowledge sharing objective is extended by making the main outputs, toolkits and case studies, available to a global audience through the e-Agriculture Community.