Friday, October 17, 2014

Web 2.0 and Social Media spread like wildfire in Vanuatu

Group photo of participants of the Web 2.0 and Social Media
training in Port Vila, Vanuatu 2014
Friday 17 October 2014, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Vanuatu – Vanuatu is a young state as far as information and communication technology (ICT) is concerned and the development of ICT is very important for the socio-economic growth of the country.'  The first Political Advisor for the Vanuatu Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Mrs Emily Tumukon, made this statement in her opening remarks at the beginning of a five-day training workshop on the use of web 2.0 and social media in Port Vila, Vanuatu on 13 October.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), in collaboration with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), promotes information and knowledge sharing, learning and communication for the agriculture and forestry sectors, using low-cost technology – Web 2.0 and Social Media.

CTA-developed curriculum is designed to help users interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue. Examples of Web 2.0 applications include blogs, , Google Drive, Google +, video sharing sites, photo editing, and sharing social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These web tools are used in the context of development work and are designed for stakeholders actively engaged in agriculture and rural development / natural resource management in the domains of ICT for development, policies and markets, publishing, communication and media.

Mr Hannington Tate, Vanuatu's Director of Forestry, believes that new ICT tools such as web 2.0 can improve agricultural and forestry information in rural and remote communities of Vanuatu. He maintains that this type of workshop also offers a platform where participants from the government line agencies and those representing different stakeholders can come together to share their experiences and eventually find out how they can collaborate by making use of each others’ networks in order to better reach and serve the people of the country.

The Vanuatu Government CIO (Chief Information Officer), Mr Fred Samuel, stated that the Vanuatu Government recognised ICT as an enabler for social and economic development in the country.  He emphasised that it is now important to create online content that users and citizens can access, and that is the reason such training is needed. He added that web 2.0 represents an important shift in the way digital information is created, shared, stored, distributed, and manipulated.

The five-day learning opportunity is currently under way in Port Vila. Twenty-three participants – fifteen men and eight women – from different organisations are attending it. The event is part of CTA’s effort to facilitate access to and dissemination of information in the fields of agriculture and rural development in 78 countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), this being the sixth to be held in the Pacific. Similar workshops have been conducted in Papua New Guinea and Fiji and a one is planned for Samoa in two weeks' time that will focus on the agriculture and forestry sectors.

Sponsored by the ACP-EU CTA, the event, titled Web 2.0 for Development and Social Media Learning Opportunity, is undertaken by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in collaboration with the Vanuatu Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, Fisheries, and specifically the Department of Forests (DoF) and Biosecurity and the Office of the Government’s Chief Information Officer (OGCIO).

Saturday, October 11, 2014

The film “The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan People of Suriname” launched at CWA2014

Fifty years ago, some 5000 Saramaccan people of Suriname had to leave their traditional lands along the Suriname River due to the construction of a major dam. The wounds of this transmigration are still felt today. Meanwhile, the Saramaccans who live in the Upper Suriname River area face new challenges since their territorial rights are not yet officially recognized and road infrastructure to access the area is improving. Creating a 3D model of the area that tells the inside story of their traditions and land use can help them to overcome their sense of being misunderstood by decision-makers and rediscover their voice.



The 15 min video production “The enabling power of participatory 3D mapping among the Saramaccan People of Suriname” has been launched on October 9 at the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Paramaribo, Suriname. The launch occurred during the session “Maps as media in policy processes: Bringing the 3rd dimension to the negotiating table” in the presence of representatives from the Saramaccan community.

The launch was followed by reflections done by Saramaccan representatives Mr Godfried Adjako, one of the captains of the village of Kaajapati, and Ms Debora Linga who spent her infancy with her grandparents on their farm on the shores of the Brokopondo Reservoir and later on kept visiting them in Ginginston village along the banks of the Upper Suriname River.

Mr Godfried Adjako recalled that in the process of populating the 3D model the community, especially the youth, learned a lot from the elders. “The map now shows our life, the Earth we live on, the Earth we walk on, the Earth without which we cannot live.” “We can use the map to take decisions on where to locate future developments”, he added. Both men and women contributed to the map. “Women know a lot about the surrounding of the villages, while men who use to go hunting, know the most about far away areas.”

Mr Adjako stated that when developing the legend ahead of the mapping exercise, the community decided to omit sensitive and confidential information. Therefore the data contained in the model and currently being digitised by Tropenbos International Suriname (TBI) should be considered as publicly available.

The P3DM process has been a discovery journey for young Debora. “In the 60’s my grandparents had to resettle because their village had been submerged by the rising waters of the Brokopondo Reservoir. They resettled along the Upper Suriname River in a village called Ginginston where I grew up. I could not understand the reason why my grandfather kept on navigating a long way along the river to reach the shores of the lake where he was growing watermelon” she said. “I discovered the reason while chatting with an elder who explained to me that transmigrating families were welcome by Saramaccan villages uphill the lake, but were granted limited access to resources. In fact they were sort of borrowing the land from people who occupied it for generations. Thus they only had access to small farming areas. In Saramaccan this is how you feel: they were living on somebody else’s land.”

Young Jamaican team wins AgriHack Talent Caribbean contest at 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture

And the winner is… Node420, from Jamaica. The team’s ICT application, also called Node420, offers real-time weather analysis and automatic yield forecasts for farmers. The AgriHack Talent Caribbean contest, organised by CTA and partners, came to a close during the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture, held this week in Paramaribo, Suriname. The winning teams designed agricultural apps that can forecast crop yields, improve pest management and put farmers in touch with market outlets.

Second prize went to CropGuard, from Barbados, an app that seeks to enhance food security by helping farmers to protect their crops through pest diagnosis, monitoring and control. Third prize was awarded to UNICODE, from Suriname, with an application called Agri-Kari, designed to help farmers manage their land and sell their products.

More than 150 young ICT specialists took part in the AgriHack Talent Caribbean contest run by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and partners. The regional championship sought to develop innovative ICT applications that address key Caribbean agricultural challenges and drive agri-enterprise among young people. The ICT applications created by the first three prize-winners will now be developed and incubated, to promote their successful rollout in the region.

The eight regional finalists, drawn from the results of national contests in six Caribbean countries – Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago – spent the first four days of the 13th Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) fine-tuning their applications before the winners were announced on Thursday October 9. The CWA has been held this week in in Paramaribo, Suriname and ends today (October 10).

All the finalists were given the opportunity to pitch their products to participants attending the CWA, before the regional winners were selected by an international jury.

The contest was based on the idea of a hackathon – a gathering that brings together computer programmers for a short period of time to develop an ICT application or platform that offers solutions for a specific challenge.

Partners in the AgriHack Talent Caribbean contest included the Caribbean Farmers’ Network (CaFAN), the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Connectimass, Suriname telecom operator Telesur, the Caribbean Open Institute and eight ICT innovation hubs.

“ICTs can strongly enhance family farming and the AgriHack Talent Caribbean initiative is supporting ICT innovations and entrepreneurship by youth in the Caribbean,” said CTA Director Michael Hailu. “There is an undisputed need to engage youth in agriculture. Encouraging young ICT innovators to develop services for agriculture contributes to this. It also contributes to improving the image of agriculture and offers opportunities to modernise the sector.”

A key ingredient in the mix has involved bringing together a broad range of expertise from the ICT, agriculture and business sectors, to help take products to the next level. In the run up to the regional finals, the ICT team members received technical support to develop their applications, as well as advice on how to draw up a business model, how to approach investors and how to pitch their idea to the judges and audience.

During the next six months, incubation and mentoring will be offered to the winning teams, who will be given technical and business support, including contact with potential investors and opportunities to promote their applications.

“This contest is about helping young people to sustain agriculture, developing exciting ICT applications that target key agricultural challenges in the Caribbean,” said Ken Lohento, ICT Programme Coordinator for CTA. “The agricultural sector offers substantial opportunities for young people, including those who can offer ICT services to support it. We hope that the AgriHack championship will also result in young people having more livelihood opportunities.”

Winning Jamaican team Node420 said its product sought to provide solutions for some of the most challenging difficulties faced by farmers. “Collecting the information they need can be a real problem for farmers, so we decided to design some hardware that could gather all sorts of data to help them with their cultivation, including planting, sowing and harvesting,” said Jason Scott, who was at the prize-giving with colleague Orane Edwards to collect first prize on behalf of the Node420 team from Jamaica.

The other two team members were: Simantha Hong and Jonathon Cooper. The young ICT developers, who won €5,000 euros plus six months of incubation, are supported by Jamaican ICT Hub SlashRoots, which won €3,000.

“Think of it as a very compact weather station,” said Scott. “It helps farmers to increase their yields, and to forecast how much they might be able to produce.”