CTA programme wins top UN prize for its youth and ICT work

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has been honoured in the prestigious 2015 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Project Prizes. The Centre won the e-agriculture category for its youth and ICT programme – Agriculture, Rural Development and Youth in the Information Society (ARDYIS).  The prize was presented in Geneva, Switzerland, during the WSIS Forum 2015, the biggest international event in the ICT for Development calendar.
CTA’s ARDYIS entry was proclaimed winner of the e-agriculture category at the prize-giving ceremony on May 26, following a round of online voting and a review by a panel of experts.

The prize marks the third time that CTA has won a WSIS award.

In 2013, the Centre’s Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities programme was also named winner of the WSIS Project Prizes contest in the e-agriculture category.

Jointly with the FLMMA network in 2007 CTA won the WSIS award in the domain of e-culture for its activities in the domain of Participatory 3D Modelling in Fiji.

Each year, a series of WSIS Project Prizes recognises initiatives that help to further the goals of bridging the global digital divide and ensuring wider distribution of the benefits that can be generated by information and communications technology (ICT). Launched by the United Nations in 2011, the awards span 18 categories and offer a platform to showcase success stories and models that can be easily replicated.

The CTA ARDYIS programme, a group of initiatives aimed at 18 to 35-year-olds living in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, seeks to connect young people with ICTs and promote their use for agricultural development and enterprise. Key activities include the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo Awards), which has so far attracted nearly 300 agricultural blogs, and the AgriHack Talent contest, which supports the development of ICTs, mobile apps and entrepreneurship in agriculture.

An important feature of the ARDYIS programme is the wide range of activities it uses to raise awareness among young people of the potential for ICTs in agriculture. These include e-debates, workshops, information dissemination and support in developing agricultural ICT applications and other entrepreneurial initiatives.

“ARDYIS is an incredibly dynamic project which has opened opportunities for ACP youth in agriculture through ICTs, and strengthened their capacities in using these tools,” said CTA Director Michael Hailu. “So far, the project has reached young people in more than 40 ACP countries and it has supported the development of dozens of ICT prototypes, targeting different segments of agricultural value chains.”

Receiving the award on behalf of CTA at the WSIS ceremony was Ken Lohento, Programme Coordinator, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

“We are very proud of this prize,” said Lohento, who is leading the ARDYIS programme. “the prize also belongs to all the youth who have been participating in the ARDYIS network and who support us with their ideas and contributions. We thank all the people who voted for us from many countries around the world and the ARDYIS Advisory Committee for its support. CTA will continue to work hard to encourage and support greater youth engagement in ICTs for agriculture.”

Building Capacity in using social media for agricultural development in Cook Islands

Rarotonga, Cook Islands, 14 April, 2015 – From 13 to 17 April 2015 the Cook Islands Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) is hosting a Web 2.0 and social media learning opportunity workshop and training. The event held at the MoA’s headquarters in Arorangi, is jointly supported by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), and the European-Union-funded Pacific Agriculture Policy Project (PAPP) (part of the Intra-ACP Agriculture Policy Project). The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) is the implementing agency for the European Union funded PAPP project.

Participants in the course posing together
with the Minister of Agriculture, Kiriau Turepu

Participants were drawn from government agencies, including ministries of the environment, agriculture, education and internal affairs, the police and the Seabed Minerals Authority, from the private sector and from civil-society and non-governmental organisations, including the Red Cross, the National Youth Council, national women’s group, and two youth organisations Rotaract, and organics. All were keen to learn how to make best use of online social media tools to generate and share information to achieve both personal development and organisational goals.

The Hon Minister of Agriculture, Kiriau Turepu, delivered the keynote address to more than 25 local participants. He acknowledged the partnership of CTA, SPC and the European Union for offering the opportunity to the Cook Islands to build capacity in information and communication technologies and social media.

“I am particularly pleased for the Ministry of Agriculture to take the lead in promoting social media to generate, manage and disseminate information in this ever-more-connected world we live in. The internet offers tools we can harness for the development of our people. The outer islands may have produce to sell and using the internet they can connect to consumers and markets in Rarotonga. We will be able to share and show new innovative ideas such as growing dragon fruits for example – I can show a friend in Penrhyn steps on growing these fruits using social media.

“As the first of this kind of workshop to be held here in the Cook Islands, we are expecting this group of participants to learn, and make use of the knowledge so that our people are better informed, more articulated in the affairs of development as far as agriculture is concerned.

“Today the speed with which information travels in our work places and the changing technologies that we have at our disposal is extraordinary and important to all of us. Whether it is Facebook, blogging, Twitter, photos you share, these are all extensions of individuals and their personalities. They help portray interests, views and help show people who they are. They offer a platform for you and I to be ourselves, to be creative, to be who we want to be and most importantly, have an audience for all to debate critical innovative ideas that are good and can grow for the future.”

Mr Emil Adams, PPPP Information Communication Management Officer, thanked Permanent Secretary, Dr Matairangi Purea, and MoA Director of Policy, Planning, Mr Patrick Arioka, for the planning and coordination that went into organising the workshop. The good turnout of local participants is testimony of the planning, interest and enthusiasm of stakeholders to release their officers to attend the Web2.0 and social media training.

“Social media tools allow continuous dialogue between groups of individuals to take place on the internet. This online dialogue contributes to a knowledge society where individuals continuously pull information as well contribute content, further enriching knowledge and available to other users. People are empowered when they freely express their opinions on social media, and attain a level of gratification when they get information they want when they want it,” said Mr Adams.

“Accessing the internet allows a farmer in a remote village to directly interact and feedback on government policies affecting rural livelihoods, tweet a photo of a pest outbreak back to researchers for identification and management, or post on Facebook photos of a rural development training.”
Workshop facilitator, Ms Anju Mangal, offered words of warning about the potential of social media, noting that, while it can open up a whole new horizon of possibilities that can improve lives, it can also destroy lives and upset social norms if used wrongly by unscrupulous individuals.

Ms Mangal said that online cyber security is of major concern to individuals and to organisations that want to protect their integrity. Social media policies supported by national infrastructure need to be robust to guide the use of these tools to achieve national goals. Above all, measures are needed to prevent compromising the integrity of government machinery.

In the Cook Islands broadband connection is available to more than 95% of the population, with mobile coverage reaching more than 99% of the population. On Rarotonga only, third-generation (3G) services are available to 11,000 plus mobile connections.

Agriculture currently contributes only 3.8% to GDP, but Mr Arioka expressed his confidence that this can be increased through the use of online tools supported by an enabling policy environment. The Ministry is currently developing a new Strategic Plan to help agriculture services support income streams, food consumption and self sufficiency. Healthy soils, healthy food will underpin the strength of the new Strategic Plan.

CTA, in partnership with SPC, has embarked on a series of regional Web2.0 and social media learning opportunity workshops to strengthen national capacity in the use of social media for agricultural development and climate-change adaptation. National workshops have been completed in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu. A second national workshop for the Cook Islands is planned for September 2015.

Here is a link to follow for more information on forthcoming training events.

Follow Web2forDev on Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo and join the community on DGroups and LinkedIn

Discussion list on video production for development cooperation

Vlogging is an essential component of social networking. Are you interested in how to produce videos for educational, ‪‎advocacy‬ or development ‪purposes? Here is the discussion list you should join: https://dgroups.org/cta/video4dev

https://dgroups.org/cta/video4dev

Latest statistics about the Web 2.0 for Development Community of Practice

The Web2forDev Community of Practice was created by CTA in 2006 in anticipation of the Web2forDev International Conference which CTA organised in September 2007 in partnership with FAO, GIZ , IFAD, APC, IICD and other development organisations.

As anticipated in the article published on PLA 59 in June 2009, “The Web2forDev story: towards a community of practice” the community has been steadily growing also as a follow-up of the Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunities regularly organised by CTA, so far in 37 countries.

Here are some stats about the latest growth of the Web2forDev community on various social media platforms:

Dgroups (En) (since 2006) :
# of members on 31/12/14:      3,874  in 110 countries
Growth over the year 2014:     +46%

Dgroups (Fr) (since 2006)  :
# of members on 31/12/14:      940 in 48 countries

LinkedIn (since July 2007)  :
# of members on 31/12/14:      1,939
Growth over the year 2014:     +20%

Facebook (since July 2007)  :
Total Likes on 31/12/14:          4,060
Growth over the year 2014:      +49%

Twitter (since August 2008)  :
# of followers on 31/12/14:      2,926
Growth over the year 2014:     +18%

The main portal is found at www.web2fordev.net and is available both in English and French.

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).

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.”

Additional references:

• Saramakan’s forests: watercourses at the core of a Participatory 3D Modelling exercise along the Upper Suriname River
• CTA-funded 3D map helping tribe document and articulate their traditional knowledge
• Multi-scale modeling of ecosystem services and land-use scenarios in the upper Suriname River basin

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.”