Displaying items by tag: innovation

Innovate for Agriculture (Report)

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:45:49 +0000

Increasing agricultural productivity in developing countries and promoting youth employment and entrepreneurship are important recommendations of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play an important role. Young entrepreneurs using ICT innovations are particularly suited to contribute to increased agricultural productivity and sustainability given their inventiveness, energy and capacity to take risks.

An increasing number of young innovative entrepreneurs in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are developing ICTs for agriculture solutions to support agricultural value chains, providing employment and livelihood opportunities.

To highlight ACP entrepreneurs’ important contribution and to emphasise the need for strengthening their endeavours, CTA, in collaboration with Ashoka's Youth Venture, has produced the publication Innovate for Agriculture.

The report introduces 30 innovators, 21 featured with full stories, and nine ‘innovators to watch’. Case studies include innovations from Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. A couple of innovators who come from outside ACP but offer services in these regions are also featured. The publication is a collection of life stories of interest to aspiring agri-tech entrepreneurs from all countries.

Featured innovations include: how the innovation came about; what problems it addresses; how the innovations are implemented; impacts so far; the business model; challenges faced; strategies to address sustainability; and, the future outlook. The report also includes entrepreneurs’ own recommendations and advice to other young people interested in venturing into ICT innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture.

According to Michael Hailu, Director of CTA, “The young innovators featured in this publication are role models who can inspire others and encourage them to innovate for agriculture. Their stories are a testimony of how young people are already contributing to transforming agricultural value chains through their innovations.”

The innovations featured fall into various segments along the agricultural value chain. While the first part of the publication focuses on services helping to improve livestock and crop production (e.g. HelloTractor, Daral Technologies), subsequent parts concentrate on those facilitating access to finance (e.g. Ensibuuko and FarmDrive) and those strengthening trade, markets and consumption (e.g. Foodrings, D'MarketMovers).

As Reem Rahman from Ashoka, one of report writers, observes, "The innovators featured in this report demonstrate the power of opening the door to youth leadership. They confirm that we currently have a powerful generation of changemakers transforming the world -- from agricultural value chains and beyond."

Innovate for Agriculture presents a multi-dimensional picture of the evolving field of ICT entrepreneurship in agriculture in developing countries. It describes challenges but also successes already achieved. It is hoped that this publication will serve as a key reference for young people and stakeholders seeking to invest in agriculture and ICTs in the ACP region.

The report is produced as part of CTA’s Agriculture, Rural Development and Youth in the Information Society (ARDYIS) project, which supports youth innovations and entrepreneurship in ICTs and agriculture. Most innovators included in the publication have benefited from CTA support and participated in its activities.
Resources

Download your copy of the report at http://bit.ly/innovate-agriculture
Follow @ctaflash and @ardyis_cta on Twitter.
For more information on these topics, read our reports ICTs and Youth in Agriculture and Innovative and Inclusive Finance for Youth in Agriculture in Africa.

Meet the winners of the Durban AgriHack Talent Challenge

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 10:49:17 +0000

The winners of the Durban AgriHack Talent Challenge, which took place from 28 November to 02 December 2015 in Durban in South Africa, were announced on 2nd December, at the closing ceremony of the Global Forum for Innovation in Agriculture, African Edition (GFIA Africa).

For more information, go to event's website http://durban-agrihack.ict4ag.org/

Agrihack Talent Caribbean! launched

Mon, 01 Sep 2014 16:32:17 +0000

The AgriHack Talent Caribbean initiative has been launched with the planning meeting that was held in Jamaïca. A Call for Expression of Interest will be launched on 2 August 2014 to the attention of Caribbean labs and hubs interested to partner on the programme.

The regional Finals of the AgriHack competition will be held in Suriname, in the framework of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture organised by the Secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Caribbean Ministries in charge of Agriculture early October 2014 in Suriname.

Read more on the AgriHack Talent: Agrihack Talent Caribbean! launched

The 40 Chances Fellows program

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 07:52:02 +0000

The 40 Chances Fellows program will fund four 40 Chances Fellows with the most innovative social enterprise plans that use strategies built on the principles of 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World. These social enterprises must seek to address issues of hunger, conflict, or poverty and may be established in any one of the following four countries where the Africa Governance Initiative has a strong presence: Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, or Malawi.

Each strategy must involve local leadership and management into the operations of the social enterprise by integrating local place-based ownership and relying on locally driven design, development, and deployment in its programs or services. In addition, these enterprises should fill gaps in existing value chains, or otherwise combine a variety of complementary and existing efforts into a comprehensive and integrated approach to solve the intended challenge.

The application timeline for the fellowship runs from October 17, 2013, to May 31, 2014. Applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 39 on the date the application closes (May 31, 2014). Winners will be selected by a blue ribbon panel of judges and formally announced at the 2014 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue in Des Moines, Iowa. Each of four fellows will receive $80,000 in start-up funds and $70,000 for living and transportation expenses (a total of $150,000) for one year.

During their first year of activity, fellows will be required to submit quarterly update reports to the World Food Prize.

More information on the 40 Chances Fellows website: http://www.40chances.com/fellows/

The Youth Agro Environmental Initiative wins Google Innovation Awards at Connected Kenya 2013!

Thu, 30 May 2013 16:17:02 +0000

The Google Innovation Awards 2013 (Agriculture Innovation category) went to the Youth Agro Environmental initiative, a Kenyan firm that runs a campaign focused on bringing youth back to agriculture. The winners were announced yesterday at the Connected Kenya Summit in Mombassa.

The Youth Agro Environmental initiative started as a blog that was created during YoBloCo Awards (Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition) organised by the ARDYIS project of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in 2011. "The YoBloCo awards pushed me to start blogging and to this day I remain an avid blogger. In fact, I’m no longer the only contributor to the blog. An agriculture professional with lots of experience in the field was so impressed by what we were doing that she offered to be a regular contributor on the blog", says Ms. Grace Wanene, the founder of the Youth Agro Environmental initiative.

Grace started the blog to share information and advice on agricultural, environmental and youth issues. Some of the popular posts that one can find on the blog are on the production of mushroom, strawberries, broiler, potato, passion fruit and many other agricultural commodities. What is very interesting about the articles she writes is that they are focused on how to produce these crops or livestock, with details on the agricultural practices and also adding a business perspective to them by giving examples of business plans.

The Youth Agro Environmental initiative was the runner-up in the individual category of the YoBloCo Awards. Grace did not stop her blogging activity after the competition. She upgraded the blog, added more features, allowing her to have feedback from her audience which includes other finalists that she met during the prize giving ceremony in South Africa. She also started to provide consultancy services on agriculture through the blog.

Today, apart from being just an online information sharing platform, the Youth Agro Environmental initiative is also offering trainings to young people on how to grow different crops in Kenya and start up an agri-business. “Currently we are holding trainings on strawberry and sweet yellow passion fruit but we will soon introduce mushroom farming and other crops gradually. We also have a question and answer service where we answer questions from farmers by email. We get between 5 and 10 questions daily”.

Winning the Global Innovation Awards is a great achievement for the team and this is another success story showing how the use of ICTs are creating opportunities for youth in Agriculture.

The Blog of the Youth Agro Environmental initiative can be accessed on this link: http://yagrein.blogspot.nl/

The ARDYIS project warmly congratulates Grace for this outstanding achievement!

The Awards at the Connected Kenya 2013 were sponsored by Google, with winners getting mentorship from the firm, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8 tablets, online ad spend vouchers and Google App subscriptions. The top two winners get a Nexus Q and a Pixel laptop in addition.