East Africa Digital Conference & Exhibition

Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization and partners are organizing the East African Digital Farmers Conference. The conference will run from the 25 -27th of April 2018, at the Kenya Agriculture & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) grounds in Nairobi, Kenya.

Image credit: Karlo and partners

The 3 day conference will bring together end users, service providers, disseminators, regulators, policy formulators, and technology developers of ICT solutions in the agricultural sector for the region.

The specific objectives of the conference are:-

• Highlight gains in the ICT sector that are fostering growth in agribusiness and food security in the East Africa Region
• Identify opportunities for sustaining gains and furthering geographical and technological scope in ICT for agricultural development
• Bring together stakeholders in e-agriculture to augment efforts and avoid duplication for better utilization of resources.
• Recommend actionable points for follow up with various stakeholders and identify their roles for better cohesion in the sector
• Develop a sustained approach that will guide future similar events

Some of themes addressed by this conference

• Strengthening policy and regulation - a major impediment to agricultural development is weak policy and regulation and poor enforcement of existing laws and regulations
• Research and development - Successful cases of ICT application in research include bioinformatics, application of programs for interpretation of gene sequencing data, use of GPS, GIS, disease forecasting, crop suitability assessment and modelling, data cubes, geospatial data, satellite imagery and remote sensing, agricultural science, technology and innovation (Agri-STI), exploratory analytics and database visualisation and agricultural weather modelling, and modelling
• Capacity development - A major challenge in adopting ICT technologies by end users is the low level of ICT literacy. In addition, infrastructural support to necessitate adequate training as well as use of ICT innovation is limited. Stakeholders will discuss gaps in ICT literacy, including gender barriers, policy requirements to address such gaps, the role of e-learning to fast track capacity building initiatives, and the role of PPS in fostering ICT literacy and application

For more information here