On Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017 the board of the brazilian National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC) approved the text that regulates the operation of drones for commercial purposes throughout the Brazilian territory. The regulation brings standards and procedures that guarantee legal and operational safety and will have a great impact on the market’s sustainable growth. According to ANAC, the objective of the new regulations is to make viable Drones operations in Brazil, preserving the safety of people. The regulations were elaborated taking into account the level of complexity and risk involved in...
The European Commission presented on Thursay, May 4th, "Digital4Development", a strategy to mainstream digital technologies into European Union development policy, contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The EU lacks an appropriate framework for mainstreaming and ensuring an effective delivery of digital technologies and services. Digital technologies can be very useful in key areas for development, such as agriculture, job creation, access to micro-finance, education and health. The Digital4Development project is intended to be part of overall development...
The GSMA mAgri Programme forges partnerships between mobile operators, technology providers and agricultural organisations. Although it has enourmous potential, Mexico seems to have been left out by ICT for agriculture initiatives. This article presents seven reasons for which Mexican agriculture should invest in ICT related projects to lift farmers out of poverty and into the 21st century. 1. The needs of Mexican farmers are huge 3.9 million farmers out of 5.3 million in Mexico earn of less than USD 1,000 per year. 61 per cent of Mexican farmers live in poverty. The reasons for this...
ICTs are pivotal for the future of agriculture. As they are finding an ever important space in most sectors of everyday life, agriculture should't be an exeption. ICTs can help in many ways producers and particularly smallholders in their livelihoods and development. In particular, ICTs can be an essential tool for young people aspiring to create their own agricultural business. As most of them have grown with these tools, they are more eager to use them in their worklife as well. This handbook published by the CTA is a guide designed for aspiring ICT entrepreneurs to instruct them with the...
In the recent special report entitled ' EU Farming getting smarte r' the EURACTIV.com covers on technology and agriculture. The publication reports that European Union is exploring ways of helping its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) enter the digital era after 2020. However, there are numerous challenges that are identified such as the e-skills building, lack of broadband infrastructure and Big Data management. Below we present the abstracts of the titles covered in this report. Smart farming hinges on e-skills and rural internet access The digitisation of agriculture could help Europe...
In this blog Oxfam publishes a report that gives a glimpse on the use of ICTs in humanitarian response. The report details activities, outcomes of the Scaling Humanitarian ICTs Networks (SHINE) project. Similarly e-Agriculture forum on ICTs and resilence provided use cases of ICTs in humanitarian situations in the agricultural domain Natural disasters such as droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, diseases epidemics and man-made crises such as conflicts, war and socio-economuc shocks still bedevil communities and affect agricultural activities. Are ICTs a tool in a humanitarian response...
There are about 500 million small-scale farmers on Earth, and most of them live on less than $1 a day. They’re often separated from larger population centers, or lack the means to educate themselves on specialized farming methods. Internet connections might be less common in the developing world, but mobile technology is pervasive. Today, 90% of smallholder farmers are able to access a basic mobile phone. In Africa especially, people have turned directly to mobiles instead of owning first personal computers. WeFarm is a peer-to-peer (P2P) knowledge sharing platform for small-scale farmers in...
The USAID’s Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) signed a partnership agreement with the Ghana Fisheries Commission and Tigo Ghana called "Tigo Fishers Network Initiative." which aims to provide fisher folk with tailored mobile solutions using Tigo platform. In Ghana, 10 per cent of the population work directly or indirectly in the fishing sector, which generates over one billion dollars in revenue annually and accounts for at least 4.5 per cent of Ghana's GDP. Photo Credits: stopillegalfishing.com Tigo Fisheries Network will provide fisher folk information access on best...
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in conjuction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources and the Ministry of Youth and ICT has launched a new project called ' Agricultural Services and Digital Inclusion in Rwanda ". Mobile applications in this project This project is set to develop four mobile applications: "Cure and feed your livestock","eNtrifood","Weather and crop calendar"and "AgriMarketplace". The applications centre around the four themes - animal health and feed,weather and climate change adaptation services, nutrition and agricultural market. These Apps will be...
Ecosia is a search engine that plants trees each time you search for something. The Bing-powered search engine earns about half a Euro cent with each search and spends 28 cents to plant a tree. So to plant one tree Ecosia only needs about 56 searches. This way, the Berlin-based search engine has already planted over 7 million trees worldwide. Ecosia has focused on planting trees as it presents countless advantages, among which fighting climate change, restart water cycles, turn deserts back into fertile forests and provide nutrition, employment, education, medical assistance and political as...
