In 2015, many countries adopted the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , there by committing to a vision of a low- carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable future for all. The world events leading to and after the signing of the agreement have shown that climate issues are becoming a reality; for instance, 2016 was the hottest year on record with the average global temperature at almost 1 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have developed nationally determined contributions (NDCs), national adaptation plans and mid-...
WSIS has announced the opening of the WSIS Prizes 2018 and they are encouraging all the stakeholders to SUBMIT their project descriptions to the WSIS Prizes contest from 11 September 2017 – 2 January 2018. The e-Agriculture team encourages eligible projects in agriculture to submit their projects for this prestigious award. WSIS Prizes are a major highlight of the WSIS Forum every year and they recognize outstanding initiatives by governments, private sector, and civil society that leverage the contributions of ICT for the benefit our society. Projects related to ICTs in Agriculture fall...
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) is hosted by the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and presided over by Fiji; signaling the return of climate change to the international agenda. This meeting comes just in time when the world is seeing climate induced catastrophies in many parts of the world. At this UN Climate Change Conference, nations will meet to advance the aims of the Paris Agreement and measure progress of its implementation guidelines. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is representing as a leader of the...
Africa’s economy is based largely agriculture and most of them being smallholder farmers. One of the challenges these family farmers face is access to weather information and forecasting services. Lack of access to relevant weather information is due to lack of access of weather source information, dilapidated weather stations that fail to accurately provide reliable weather data, amongst many other reasons. Kukua is an initiative whose vision is to close Africa’s weather information gap by providing new weather station technology and improved weather forecast accuracy. Kukua seeks to...
The Yield is an Internet of Things (IoT) Australian product company that aims to use technology to improve yields in agriculture and aquaculture. The Yield combines wireless sensor networks and localised data to inform farmers and growers on the best decisions to make regarding their yelds. The Yield uses Sensing+, a microclimate sensing system for agriculture which measures data from different points around the farm and provides hyper local predictions based on the farm's growing conditions by using data analytics and artificial intelligence. Watch The Yield's presentation video: Credits:...
In a recent article on Harvard Business Review, Ndubuisi Ekekwe explores how digital technology is poised at providing a solution to increase farm productivity in Africa. In this article he reviews the food challenges affecting Africa such as weather changes, rural-urban migration that deprives farming communities of young people and deforestation amongst many challenges. While African governments have employed many policy instruments to improve farm productivity, yields are still marginally improving. The article notes that African entrepreneurs are interested in how farmers work and how...
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) , agriculture sector accounts for more than half of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and over 70 per cent in East African Community (EAC). But there is an issue threatening agricultural crops and practices more than any other these years: climate change, and the category most affected by this are smallholders farmers. Smallholders, who have learnt to plant and cultivate their crops according to ancestral knowledge, are now confronted with an issue which is much bigger than them and which they cannot control. In...
Agricultural insurance is essential for smallholder farmers, as plots of land are small and the consequences of crop diseases and climate change effects can be disastrous. Yeld loss and damage monitoring and verification can be long and laborious task, causing huge delays in settlements. Although new technologies have been applied, drones, micro-satellites, digital photography can help improve the monitoring of crops and yelds for smallholders and insurance companies. Remote sensing can be a key tool for farmers to prove their crop and harvest loss to insurance companies. At the same time,...
