Let me try responding to Manish's original question. Specific to Indian context, I am citing here two examples that reflects civil society partnership models with government and private sector on agriculture: [u]Civil Society & Government[/u] Most notable example would be the collaboration between MSSRF (M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) for Interactive Farmers' Advisory Services through Village Resource Centres. Farmers can use these VRCs to access technical know-how and also can virtually interact with experts. Other CSOs (e.g. TARAhaat) also runs distance training for farmers using the VRCs. [u]Civil Society & Private Sector[/u] The LifeLines - India initiative, anchored by OneWorld South Asia in partnership with BT (British Telecom), Cisco Systems, ISAP (Indian Society for Agri-business Professionals) and TARAhaat (a social enterprise promoted by a leading Indian CSO). Please access more details on LifeLines India from a case study available at http://www.btglobalservices.com/business/global/en/docs/case_studies/li… This innovative IVRS & Web application, together with a service delivery process, demonstrates how the complementary competences of civil society and private sector have been synergised to deliver benefit to farmers. There are also examples of government and academia partnerships for new application development on agro-business domain (eAqua, eSagu etc.); but their usage is primarily restricted to public entities. I am also aware of sizeable private sector ICT initiatives which are being planned / rolled out. I would welcome contributions from members, especially from private sector, to throw more lights on these. Naimur Rahman OneWorld South Asia
Submitted by Fred Weirowski on Tue, 03/11/2008 - 05:50
Hello to all from WorldFish Center, HQs in Malaysia. I'm working as integrated expert for Public Private Partnership in Fisheries and Aquaculture at the WorldFish Center. This project is supported by the Geman development agency CIM. I'm very interested to learn more about the progress to use IT tool in PPP's practical examples, results and even obstacles from other projects in Agriculture dealing with IT to support the improvement of agriculture in developing countries. And, may be I can find somebody who is working in a project which is targeting the fishery and aquaculture? I'm working since more than 30 years in aquaculture and fisheries and could collect some experienes regarding IT solutions for fish trade about ecommerce, fish auction systems in europe (like Agro amarches , PEFA ) and traceability systems for seafood sine mid of the 90's. So I'm interested how tools like sms , mobil phones and other communication channels could be used for establishment of useful information networks for small scale fishermen, aquaculture farmers, communities or fish traders.