Question 5 (opens 5 Mar.)
Question 5: Stakeholder roles: What are the roles of ICT and agricultural stakeholders in e-agriculture strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation? How can we ensure the full participation of farmers and other non-governmental stakeholders ? What are the role(s) of the Ministry in charge of ICT and the one in charge of Agriculture? What role(s) for international stakeholders?
The Ministry of Agriculture plays a key role in ICT for Agriculture in Kenya.
Overly, they have created an enabling environment for ICT in the sector for Growth.
From the Vision 2030, the sector is recognized as key to economic development. The Ministry is anchored on the Agriculture Sector Development Strategy (ASDS) that acknowledges use of ICT in Agriculture. More recently, the National Agricultural Sector Extension Policy was launched and this policy has provisions for ICT in Agriculture, actually it analyses its contextual background and its current status.
The roles are complimentary between the ICT and Agric stakeholders. The ICT professionals develop the technology, deliver it and support it. They also help the stakeholders to understand what the technology means and how best to take advantage of the same.
Stakeholder roles
Stakeholders on their part provide info to the ICT pple and requests for solutions to their problems. This is what guides ICT to create solutions and to innovate new methods or processes that stakeholders can use. Farmers can participate in this process by coming together into strong associations and groupings so that they can be able to collaborate in the development of these technologies. This way they are also able to mobilize their members or the grassroots users to take advantage of these solutions (providing a platform to ensure that the technology easily reaches grassroots).
I have enjoyed reading through the posts from colleagues and would just like to make a few comments:
@Ben: Fully agree with the multi-stakeholder approach. I don’t agree with letting international actors take lead in M&E to ensure neutrality; we need to own these processes and we need to develop local capacity an expertise. Relying on international partners means that we will forever be dependent.
@Brad: I like your insightful comments and I am rather curious about your positioning of government as a regulator ; if you mean government as an enforcer or policy, then I fully agree. I also agree that broader participation = success with the caveat that everyone is speaking the same language and moving in the same direction. I am also curious as to why you would remove government from the evaluation process?
@emligot: I like the example of the private sector engagement with farmers and fully agree that it is essential to get farmers buy-in and trust
@Ngwanani: do our government ICT departments have the capacity to provide technical leadership? Should they even take on this role or should they rather focus on the policy dimension?
@all: we need to be careful about this assumption that “International Agencies provide the funding?” – do we want to maintain this status quo?
Alas funding sources being foreign seems to be the "new" normal for so many people in Africa --and maybe in the whole developing world? As we think about those challenges, we should do so with the constraint to create as much as possible self-sustaining economies not only based on domestic production but also based on trade and foreign investments -- but foreign aid is not foreign investment, or it is a hidden, perverted one made in some cases by some foreign governments to create markets for their private sectors. No one can be self-sufficient in the sense of producing all they need, but at least they can build a self-sustaining economy by striving to reach the appropriate levels of domestic production and consumption, export, import, domestic entrepreneurship and foreign investments. As far as I'm concerned, those are the main variables that drive development. I realize that many countries in the developing world are mismanaged, or their state building process was not even a viable one to begin with, and as a result the state/government may need budgetary support (in the hope that such situation is not structural but transitory). It then becomes even more crucial that those governments seek to unleash the ingenuity and productivity of their people by creating the right incentives and stretegies and frameworks (without the government spending a lot of money trying to become an economic entrepreneur or producer itself).
Every now and then I hear about African university students or professors going on a strike in order to improve their working conditions, etc. Maybe if we give enough thought into organizing universities so that in addition to being "intellectual developpers" they also are fully involved as economic actors, we might avoid having to wait for international agencies for some tasks. Why units could not be formed in our academias to play a more neutral role of providing providing assessment and evaluation services for our governments' policies as well as helping governments upfront to make evidence-based policies? And be even paid for that through research grants, etc.? And give the opportunity to qualified students to design and undertake research projects that address their countries' problems, with some assurance that their results will be consiered (maybe challenged but still considered) in related decisions that are made for the country-- as opposed to having their works be even more accessible to their colleagues in the "North" than to their national peers?
Well, I started this message with the above subject line, thinking to myself that sounds too grand for the 3 or 4 line observation I had in mind; that sounds like a book title. But let me stop here before it becomes one. I'm not sure whether this message can be ascribed to the discussion facilitator. Whatever the case, I am Mawaki Chango and I approve this message :)
Hi All,
It looks a very rich list of roles already identified. Just to add on what is proposed. As it was noted earlier, the e-agri strategies formulation and implementation process is a multi-stakeholder undertaking. That is why multistakeholder consultation is important in the e-strategies development process to ensure right from the beginning the participation and take of the various stakeholders. As it was rightly indicated, the role of Government is of paramount importance through its policy making mechanisms and has the primary responsibility in the development of forward-looking policy and legislation related to ICTs, recognizing that they have the capacity to spur growth, to create vast amounts of employment, and to attract investment, both local and foreign. In this regard, each country should develop a vision to guide development of the e-agriculture. Government considers development and adoption of Vision statements as the first steps in materializing government commitment to the e-strategy development process and adoption of ICTs. It creates the institutional framework (lead agency) to coordinate and implement the e-strategy. It creates the enabling environment in terms of legal and regulatory and other incentives for the growth of e-agri sector through participation by the private sector, other international partners and non-state actors. There are therefore a range of roles that we can list for each of the stakeholders including the private sector (e.g. application development, capacity building, research, etc.), research and academic institutions (e.g. training, research, content, etc.), government agri departments (e.g. building and maintaining national agri info system and network, etc.), etc.
It is here that the e-agri strategy is so important to clearly define the roles and strategic visions in all aspects.
Thanks
Abebe Chekol
Dear all,
Apologies for contributing so late day in the discussions. Contributing to this question about the role of different stakeholders, I believe IICD's past experience with formulating the ICT for Agriculture strategy in Bolivia can be informative. Although the experience is slightly dated (2007), the process was a very interesting one, and the process experience was evaluated by various stakeholders and documented for us to draw from in this current work.
The initiative to develop an ICT policy for the agriculture sector was a result of the ICT Roundtable for the agricultural sector in July 2002, organized by the IICD with the participation of key stakeholders from civil society and the government. The development of an ICT policy and strategic framework was seen as a requirement to ensure appropriate implementation of ICT in the agricultural sector, particularly when aiming at an impact on the lower-income agricultural producers in isolated rural areas.
Related to the process of formulation of the Estrategia TIC Agropecuario (ETICA), the Ministry of Agriculture indicated in its initial ETICA plan that it had the intention to: ‘Elaborate and implement an ICT policy and strategy developed with and validated by key stakeholders from civil society and the private sector. The Ministry has taken upon a process that aimed at the institutionalization of ICT in a systematic and participative way and based on consensus between the public sector and the civil society and the private sector.’ To achieve this objective the Ministry a National Coordination Committee was set up with the task to plan, execute and evaluate the process of formulation of the strategy under the supervision of the Minister of Agrciulture. The Committee included:
The process was financially supported by IICD and the Department for International Development of the British Government. IICD provided strategic advice on content and process and facilitated workshops. The support was provided directly through IICD staff or through a project team of technical staff of the Ministry and two Bolivian consultants working on a permanent basis in the Ministry of Agriculture. The processes included a range of activities, including a diagnosis of relevant development policies and the role of ICT and an analysis of the state-of-the-art in ICT-related activities in the sector. Discussions and input from stakeholders were gathered through a series of national workshops and 3 regional workshops in which government representatives of the 9 departments of Bolivia participated.
Key steps formulation process ETICA:
Jul 02 Start project team
Aug 02 Reference report ICT in agriculture
Aug 02 Installation National Coordination Committee
Aug 02-Jun 03 Start publication monthly newsletter
Sep 02 Introduction workshop with government officials and key actors
Sep 02 - Mar 03 Awareness and capacity development program for government representatives
Oct-Nov 02 Elaboration of the draft policy
Jan 03 Validation workshops at regional (department) level
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The document which this is drawn from was an internal document, but I can make it available to inform these debates. Hope it is useful for our collective goal!
(from the evaluation document)
The participants agreed that the strategy had an active participation of the different key actors of the sector. The government representatives at national and department level made up the majority of participants (55%), plus an additional group of government representatives of other related government institutions. Within the group of the government, the majority represent technical positions in the government.
The civil society, the private sector and academic sector had a smaller participation. Participants from these sectors were chosen on the basis of their on-the-ground experience and the knowledge in the use and application of ICT in the agricultural sector in Bolivia. Although the experience of actors in the process is recognized, the limited participation of the producers themselves is indicated as a clear weakness of the process.
The majority (85%) of the participants were involved in workshops and focus groups organized during the process. A small group of 15 persons participated in preparing and writing the actual policy document. Most participants indicate that the process has been transparent and that their opinions were being valued and taken into account in the actual policy documents. They have been able to participate in the formulation of the vision and goals of ETICA as well as in the taking decisions around the policy process. The participants mentioned contributions to the focus and methodological procedures. Furthermore, they have been able to bring experience and knowledge on the characteristics of the sector and the needs of the beneficiaries to the process particularly at local and rural levels. The larger part had experience with policy formulation processes before, which informs us on their judgments around the quality of the ETICA process. 70% of the participants wanted to participate more in the process. Part of these persons were not able to do so due to other obligations or cost related limitations. Still, around 70% indicates to have received insufficient information, received information late or not at all. The information exchange is clearly a point to improve in future processes.
Learning points on the part of participants
Participants joined the process for various reasons. Most important reasons included the representation of interests of the professional area each participant represent and the interest to participate in future implementation of ETICA. Learning about ICT and the formulation of public policies represent a second important objective for the participants. In general, 20% of the participants have reached their objectives fully, while 70% has partially met the objectives.
Consulted on learning aspects, they state that their participation allowed them to learn about policy formulation (65%) and related issues such as policy participation, reaching agreement and lobbying in policy processes. Another learning area was related to the understanding of the potential contribution of ICT to development (50%) and knowledge about the needs of beneficiary groups. This motivated them to integrate ICT better into their professional activities.