Hani Eskandar
| Organization | International Telecommunication Union (ITU) |
|---|---|
| Organization type | International Organization |
| Country | Switzerland |
Mr. Eskandar is the ICT Applications Coordinator at the ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of ITU. Mr. Eskandar is currently involved in providing assistance to several developing countries by advising on eApplications strategies and policies, assisting in implementing technical co-operation projects and developing guidelines and best-practices on eApplications.
Previously, Mr. Eskandar had extensive experience in the field of ICT for Development where he, through working with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent in Switzerland and, UNDP and other NGOs in Egypt, was involved in several development projects in the fields of Health, Education, Illiteracy Eradication, Community Development, SME development and Micro Credits. This included, among others, introducing Telemedicine services in rural areas, introducing ICT in Schools, creating Community Development Portals, Community Learning Centres, developing e-Learning and training programs for Youth.
Mr. Eskandar has an educational background in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunications) and has completed an MBA from McGill University, Canada and a Master Degree in Social and Economic Development Studies from University of Paris I, France.
This member participated in the following Forums
Forum Towards National E-agriculture Strategies
Question 1
While a strategy does not guarentee reaching out your objectives, with no strategy, you are almost sure not to!
Moving from pilots to scale is not an easy process. A strategy is essential to create the environment in which the right discussions and collaborations happen to initiate and support such process and more importantly, to respond to some of the key issues that impede the adoption and mainstreaming of ICT in Agriculture. Several questions need to be answered:
Who is supposed to adopt e-Ag; who should pay for it and who should decide on investment decisions; how to evaluate its impact; how to ensure consistency and consolidation of efforts rather than competing or duplicating; What are the priorities and what is the roadmap; what overall policies are required; who should steer and govern and how to make sure that the solutions respond to problems (rather than the opposite), etc.
One should see that the strategy developmet process itself has it own value that is almost as important as the strategy end product. This is where stakeholders come to know each others and when the real issues are discussed.
In several cases, what is needed is just few adjustments and some key decisions to be made by the right people to make it happen. The best innovations and best ideas can just be ignored because no one took ownership of them and no serrious discussion happened on how to best leverage those.
A strategy is a pretext for all this to happen.