Question 1: What is resilience and how can ICTs help resilience programmes or projects?

ICTs is an asset in Agriculture to help resilience programmes or projects and particularly for data collection, management and dissemination and particularly to support Early Warning Systems at national, regional and global level in various areas such as Animal Health, Plant Health and Food Safety to ensure health protection e.g. Mobile technologies such as real-time disease reporting to support animal health systems.

Important to highlight that ICTs can help significantly resilience programmes or projects if strong technical expertise is overseeing this process and making sure that strategies for sustainability of those technology are well designed to include technical advice, policy guidance and advocacy.

Question 2: Do you have concrete examples of successful use of ICTs for Resilience

In response to the challenges that face animal health systems in developing countries in particular collecting and analysing disease data from the field,  FAO has been exploring ways of offering innovative approaches and tools to expand the use of personal electronic devices to report key data from disease threats in the field. Some FAO field projects have started to use mobile apps, Small Message Service (SMS) and digital pen technologies to facilitate field disease reporting.

FAO AGAH/Global Early Warning System (GLEWS) Unit developed the EMA-i tool to facilitate real-time disease data collection and reporting to support official veterinary services capacities in epidemiology, reporting, early warning and surveillance.

FAO is implementing some activities in African countries by offering a full package of technical services and tools to veterinary services and stakeholders which include the development and customisation of EMA-i according to national needs, the provision of a secured platform in FAO to host the data for governments and the technical support for the functionalities and flow of communication of the data reported through EMA-i and all the setting up and validation procedures. All this knowledge and technology is developed using open sources and Android technology under the overall development of the FAO’s Global Animal Disease Information System (EMPRES-i).

EMA-i is being successfully implemented in Uganda and with a plan for expansion. Other countries have just started such as Tanzania (Zanzibar) and Mali.

Uganda:

So far EMA-i app has been implemented in Uganda since 2013 and so far in 18 districts, which include all the seven Karamoja districts. Currently there are 169 EMA-i users/reporters in Uganda and a total of 1,158 disease reports have been received during the period of implementation in 18 districts which has increased the sensitivity of the overall surveillance systems and allowing authorities to take measures to mitigate the potential spread of this diseases within the country. The potential expansion of EMA-i has been discussed with the government to expand its development to collect additional information on livestock production and associated parameters.

Mali:

EMA-i is currently implemented under a first phase from November 2016 to April 2017 in eight communal areas of four Cercle in the regions of Koulikoro, Kayes, Sikasso. Criteria to select the areas included safety, accessibility, presence of certain diseases and internet availability.

United Republic of Tanzania (Zanzibar):

EMA-i is currently implemented since June 2016 in Zanzibar and with a plan to expand to the mainland during 2017.

Some useful links:

Information sheet on EMA-i:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4853e.pdf

EMA-i: a Mobile App for Timely Animal Disease Field Reporting to Enhance Surveillance:
http://www.e-agriculture.org/news/ema-i-mobile-app-timely-animal-disease-field-reporting-enhance-surveillance

EMA-i Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLh9dCWne0o

EMA-i Uganda:
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/empres/news_020813.html

EMPRES 360 Bulletin – page 12:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3470e/i3470e.pdf

EMA-i Plan in Mali:
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/programmes/en/empres/news_241214c.html

Thanks for allowing us to contribute to this forum,

Julio Pinto (AGAH/GLEWS)

Fairouz Larfaoui (FCC EMPRES)

Martina Escher (AGAH/GLEWS)