Hi all,

It was an interesting discussion and hope all the important issues could be captured and senthesised. By way of key recommendations, I would like to suggest the following:

- e-agriculture readiness study (baseline study) - this needs to be the first step in the e-agri strategy formulation process where it enables us to benchmark the existing situation in the sector and set the goals and vision for the e-agri strategy. This covers a range of issues from infrastructure, content, access issues to consulting key stakeholders in terms of the visions of goals for the e-agri strategy. It also helps in looking at all the external factors including risks and assumptions.

- ensuring multistakeholder participation - as it was noted in the earlier discussion, the e-strategy development process need to involve all stakeholders and ensure their particpation during formulation including validation of the strategy and their role in the implementation; it would also be useful to make sensitisation both at grassroots and high-level policy making bodies.

- institutional framework - as it indicated from the experience of Philippines, the lead agency in terms of coordinating the implementation of the e-agri strategy is important which needs mobilising resources and building capacity to this effect.

Thanks all for the useful exchanges.

Best wishes

Abebe Chekol

 
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,

Just to share some experiences both from the broad ICT policy formulation and implementation challenges that cuts across the e-strategies in sectors. In this context, some of the challenges we identify both in working with governments in Africa particularly are the following:

- political will and stability- most of the success stories in terms of ICT sector policy development and implementation is linked to political commitment at the higher level of the decision making. The ICT success stories many refer to Rwanda is one example of this such political will and championship in the leadership. On the other hand the stability and continuity issue is also another challenge where e-strategy development and implementation can face obstacles in cases of change of bureaucratic apparatus and leaderhship.

- participatory approach - as it was noted in some of the discussions, e-strategies development can only be achieved through a broad-based participatory approach. This clearly signifies the cross-cutting nature of ICTs from specialised agencies involved in the infrastructure development aspects to sectoral agencies for the various socio-economic sectors to the policy, legal and regulatory agencies including other non-state actors. Therefore the broad-based participation in e-strategies development and implementation is an important factor.

- priority sectors - as it was also noted in some of the discussions, it is important that the sector gets priority attention to necessitate the need to put strategies in place.  There are also other priority issues in terms of the capacity building i.e. human and institutional strengthening, etc. that could contribute to challenges in effective implementation of the e-strategies.

- external factors - some of the challenges particularly in implementation could be those that were not seen in the policy formulation process such as those that require legal and regulatory frameworks that need to be in place. I assume some of the mobile-based agri marketing initiatives would require require legal and regulatory frameworks for such activities as issuing statements with financial values, etc. 

Hope these could help in highlighting issues in this area.


Best regards

Abebe Chekol

 
Dear All,
Thanks for the lively discussions going since last week which I found very enriching. Having being on mission in Rwanda last week, I was trying to catch up and wanted to share few thoughts and experiences from UNECA initiatives in this area particularly on issues that have been discussed over last week.

Yes, there is a need for national e-agriculture strategies, as it was highlighted by different colleagues here for some simple reasons ranging from competing for the limited financial resources for the sector to coordinating the multi-stakeholder initiatives in the sector into the overall national vision for the ICT sector in general and sectoral strategies in particular. In this regard, for example over 45 countries in Africa have now national ICT policies in place.  These national policies identify key pillars or priority areas ranging from infrastructure development to human resource devt, content dev’t, e-government, ICT for community development, agriculture, education, health, etc.  For example, agriculture is one of the key pillars of the national ICT policy in Burundi, Cameroon and Cote d’Ivoire. Most countries have moved from policy formulation to implementation in the last over ten years which necessitated defining sectoral priorities through sectoral strategies, namely, e-agriculture, e-health, e-commerce, e-education, etc. strategies.  However, we have few countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali which have developed e-agriculture strategies. As most colleagues mentioned, there are a number of initiatives in the agri sector in several countries aiming, for example, to enhance the agri value chain through for example mobile app for providing market prices of agri products to farmers, and providing community telecentre access to rural communities, etc. However, there are several challenges of sustaining such initiatives as they are not connected to national dev’t plans or government sector development programmes through e-strategies in the sector. We are glad that the needs for e-agri strategies have been largely positively addressed in the discussions last week.

As it is clear, a lot of investment is going on in developing the infrastructure, deploying broadband and upgrading networks to 3G and 4G, etc. which agri stakeholders ranging from smallholder farmers to govt ministries and research institutions, famers organizations, universities and research institutions in the agri sector, etc. need to exploit the benefits of using ICTs in their respective domain in the wider agriculture sector.

At UNECA, as facilitators and coordinators of the implementation of WSIS action lines in Africa, we undertake questionnaire-administered surveys every two years to assess the status in each country. According to the results in the last three surveys, there is increasing use of ICT in some sectors such as e-government, e-education, e-business, etc. which has received the priority from government and other stakeholders. However, with agri gaining importance in the last few years at international levels there is increasing investment in the use of ICTs which need to be coupled with proper strategy in place. We look forward to providing our inputs on the rest of the issues this week.
 
Thanks
 
Abebe Chekol
UNECA/ISTD