The theme for this years’ International Women’s Day celebration is “Empower Rural Women – End Hunger and Poverty.” This is in recognition of the critical role and contribution women, especially rural women are playing globally to enhance agricultural and rural development, improve food security and help reduce poverty levels in their communities. Unfortunately, there are others…
Tag: Ghana
Can ICTs help reduce side-selling? Challenges with financing the Ag Value Chain
I was part of a recent USAID After Hours Seminar Series (even though this particular one was a breakfast event) sponsored by the Microenterprise Development office on the topic “Viewing Value Chain and Household Finance From a Demand Perspective.” The discussion was led by Geoffrey Chalmers, a senior technical advisor at ACDI/VOCA and Jason Agar,…
Nigeria to join Zambia for e-voucher: who’s next?
A new plan using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to facilitate smooth delivery of inputs to farmers will soon be implemented in Nigeria. “With this system, we can trace if somebody is supplying bad fertilizer, supplying sand instead of fertilizer; we know where it comes from as opposed to the old system,” said the Nigerian…
The Myth of E-Voucher Schemes for Enhanced Fertilizer Use
The future use of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as e-vouchers in delivering subsidized fertilizer (or other inputs) to farmers in the current information age is blurred due to the very high cost involved in setting up such systems and the anticipated power/energy problems. This was one of the revelations made by experts…
Esoko: Partnership with MNOs for Ag. Mobile Service is a Challenge!
(Originally Posted on GBI Portal by Benjamin K Addom) A Partner Director at Esoko, Laura Drewett says one of the challenges being faced by Esoko as a technology company in developing and deploying mobile services to rural communities, is partnering with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Drewett was speaking at the January 06 2012 GBI TechTalk…
“Agriculture Goes High Tech” – A Decade of Digital Video!
It is over 10 years now that the Commonwealth of Learning Media Empowerment (COLME) program hit the media with the headline “Agriculture Goes High Tech With Digital Video”. This came up as a result of the success of their pilot project that used digital technology to produce farm instructional videos in Ghana and Jamaica for…
The Magic of ICTs: Rural Women in Agriculture
Let’s imagine the state of the global food security in the next 3-5 years, if rural women decide to back out of agriculture and food production today? Secondly, let’s visualize how access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) by rural women could reverse the negative impacts that this could make on the globe – that…
Digitalisation and Smallholder Agriculture 