As part of a Webinar series annouced at the IGAD/RDA 14 Plenary Meeting at the University of Helsinki (Finland), to enable high quality discussion outside of RDA meetings, GODAN Cheif Scientist Dr. Suchith Anand and Data Rights Advisor Foteini Zampati will deliver a Webinar on Mobilizing Capacity Development for Bridging the Digital Divide in Agriculture. The discussion will be moderated by Cynthia Parr, Technical Information Specialist, Agricultural Research Service, USDA.
The Webinar will be held on 12 December 2019, 16h00 (CET). To join, please register here.
Around 800 million people worldwide struggle with hunger and malnutrition, the majority being women and children. The solution to Zero Hunger lies within existing, but often unavailable, agriculture and nutrition data. Open Data offers great potential for innovation and advances in agriculture.
Without the innovation and insight open data provides, smallholder farmers face many, unnecessary challenges and risks in realising benefit from their investments. There are two main challenges that need to be overcome: How to gain access to relevant data and services provided by third parties, and secondly; how to make sure that data shared does not in fact weaken their positions.
Improving data access in agriculture is not only a technical issue; it is also a social, ethical and legal one - and complex, as agriculture is extremely diverse, composed of very different types of agricultural methods and farming realities.
Today, our society and food systems are globally connected, we source our products from all over the world and agriculture is making significant impacts in local communities. A large share of the world’s farmers could benefit from bridging the digital divide but as a starting point we need to strengthen the capacity to access and reuse data. It is important that digital solutions developed are designed to allow all farming communities to maximize their potential, especially in areas with low literacy levels and limited knowledge of digital technologies, yet where the untapped agriculture potential remains among the highest in the world.
The presenters will use their experience to explore how bringing together various global stakeholders in a shared mission can help us to bridge the digital divide.
