The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), in collaboration with ITU will organize a “Plug and Play event” in the framework of which various agricultural mobile applications and devices will be showcased. These applications and products have been developed and are operated by young entrepreneurs from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and USA. Some of the applications have been developed through hackathons and incubations organised by the project “Agricultural, Rural Development and Youth in the Information Society” (ARDYIS) which won the 2015 WSIS Forum Prize in the e-agriculture category. The applications to be demonstrated at WSIS facilitate access to agricultural finance, agricultural market, climate smart information, pest management, nutrition, and fighting food waste. Some of these apps are already impacting lives of thousands of farmers in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.
CTA’s Plug & Play – Tech-Dating for Agriculture is an event usually organised in collaboration with international conferences and workshops to showcase the range of ICTs/mobile platforms developed and being implemented on the field. It gives participants a structured hands-on introduction to emerging ICTs for agriculture. It allows innovators to demonstrate their systems in-turns thereby allowing participant to experience as many innovations that is of interest. Participants have the time and opportunity for one-on-one discussion with peers and innovators on the challenges in the field, what is new, what is working. It is a fantastic opportunity for a valuable and very practical insight into the new technologies.
It offers ICT innovators the opportunity to demonstrate their solutions to interested clients; agricultural value chain actors to discover the latest ICT platforms for their agricultural activities; investors a unique platform to identify viable areas for investment; donors options for discovering emerging areas for support; and policy makers the room for understanding and exploring potential areas for policy and decision actions.