ICT Update's List: Agricultural knowledge

Created in 2005 with IDRC support, the UbuntuNet Alliance has helped propel many of southern and eastern Africa’s academic institutions into the Internet age. It has done this by promoting policies and practices that have drastically reduced the cost of Internet access.

The Internet revolution created a do-or-die situation for African universities. New electronic networking opportunities for researchers, as well as the shift to digital databases and e-journals, promised small institutions around the world access to an immense range of materials. It also offered their researchers a voice in important global academic and scientific discussions.

But in Africa, Internet access was extremely expensive. A large institution could typically afford only the level of connectivity available to a North American home. Under these conditions, trying to access essential materials on the Internet “was like trying to drink up an ocean through a straw,” says Steve Song, a former IDRC program manager who worked with the UbuntuNet Alliance during its formation.

Remaining cut off from the digital revolution would have been profoundly damaging for Africa. Economic growth and the pursuit of solutions to the medical, environmental, and other challenges facing the continent are highly dependent on local research capacity and collaboration. Yet without access to the digital tools that had become standard elsewhere, Africa’s best researchers and teachers could be expected to move abroad.

NMRiceMobile enables farmers in the Philippines to

Call a toll-free number from their mobile phone
Answer questions by pressing the numbers on the phone's keypad as prompted by a recorded voice
And then receive a text message with a fertilizer recommendation for their field

MDI is an Open Data portal for the developing world mobile industry. We believe that open access to high quality data will improve business decision making, increase total investment from both the commercial mobile industry and the development sector and accelerate economic, environmental and social impact from mobile solutions.

A challenge facing mobile industry stakeholders in the developing world is the lack of publicly available data and analysis to support their business decision making and to clarify the socio-economic impact of mobile. MDI will fill this information gap and will aggregate and host data from multiple sources such as the World Bank, UN, member operators and from vendors and development organisations.

There are nearly five billion mobile connections in the developing world, increasing by 18 per second. The industry is moving beyond basic voice to the use of mobile to deliver services in adjacent sectors such as health, financial services, agriculture and education. As the most widely adopted technology in history, mobile is uniquely positioned to drive economic, environmental and social change.

The World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ), in an experimental initiative, has launched the first ever virtual science newsroom in Amman, Jordan, targeted at supporting the development of science journalism in Africa and the Middle East.



The Science Journalism Cooperation (SjCOOP), is a 3-year training scheme for budding science journalists in Africa and the Arab world which developed the newsroom.