In 2013, the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) organised a pilot regional hackathon in collaboration with institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) and the Ministry of Youth and ICT (MyICT) of Rwanda and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Young aspiring entrepreneurs from East Africa developed ICT applications targeting agriculture. The winners and some best participants are currently being incubated and coached in partner ICT innovation centers to fine-tune their products, their business strategies and prepare the roll-out of the applications.
From 11 to 12 July 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya, CTA will organize a workshop to review the process of this acclaimed and innovative experience, its results, promote the young entrepreneurs and their products, discuss modalities for improvement, replication and scale-up of this activity in other ACP regions.Participants will include representatives of ICT and agriculture ministries, representatives of the ICT hubs, teams of young entrepreneurs and mentors involved, as well as other development stakeholders, including those who contributed to the conception of the activity. In total, about 30 participants will attend it. They will come from African, Caribbean, Pacific regions and Europe.
After the official opening, the workshop will discuss: experiences of East African ICT hubs with the initiative; experiences of young entrepreneurs; overall results achieved, challenges met; capacity building and business opportunities created. Other sessions will discuss how to meet the agribusiness knowledge needs of ICT developers; how to support the deployment of effective business models; how to increase collaboration between ICT hubs/institutions, agricultural stakeholders and business development organisations to support youth ICT4Ag entrepreneurship; collaboration opportunities around the Agri-Hack initiative; follow-up activities to be undertaken in regions like the Caribbean and West Africa where interest has already been expressed.
The workshop will be held prior to the international conference “Revolutionising finance for agricultural value chains (14 to 18 July), http://www.fin4ag.org/ organised by CTA and partners. Some winners and best participants of the activity will also attend that conference to promote their products and network with experts and potential partners and investors. Some of them (Farm Drive and Ensibuuko teams) have been selected to promote their products at the Plug and Play Day of the conference and other will share their experiences in various sessions.
For more information on the activity, read posts on this website and watch this 6 min video on the hackathon:
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