An initiative of CTA, facilitated by the ARDYIS project

Incubation starts for winners of the hackathon

February 27, 2014 By KLO With 1 comment

A quick update on the hackathon.

The regional winning teams have received their prizes and are/have enjoyed them!  Currently, as planned in the activity, the incubation phase is starting.

For six months, each of the three hubs supporting the winning teams will provide them with services relating to :

  1. fine-tuning the concept that was presented at the hackathon to improve its market viability
  2. addressing technological and business challenges arising in the course of rolling out the product
  3. designing of strategies that favour wide adoption of the product
  4. establishing linkages to potential investors for additional capital for scaling out the product
  5. introducing the team members to local mentors in the technology, business and agricultural space
  6. monitoring the team’s progress and commitment for recommendations to CTA regarding planned follow-on activities. 


Thanks to a support provided by AGRA, finalists from Rwanda will also benefit from an incubation for three months. As a reminder, the regional winners come from Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

CTA plans to involve committed teams in its future activities or facilitate their involvement in activities organised by partners. This will help them enhance their capacity, promote their products, meet professional contacts.

More update later.

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Concept of the AgriHack East African experience

January 9, 2014 By KLO With no comments yet

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), Rwanda, are organising an international conference on ICT for Agriculture (ICT4Ag) in Kigali from 4 to 8 November 2013. It will promote the application of ICTs in the agricultural sector with particular emphasis on value chains, advocacy and policy development. Around 400 international delegates are expected to attend the event, coming from the private and public sectors, civil society, farmers and community organizations, development practitioners, academics, entrepreneurs, telecom operators, technology hubs and policy makers.

Agri-Hack Championship

One of the key activities planned to run in parallel to the conference is a “hackathon”, focused on the agricultural sector. A hackathon is an event during which computer programmers (and development stakeholders when required) collaborate intensively to develop an ICT application or platform addressing a specific challenge. It is a great instrument to demonstrate how communities of developers provide IT solutions that can address development information issues. The ICT4Ag Hackathon called “Agri-Hack Championship” is the first event of its kind organized by CTA. It focuses on East Africa, as a pilot event. Lessons learned will be shared with all ACP regions and beyond.

Aim of the hackathon

The aim is to highlight the potential of ICT applications in agriculture and to support the development of ICT innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture, especially by young people. Indeed, the ICT4Ag hackathon does not aim to be a one-shot event that will end with the closing ceremony and site visits of the ICT4Ag Conference. It is conceived as an event with follow-up, which will be facilitated notably by CTA. It takes the form of regional championship, with national selection events or hackathons, and the Finals will be held during the conference. Development of applications will thus start before the conference.

Subject of the hackathon

Applications to be developed during the hackathon will offer solutions to strategic information dissemination challenges and access to financial services for agricultural stakeholders in East Africa. They have been selected following consultation with key East African stakeholders, during a planning meeting organized from 16 to 17 July 2013 in Rwanda.

Collaboration with technology hubs

A call for Expression of Interest to select tech hubs/labs which will be involved as partners was launched in August 2013. The institutions selected, which are the most reputed in the region, are: kLab (Rwanda), KINU and Buni Hub (Tanzania), Ice Addis (Ethiopia), Hive Colab and Outbox (Uganda), C4DLab (Computing for Development Lab) and iBizAfrica (Kenya), Habaka Madagascar Innovation Hub (Madagascar). Each of these partners will organise a national event to select a team which will take part in the Finals during the Conference. Each team will send two representatives to the finals in Kigali. Hubs/labs will also be involved in follow-up activities. m:lab East Africa has been selected as technical partner for the entire event. iHub (Kenya) will also take part in some activities.

Follow-up to the Hackathon, Multi-stakeholder collaboration

To ensure that the applications developed meet the needs of agricultural stakeholders in East Africa and that the developers have the opportunity to further refine and launch the applications after the event, CTA has involved, from the start, key East African stakeholders, including agricultural authorities, ICT institutions and business support organizations to collaborate on the initiative. After the conference, follow-up activities are planned and the involvement of various national and international institutions is being explored. Representative of those institutions attended the planning meeting of the event, who notably contributed in fine-tuning the concept of the activity and proposed the challenges for which the applications are to be developed. The Ministries in charge of Agriculture and ICT are strong partners of Rwanda. A fully-fledge hackathon will take place in Rwanda as part of the regional event.

Winning applications

The top three applications developed and the ICT innovation hubs supporting them will receive a substantial prize including cash awards, capacity building and incubation opportunities. In addition, the winning applications will be pitched and showcased at the ICT4Ag awards dinner on 07 November 2013.

Interested in being a partner?

Partners can contribute by:

  • Funding prizes for the winners
  • Providing business development, incubation or investment opportunities
  • Collaborating on the design or implementation of follow-up activities
  • Any other partnership possibilities can be discussed with CTA

Contact for the Hackathon

Ken Lohento
ICT4D Programme Coordinator
Email: 

Technical manager
 m:lab East

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Challenges for the East African experience

January 9, 2014 By KLO With no comments yet

Challenges for the East African experience

Applications to be developed will provide solutions to key strategic information challenges faced by agricultural stakeholders in East Africa. The challenges have been selected following a consultation with key East African stakeholders, at a meeting organized on 16 -17 July 2013 in Rwanda. Participants came from countries such as Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zambia, and included representatives of MINAGRI; the Ministry of Agriculture from Uganda and Kenya; the Rwandan Ministry of Youth and ICT (MYICT); ICT hubs from five countries; development organisations working in Agriculture; as well as representatives from NEPAD, COMESA, and AGRA.

The challenges also represent business opportunities.

The challenges finally selected for the hackathon are the following :

  • Challenge 1:

How can bidirectional information sharing and communication between farmers and extension workers be encouraged or improved? Key areas of interest include information sharing and advisory on soil fertility, fertilizers, weather information, pests, diseases, access to localized farming inputs, multimedia content and ability to verify counterfeit products.

  • Challenge 2:

Through ICT applications, how can access to financial services be made easier for farmers through a disruptive, innovative tool?

Partnering hubs are invited to support their participating teams with any available data sources and content in their countries for ICT4ag applications to be developed. Such data source may include but are not limited to the following :

  • Weather Data for different countries
  • Soil data
  • Plant / animal diseases & pest data
  • Agricultural productivity and yield data
  • Land use data
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Meet the regional winners of the 2013 ICT4Ag Conference Hackathon

November 11, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet

The regional winners of the hackathon organised in the framework of the 2013 ICT4Ag Conference were announced at the Awards and Closing Ceremony of the event, on 7th November in Kigali, Rwanda. This concludes the first phase of the Agrihack Championship.

Meet the winners in this article.

1st Prize: Ensibuuko, from Uganda (won 5,000 Euros + smartphones + incubation)

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Representatives of winners and the Outbox hub manager receive the trophy won by the team from Hon. Agnes Kalibata, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI), Rwanda

The team is composed of Opio Obwangamoi, Gerald Otim, Kalinzi Kalinzi, Winnie Uhoozi, Angella Nkalubo.

Supporting hub: Outbox Hub 

Product developed: Ensibuuko App

Ensibuuko  is a web and mobile application that enables Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOS) of smallholder rural farmers mobilise savings, receive and disburse loans easily and quickly using SMS and Mobile Money. The system enables farmers to register using SMS, save, receive and pay back loans using Mobile money. It enables members build trust in their SACCOS as the system promotes transparency and accountability. (more…)

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Teams and products of regional finalists and winners

November 11, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet

CTA organised the first edition of the Agrihack Championship in the framework of the ICT4Ag 2013 Conference, in collaboration with partners including MINAGRI and MYICT (Rwanda), mLab East, kLab and the support of  AGRA and Microsoft Africa. The three regional winners were Ensibuuko, AgriVAS and Agrinfo. The Agrihack Championship is a several weeks’ regional coding challenge on agriculture, which includes national selection events/hackathons, a regional final, capacity building, incubation and promotion. This first pilot experience was focused on East Africa. The finals were held from 04 – 07 Nov 2013 in Kigali, Rwanda.

Find here details on teams and products developed by all regional finalists and winners.

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Day 3 – A week to remember

November 8, 2013 By KLO With 2 comments

“Conferences this size are nearly always Powerpoint-led,” said CTA’s Giacomo Rambaldi during the closing ceremony on Thursday evening. “But right from the outset, we decided that this one would be different – that interaction would be at the core of the conference.” And that’s exactly how it’s turned out.

There were no big set piece speeches in the Thursday plenary, ‘Implications for inclusive agriculture – what next?’ Opening the plenary, Pete Cranston of Euphoric Services explained that during the final parallel sessions he and his fellow facilitators had asked everyone: “What was your ‘wow’ moment?” This helped to identify some common themes, or clusters, both within the three conference streams and between them. (more…)

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The Hackathon featured – Video – Day 2 ICT4Ag conference

November 7, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet

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Discover Agrinfo team from Tanzania and “GIS for plots”

November 6, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet
  •  Team name

Agrinfo

  • Firstname, family name and contact details of team members

Rose Peter Funja,
Grace Sylvester Makanyaga,

  • Supporting hub

Buni hub

  • Name of the product developed

Gis for plots

  • Description of the product developed for Agrihack

The Agrinfo developed a web based and mobile gis platform system for mapping farms and lands.

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Do you know Agrivas from Ethiopia and mAgri?

November 6, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet
  • Team name

AgriVAS

  • Firstname, family name and contact details of team members

Nebiyou Wolde Yirga 

Dr. Abeselom, or

  • Supporting hub

IceAddis

  • Name of the product developed

AgriVAS

  • Description of the product developed for Agrihack

AgriVAS is an information resource center for farmers. It delivers information to the farmers via radio, sms and Internet. Farmers register using their feature phones to get content via sms where the app interprets the message and reads the message to their native language as it would alleviate the illiteracy issue.

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Discover Fertilizer Logic team from Rwanda

November 6, 2013 By KLO With no comments yet
  • Team name

Fertilizer Logic

  • Name of the company/start up

Fertilizer Logic, www.fertilizerlogic.com

  •  Firstname, family name and contact details of team members

Hilary Muramira,
Prince Dukundane Gashongore,
Robert Basomingera,
Origene Igiraneza,

  •  Supporting hub

kLab

  • Name of the product developed

Fertilizer Logic

  • Description of the product developed for Agrihack

Plants need vitamins just like we need them. If child doesn’t get enough vitamins he/she becomes skinny (or maybe just a bad cold). If a maize plant doesn’t get enough fertilizer, it won’t bloom, therefore it will not produce, or if it does produce, it has sickly maize grain and/or fewer blooms. But just like people, more vitamins aren’t always better, because plants can die from too much fertilizer just as much as from too little. Traditionally, most farmers under fertilize or over fertilize their field just due to the lack of a right and precise tools. Lastly, choosing the right kind of fertilizer for your plant is important–beans have different needs from potatoes.

That’s where we at Fertilizer Logic come in. Our Fertilizer Logic Devices are designed to help you balance your plant’s nutritional needs and provide recommendations on how to make sure your plants grow well. Fertilizer Logic is an electronic device that determines the fertility content of the soil by using nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and pH sensors. We therefore use this mobile device to provide real time data and information in a very short time through sms and web applications. A farmer is able to tell how much fertilizer is necessary for his crops without burden. We are still prototyping the device. At fertilizer logic we help people protect their fields and conserve the environment.

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