[Geo4All] AgriGIS ThinkTank Summary and welcoming Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing (CANIS) , Kenya to GeoForAll

Thu Nov 10 19:30:31 PST 2016

Thanks Suchith for this!

We are excited about the possibilities that are slowly emerging from the
potential of creating a Geo Spatial Driven Africa. Since our ThinkTank
Forum, we are discussing with Regional Universities Forum for Capacity
Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and a number of other partners on how we
can make data driven decision making the focus of the next step in creating
knowledge for the African Food Sector.

RUFORUM is therefore collaborating with CANIS to evolve a truly ICT4Ag
driven degree programme that will be adopted by the 80+ members of the
forum to also drive the open data on agriculture and nutrition. We have
negotiated a proposal with the IDRC to support the financial support to
launch this initiative, but are looking for other partners so that this
effort can move faster to realization.

Our thinking is that we should have the curriculum formulation going on as
we try and evolve the research domains that IDRC is keen in supporting. The
financial support to the Think Tank Secretariat is currently being
supported by CANIS, VACID Africa and Y-Center Africa. We intend to run a
number of other short courses in Design Thinking and Innovation on the use
of Open Data for the Transformation of Agriculture  (ODATA) in Africa which
we are currently evolving with Y-Center. Details of this will emerge as we
evolve the programme. Anyone who knows institutions that we can work with
is free to introduce the same to us so that we reach out to them.

The university of Nairobi has taken lead in adopting the Geospatial
coordination perspectives of CANIS and is centralizing all its GeoSpatial
Operations from a centralized server that has been dedicated to the model
behind what came out of the Think Tank deliberations. Ms. Ann Rose Mwangi <
arosemwangi at gmail.com> is the linkage person on the coordination of the
secretariat.

We look forward to inviting you all in the launch of the ODATA Programme
once a date has been granted by the VC of the University of Nairobi on a
date to be communicated soon.

We are and shall always remain at your disposal.

Sincerely,

Kiringai Kamau

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 11:50 PM, Suchith Anand <
Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> We are pleased to send you the summary updates from the very successful
> AgriGIS Workshop & Think Tank meetings in Nairobi organised jointly by the
> The University of Nottingham, the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources
> for Development (RCMRD), the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition
> (GODAN) and Crops for the Future (CFF) on October 27-28, 2016.
>
> The objective of the event was to provide a forum for stakeholders in
> agricultural research organizations in Africa to share knowledge and
> propose strategies on improving the use of  open data, open educational
> resources , free and open geospatial software with the aim to expand
> Capacity Building and Training in AgriGIS to support Global Food Security.
>
> The slides of the event  are at  http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/
> grace/events/agrigis-kenya-slides.aspx
>
> We thank all the participants for their inputs and contributions for the
> Think-Tank discussions which covered the following themes (details to the
> summary of each theme are available at the event website)
>
>
>   *   Big challenges for Agriculture in the African context
>   *   Tools (known & wish list) used for agri using satellite/remote data
> collection
>   *   Existing or potential data sets we would like to use
>   *   Practical, technical, policy, impementation obstacles to Location
> aspects/geotechnologies for agri
>   *   Data and Modelling
>
>
> There was interest and support from  participants for the need for Open
> Data in Agriculture and  initiatives like GODAN [1].
>
> Some of the key themes that emerged  from the Think Tank discussions were
> the following
>
>
>   *   Importance of the need of an organisation locally to facilitate and
> ensure sustainability of AgriGIS
>   *   Spearheading open data and free and open software use for cost
> savings, expanding innovation and sustainability
>   *   Need for Capacity building among stakeholders
>
> We are getting lot of emails of interest lot of colleagues in Africa
> expressing interest in follow up activities. We are pleased to inform that
> Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing (CANIS) , Kenya
> has volunteered to  host the secretariat for the Think Tank  for developing
> as a focal point for interaction with other stakeholders on Open GIS and
> open data and keep building the ideas from the ThinkTank. We thank Kiringai
> Kamau and colleagues at CANIS for their support.  Please contact Kiringai
> (email  - kiringai at gmail.com  ) for expanding AgriGIS momentum in
> Kenya. We are also pleased to welcome CANIS as our new GeoforAll lab in
> Kenya.
>
>
> It is good to see many blogposts from participants of the workshop such as
> the one at GEOSYMP  http://geosymp.com/2016/10/
> what-happened-at-the-agrigis-workshop-and-think-tank/
>
>
> We would like to specifically thank our hosts RCMRD ( Dr Hussein Farah and
> all colleagues) for their excellent organisation and arrangements including
> the hands on workshop .  We need to also make use of the community and
> momentum build by the ThinkTank for expanding future collaborations and
> make sure the community is kept  updated. Please make use of the  Twitter
> created  to share your ideas https://twitter.com/hashtag/
> agrigisnr2016?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash
>
> We  shared some examples of research at Nottingham at
> http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/genius/documents/egrasp-nairobi.pdf
>
> We are hoping to keep building the collaborations in AgriGIS to  support
> Global Food Security.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Suchith
>
> [1] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/genius/documents/godan-uon-intro.pdf
>
>
>
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