[Geo4All] Help needed for AgriGIS capacity development across Africa

Thu Aug 22 09:34:56 PDT 2019

Thanks, Suchith for the kind words and the good memories of where we have
come from!

I am humbled to be invited to this forum and to join the community of the
people keen to change the world through knowledge sharing. It is a pursuit
we all share.

The challenge in Africa is not just learning the use of ICTs and GIS tools
alone, but even maintaining traction with the foundational courses like
Agriculture or veterinary as an extension and hence the creation of
champion farmers from which others can learn is a challenge. We have
therefore jointly with partners like CTA, Wageningen UR, and GODAN decided
to create rural Hubs where integrating ICTs, Data, and Agriculture all
happen at the same time. We encourage you to visit us when you have the
opportunity to do so to learn more from what we are doing.

Since the extension is a challenge, we are using students who will be
domiciled in our Hubs to practice what they learn experientially and extend
the knowledge to farmers as they also collect data that we then use to
drive technology-based innovations. It is for this reason that we have
partnered with RCMRD/AfriGEO and now mooting collaboration with Digital
Earth Africa, to promote GIS anchored solutions development. We shall,
therefore, need support in diverse ways which Suchith well captured in his
introduction.

This December, RUFORUM will hold their continental forum in Accra, Ghana
and want to listen to what we are doing and proposing universities to do.
We would like to go there with some case studies that we are discussing
with RCMRD and some of the universities that we are working with.

We also have another forum on Geospatial Data and Internet Conference
<https://www.godan.info/events/africa-geospatial-data-and-internet-conference-2019>
in
October that we invite you to join in and explore how we can support many
of the African Countries that shall be participating in this conference.

I will be able to share more with any individuals that may seek to learn
more.

Sincerely,

Kiringai Kamau
GODAN Africa Lead

On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 2:30 PM Suchith Anand <
Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
>
> The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) supports the
> proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and
> nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent
> challenge of ensuring world food security. As part of GODAN’s Capacity
> Development Working Group[1], we ran AgriGIS ThinkTank in Nairobi (2016)
> and Washington (2017) to get inputs from the community. Details at
> https://www.godan.info/documents/summary-godan-think-tank-open-geo-data-and-open-tools-achieve-food-security-and-sustainable-agriculture
>
>
> As requested by participants at the GODAN ThinkTanks , we have
> provided links and resources for free and open tools for AgriGIS at the
> GODAN website and started promoting OSGeo software to our community
> members. There is big demand from the GODAN capacity development community
> for GeoForAll training resources [2] ,  OSGeoLive, open data tutorials
> etc. GODAN Capacity Development community consists of over 4000 members
> globally  from policy makers to students.
>
>
> As majority of our members are from developing world and from economically
> poor communities , there is internet bandwidth issues esp. for downloading
> big files like OSGeo Live (4GB!), so we have decided to provide them
> through USBs to our partners (RCMRD, RUFORUM etc) for their AgriGIS
> training in Africa and I would like to request help from the
> OSGeo community for  this. We will also be helping the Regional
> Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM)
> colleagues to establish GeoForAll labs in their universities. The Regional
> Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM),
> established by ten Vice Chancellors in 2004, is a consortium of 113 African
> universities operating within 38 countries spanning the African continent.
> RUFORUM is coordinated by a Secretariat hosted by Makerere University in
> Kampala, Uganda. RUFORUM supports universities to address the important and
> largely unfulfilled role that universities play in contributing to the
> well‐being of small‐scale farmers and economic development of countries .
> Details at https://www.ruforum.org/about-us
>
>
> In 2018, I was invited by RUFORUM to  address on the topic of  *“Harnessing
> the digital potential to drive  **higher education transformation in
> Africa”* [3].  I shared GeoForAll principles to ensure geo digital
> economy opportunities are also available to economically poor countries and
> economically poor people worldwide.
>
>
> I would like to introduce you to Kiringai Kamau ( GODAN Africa lead) and
> request you to help him and  all colleagues in Africa to build up
> capacity in AgriGIS. Kiringai is also Programme Lead for University of
> Nairobi’s Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing
> (CANIS). He is the Executive Director for Programme for Capacity
> Development in Africa (P4CDA) where he is involved in a new thinking in
> African Agriculture - the Student Led Agricultural Extension (SLAE).
>
>
> I had the opportunity to meet Kiringai at the GODAN AgriGIS ThinkTank In
> Nairobi in 2016 [4]. He went on to establish GeoforAll at University of
> Nairobi’s Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing
> (CANIS) and shared GeoForAll ideas to wider colleagues in Africa. I am
> impressed by his work on Capacity Development at grassroots level esp.
> for students and small holder farmers.
>
>
> Kiringai, You already know GeoForAll community. May I introduce you to
> OSGeo Live community. Please join the maillist at
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive and send any queries
> you have to help you in your training needs. Please also request relevant
> colleagues in RUFORUM, RCMRD and other universities in Africa to join the
> OSGeolive maillist , so they can get help for their AgriGIS capacity
> development and training needs. Thanks.
>
>
> I also request the GeoForAll community to share ideas on developing  training
> materials in Capacity Development in Climate, Landuse, ecosystem services
> for Agriculture. Thanks.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Suchith
>
>
>
> Dr. Suchith Anand
>
> Chief Scientist
>
> Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition
>
> https://www.godan.info
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [1]
> https://www.godan.info/working-groups/capacity-development-working-group
>
>
> [2]
> https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/please-share-geoforall-teaching-research-resources-colleagues-students/
>
>
> [3]
> https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/harnessing-the-digital-potential-to-drive-higher-education-transformation-in-africa/
>
>
> [4]
> https://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/11/summary-of-agrigis-thinktank-and-workshop-2016-nairobi-kenya/
>
>
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>
>
>
>

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Kiringai Kamau

*GODAN Africa Lead*
Programme for Capacity Development in Africa (P4CDA Africa)

*GODAN Head Office*

845 Sherbrooke Street West, *Montreal*, Quebec, Canada H3A 0G4

Macdonald Campus, McGill University, 21111 Lakeshore Road,
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC H9X 3V9

*Programme for Capacity Development in Africa (P4CDA)*

PO Box 1618, 00100 GPO Nairobi, 1st Floor, Nyaku House, Argwings Kodhek Road

Cell: +254 722 800 986/+254 733 375 505

*Email*: *kiringai.kamau at godan.info <kiringai.kamau at godan.info>* or
kiringai at perfect.africa

*Website*: www.godan.info or www.perfect.africa, *Tweeter*: @kiringaik,
*Skype*: kiringai.kamau
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