[Geo4All] Help needed for AgriGIS capacity development across Africa

Thu Aug 22 12:03:15 PDT 2019

Dear Kiringai,

I have read with interest your email exchanges with Suchith about building geospatial capacity in Africa and wanted to share this announcement and Call for Papers for a special issue of Geo-spatial Information Science (GSIS) on "Application of Geospatial Science in Disaster Mitigation and Conflict Resolution in Africa".  All publication costs for Open Access articles accepted for this issue will be covered by Wuhan University so it may be a good opportunity for you and others to publish your success stories and challenges with earth observations, GNSS, sensor networks, GIS, mobile mapping and geovisualization - among others.

The submission deadline for manuscripts is noted as 10 October 2019, but I will be happy to negotiate for more time, especially given the timing or your upcoming conferences in Ghana.
Contact information for the Guest Editors are listed below. Please feel free to contact any of us if you have any questions.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Best regards,
Marguerite

  *   Walter Musakwa, Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. wmusakwa at uj.ac.za<mailto:wmusakwa at uj.ac.za>
  *   Fanan Ujoh, Centre for Sustainability and Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (SaRIC), London South Bank University, United Kingdom. fananujoh at gmail.com<mailto:fananujoh at gmail.com>
  *   Marguerite Madden, Center for Geospatial Research (CGR), Department of Geography, University of Georgia, USA. mmadden at uga.edu<mailto:mmadden at uga.edu>
  *   Adriaan Van Niekerk, Centre for Geographical Analysis, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. avn at sun.ac.za<mailto:avn at sun.ac.za>

Marguerite Madden, Ph.D.
Professor and Director
Center for Geospatial Research (CGR)
Department of Geography
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
706-542-2379 (Office)
706-340-7945 (Cell)
________________________________
From: GeoForAll <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Kiringai Kamau <kiringai.kamau at godan.info>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 12:34 PM
To: Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>
Cc: Osgeolive <osgeolive at lists.osgeo.org>; GeoForAll <GeoForAll at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: Re: [Geo4All] Help needed for AgriGIS capacity development across Africa

[External Sender]
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<mailto: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<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)
[https://docs.google.com/uc?export=download&id=12AWUTz9vDpZ0noUjKIgOkRgn3DFNmMB1&revid=0BzY0XhCFp0GaZC9zTGx0RkJmWDMraFIxQzM3MzJwOGhNbitJPQ]
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Cell: +254 722 800 986/+254 733 375 505

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

Website: www.godan.info<http://www.godan.info> or www.perfect.africa<http://www.perfect.africa>, Tweeter: @kiringaik, Skype: kiringai.kamau
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