Open Tenure is an open source software designed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to help communities to better govern their natural resources. It uses handheld tablets, and a community server allows community members to map and collect data on land tenure claims in their community. The data can then be viewed and moderated, and important documents and photos can be stored electronically for safekeeping. This video presents the Open Tenure trial with a community forestry group in northwest Cambodia during 16-20 February 2016. The participants were quick to...
Mobile money is a service that allows monetary value to be stored on a mobile phone and sent to other users via text messages. Mobile money was first introduced in South Africa and the Philippines about 10 years ago. In Kenya, this service was introduced in March 2007 and was called “M-PESA” (M is for mobile, “pesa” is Swahili for “money”), which became the country’s dominant mobile money service. M-PESA has since been celebrated internationally as an innovation that can bring the unbanked population into the formal financial system, with associated impacts on economic well-being and welfare...
The market-led, user-owned ICT4Ag-enabled Information Service (MUIIS) Service Bundle was officially launched at the CTA Uganda country office on 8 March 2017. MUIIS is an innovative project that harnesses the power of satellite data to support extension and advisory services to farmers in Uganda. The MUIIS Service Bundle consists of a series of context-specific weather alerts, agronomic tips and index-based insurance throughout the season and covers four agricultural commodities: maize, beans, sesame and soybeans. To access these services farmers must be profiled and once profiled, dial short...
Smart agriculture is essential in tackling many of smallholders problems with their cultivations and for their development. Smart agriculture is an approach that helps to guide actions needed to transform and reorient agricultural systems to effectively support development and ensure food security. Agriculture sector accounts for more than half of total employment in South Asia, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) . The Punjab province in Pakistan has 5.2 million farming families and 28 million acres of cultivable land spanning over 23,000 villages. Given the enourmous...
Mercy Corps, in partnership with The MasterCard Foundation, today launched AgriFin Accelerate in Zambia. The AgriFin Accelerate program is a six-year, USD 25 million program. The program seeks to address the financial inclusion gap for smallholder farmers (SHF) who lack access to affordable, accessible, demand-driven financial products and services that drive higher productivity and income for farm families. In Zambia, more than 70 percent of the population is engaged in, or derives its livelihood, from agriculture-related activities. The lack of access to financial services among farmers is...
Mobile has the most potential to improve the income of smallholder farmers in developing countries in Africa, India and the Middle East. The up take of mobile technology (and m obile penetration rate ) for agricultural and rural development in the Global South has been on the increase. Connected Agriculture , is a report by Accenture and Vodafone on the role of mobile in driving efficiency and sustainability in the food and agriculture value chain, focuses on 12 opportunities that deliver broad socio-economic and environmental benefits. The report hinges its proposal on the fact that mobile...
