E-Agriculture

Focus on #HackAgainstHunger

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Focus on #HackAgainstHunger

©FAO

#HackAgainstHunger is organized by The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) with a goal to identify and support innovative solutions to address challenges around food and agriculture.

The #HackAgainstHunger is a tripartite event with two regional hackathons in Kigali, Rwanda (Africa) and two simultaneous events in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago and the two respective events happening in February 2018. The winners in the regional events will be selected to attend the WSIS Forum 2018 – Special Track Hackathon.

To support the participants, FAO has made available several open datasets that can be used before and during the #HackAgainstHunger, these include:-

  • FAO Stat corporate database
  • CountrySTAT
  • Agricultural Information Management Standards
  • Global Information and Early Warning System
  • Early Warning Early Action / Global Risk Map
  • Water Productivity Project
  • Agriculture in Africa from World Bank
  • Statistics at FAO
  • Main databases

To guide the interested persons, the partners have put up a webpage with all the necessary background support information.

©FAO/ITU

The Challenge

The overraching challenge is that while 2.5 billion people derive their livelihoods from agriculture, and there is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, however sadly 815 million people go hungry. The problem roots:-

  • Food produced but not accessible
  • Smallholders’ unequal access to land, water, knowledge, technology and markets
  • Conflict, natural disasters, food crises and climate change affect disproportionately food-insecure regions

Against this background, participants in this hackathon to develop innovative digital solutions to assure food security and end hunger in middle-and lower-income countries. The solutions can be grouped in the following genres (not limited to),

  1. Digital Services and applications
  2. Artificial intelligence
  3. Algorithms
  4. Web Application

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