E-Agriculture

USAID's Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET)

USAID's Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET)

The Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information and Communication Technologies (FACET) program, an associate award under the FIELD-Support LWA and managed by FHI 360, was funded by USAID/AFR/SD/EGEA––the partnership that oversees the design and implementation of USAID’s Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative for sub-Saharan Africa.

Designed to be interactive and collaborative, FACET provided technical assistance to improve competitiveness and productivity across agriculture sub-sectors through the use of ICTs as tools to enhance the functioning and competitiveness of agricultural value chains and facilitate trade in agricultural products across sub-Saharan Africa.

In line with USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah’s call for an increased focus on evidence-based interventions, documentation and learning dissemination, FACET incorporated lessons learned and best practices to build collaborative relationships. To achieve its objectives, FACET had two key program components:

  • Knowledge sharing across Missions regarding sustainable and scalable approaches using ICT; and
  • Short-term technical assistance to projects to help them improve their uses of ICT

The knowledge sharing objective is extended by making the main outputs, toolkits and case studies, available to a global audience through the e-Agriculture Community.