Kwami Ahiabenu,II Knowledge Chief

Food production is key to any country's development. From the most advanced to developing countries, agriculture is important because without this sector, their citizens can die of starvation. Human beings started food production since the dawn of creation literally using their bare hands. Over time, technology has come to play a very important role across the whole value chain of food production, starting from horse-drawn plough to current sophisticated use of new digital technologies.  New digital technology applications are now seen in every aspect of food production, from pre-production through production to post-production stages.  ICTs in action  ICT solutions are helping agriculture producers to become more effective and efficient in the whole agriculture value chain. One area which has received a lot of hype is agriculture information provision using ICTs, especially mobile phones, where a farmer is able to determine the best market to send his or her products d...

Last week I attended the ICT4D conference in Nairobi, that brought together NGO's, donors and entrepreneurs to discuss how technology can be used for development - and how (and if) we are moving from innovation to impact.  Conversations across the conference ranged from the 'big picture' talk on concerns around the regulatory environment, connectivity and taking advantage of the disruptive power of technology, to very specific project talk including how to use mobile apps to support Community Health Workers. In this blog, I want to reflect on a session I held during this conference, called Tech for open governance: where are we standing and where do we go? Joining perspectives with Jessica Musila of Mzalendo Trust and Kwami Ahiabenu of Penplusbytes , we talked about where we stand as a sector, and how we can move it into more context-sensitive thinking, using existing evidence of what works and what doesn't in tech for development. I believe ...