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Web 2.0 in Africa - Agriculture and New Technologies - Web2forDev
Duration:
8 minutes and 32 seconds
Year: 2008
Country:
Netherlands
Language:
English
Genre:
Documentary
Producer:
People TV & CTA
Views:
2,258
(975
embedded)
Posted by:
giacomo on Sep 12, 2008
An eight minute Business Africa/CTA video production documenting actual cases on the use of Web 2.0 applications in the development sector, specifically among farmers in Africa.
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Video Transcription
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- How can you exchange the maximum of information and expertise with the maximum amount of people?
- The answer is Web 2
- A mini internet revolution that is even proving its effectiveness among Ugandan farmers.
- A report by Fréderic Durandroit and Eric Mounier.
- With the forum and the blog I learnt how to grow bananas, vegetables and raise pigs and chickens.
- On internet we have forums with the farmers, we call them around, we share the ideas ...
- and also tell them what we got on the internet, and they can practice in the villages.
- With the African continent lagging behind in terms of Internet access, an innovative experiment ...
- is underway in Uganda with farmers exchanging information and expertise directly on the world-wide web.
- An experiment that owes much to what is known as second generation Internet – or Web2.
- Everyone is familiar with the initial principal of the Net:
- an enormous global network that gives computer users access to any on-line site in the world.
- Web2 is a mini revolution enabling each Internet user to share his or her knowledge.
- With Web2 we are talking about a different way of working together...
- it’s a way of sharing information.
- Before you had to go to a web sites, now you can share that information locally using free tools...
- so it is something that everybody can use and something that everybody can benefit from using.
- Web2 includes blogs, forums and wiki-style encyclopaedias with users actively contributing.
- Site content is no longer solely provided by an organisation or experts.
- The reader becomes a writer.
- The most famous example being Wikipedia, a universal encyclopaedia ‘written’ by the internet users themselves.
- More democratic and participative, Web2 is fast becoming a worldwide success.
- But how does all this benefit African farmers who generally don’t have access to computers or the Net?
- The Brosdi association has established a wide-reaching network of farmers in order to share farming techniques and improve yields.
- The Internet has changed to the effect that it’s more interactive...
- you can have people through your web site, that can communicate to you and get feed back, which was not the case in the past.
- The Brosdi site provides dozens of technical files from farmers on agricultural techniques.
- You will find out how to grow bananas, sink a well, raise ducks and pigs, grow pumpkins …
- and there is even the latest information on the best markets to sell produce.
- 1001 questions about rural life in other words.
- The site is the fruit of meetings between farmers that take place at least once a month.
- Their first-hand expertise is shared and compared before being presented on the Internet.
- They seat together as a group, then they choose one person to take lead, in a knowledge sharing forum...
- they choose a crop or animal of their interest and other members also contribute on how they do it at home ...
- and they share information on how to do certain activities.
- Today we are in Manaka province to study banana cultivation.
- Each participant contributes his own experience and particular techniques.
- Different approaches are discussed and evaluated.
- Each person’s results are assessed before an appointed secretary records the conclusions in the form of precise technical guidelines.
- How to grow bananas? You have to get an available land. You have to slash the land. After slashing the land, you burn, but ...
- in most cases we do not burn, we put those you have slashed aside ...
- We get the voice from the village, from the farmers, after we get the voices, ...
- we put them on the computer. I try to edit, and put on the web to share that knowledge.
- The information is also presented on the Net in English ...
- and local languages with hard copies available on paper and CD for villages with no Internet access.
- Text messages are also sent to farmers.
- Sometimes the messages are long but at least farmers have instant access.
- From the blog and the forum, I learnt how to make compost for vegetables and bananas ...
- and now I don’t need to buy compost from the market.
- And the money I earn with the vegetables, pumpkins and bananas can be used for paying school fees.
- In just a few months Florence has doubled his production of bananas.
- Natural compost saves him money and means he has been able to start producing pumpkins.
- Although the Brosdi Internet site – by farmers for farmers – is something of an exception in Africa...
- ... Web2 is being put to other uses in rural Africa.
- Take Wikiforêt – the only e-encyclopaedia devoted to the central African forest and composed entirely of user input.
- One of the objectives of ‘wikiforêt’ is to make sure local African expertise ...
- can be highlighted in a context where Africa’s wealth of knowledge is wasting away.
- A participative, interactive encyclopaedia written by researchers, farmers...
- city dwellers and forest-dwellers keen to share their experience and know-how.
- With its potential for development Web2 is attracting increasing interest from international organisations.
- Here in Holland at the headquarters of the CTA, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation.
- The CTA is a European Union-funded organisation ...
- whose mission is to give farmers from African, Caribbean and Pacific nations better access to information.
- Fortunately Africa’s lack of internet access, equipment and even computer skills ...
- are not impossible obstacles to overcome.
- The prospects are very good indeed. I’m thinking about things like Wifi, computing and what is called Wimax computing.
- You will be able to have very good local connectivity at a local level, at a village level, at a town level...
- but perhaps the connection to the internet will be not very good, and so with time you’ll get better internet connections.
- While waiting for Internet use to become more widespread on the continent...
- initiatives such as Brosdi and Wikiforêt show that poor access to the Web can be countered..
- with a combination of traditional and contemporary communication.
- Examples of local information gathering and sharing that should inspire other organisations of farmers...
- to preserve their local know-how and increase their revenue.
- For any further information, just visit the CTA website.
- The address in at the bottom of your screen.


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