The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa published the final report of the inventory on innovative farmer advisory services or systems, currently in design, in existence or recently completed in Africa. The discussions started inside the FARA RAILS group but expanded quickly through various consultations with relevant service providers or organizations.

Entries include projects using ICT solutions or implementing ICT-based activities, institutions/groups providing services using ICTs as well as ICT solutions software providers, both at the national and regional level. While many of the entries are projects with a definitive beginning and end date providing one or two services, others are national or regional information systems providing many agricultural services using ICTs.

The compilation of this inventory involved participation from many individuals / organizations. FARA would like to acknowledge the input from the RAILS e-discussion groups [Regional Agricultural Information and Learning Systems] and the Knowledge Management for Development [KM4Dev] e-discussion group who alerted us to projects that could be used in the inventory.

FARA attempted to contact each organization to receive the most up to date information on the project. We are grateful to every organization that responded and provided current information on the status of their project. Invaluable contributions came from the International Institute for Communications and Development (IICD) and The Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development (CTA) who provided information about the many ICT projects they are involved in. Special thanks to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), who are working on a study entitled, ICTs and small-scale agriculture in Africa: a scoping study and were able to provide a lot of valuable information about a number of ICT projects in Africa and shared their database with FARA.

Click here to access the final inventory.