We will have a course webinar on Thursday, 31 October at 11:00 CET as part of the Farm Data Management, Sharing and Services for Agriculture Development Online Course provided by CTA,  FAO of the United Nations and PAFO. This webinar, Reflection on Farmer Profiling, Data Management and Services for Farmers,  is specifically organised for this course and it will reflect the topics taught in the curriculum. 

In the webinar, Ishmael Sunga, CEO of the SACAU (Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions) will share SACAU’s experience with farmer profiling and working with partners in the development of relevant services. Our subject experts Stephane Boyera from SBC4D and Valeria Pesce from FAO of the UN together with Chipo Msengezi from CTA will help to drive some key concepts of what you need to take away from the course. These include value of data in agriculture to support farmers, digital farmer profiling, responsible data, data protection and data sharing principles in general.

Please join us on the day and allow us to have an interactive session. 

Date & Time: 31 October 2019, Thursday - 11:00 Central European Time. (click on the link to see it in your local time)

• Access URL: https://zoom.us/j/634129015 (no registration required). You may want to check Zoom help page on how to join a meeting as an attendee. 

Photo by UNSPLASH licensed under CC0 License

Speakers' Bio

Ishmael Sunga, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), The Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU)

Ishmael has more than 30 years’ experience, mainly in the development sector. Prior to his current position as head of a regional farmers’ organisation for southern Africa, he previously worked in various capacities for research and academic institutions, and for international development agencies. His experience covers southern Africa and other parts of Africa, the UK and Asia (India, Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka), and spans several areas, including agricultural development; rural transport; micro-hydro power; irrigation schemes; farm machinery; agro processing; small scale mining; light engineering, cooperatives, farmers’ and other membership-based organisations. His wide ranging practical experience and thought leadership has seen him serving in various capacities on global and other important initiatives such as World Economic Forum’s (WEF), steering committee membership for NEPAD’s Grow Africa and the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF); membership of the Montpellier Malabo Panel of Experts, being an Ambassador for the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU); being Advisory committee member of AgriCord, CTA and GODAN among many others.

Valeria Pesce, Information Management Specialist, The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations 

Valeria has worked for more than 15 years in the areas of knowledge management, content management, data infrastructures, data sharing, data standardization and more recently data policies, especially concerning agri-food data. In the last eight years, she has coordinated work packages and activities in international projects aimed at improving data management, data standardization, data use, and awareness of data rights across the agri-food value chain. She is an ECQA certified EU Project Manager, and coordinated several web development projects, primarily data sharing portals, search engines, and Linked Data implementations. In the last year and a half, Valeria has worked on planning and convening workshops and webinars on the issue of farmers' data rights and facilitating the creation of a global collective action on empowering farmers through more equitable data flows.

Stéphane Boyera, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), SBC4D

Stéphane founded SBC4D in January 2009 and till July 2013, was contracted to act as Lead Program Manager at the World Wide Web Foundation. Stéphane has played an important role in the creation of the World Wide Web Foundation since 2008, launched by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web. Stephane, as part of SBC4D core activities, is also advising numerous non-profits organizations, commercial companies, governments and international organizations interested in delivering mobile services to under-privileged communities in the developing world.  

Chipo Msengezi, Project Coordinator at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation ACP-EU (CTA)

Chipo has been working on the  GODAN Action Project since 2017, managing a work package to strengthen the skills of data users, producers and intermediaries to engage effectively with open data and maximise its potential for impact in the agriculture and nutrition sectors. She has worked in the ICT4D space, capacity development and knowledge management sector for nine years. In that time Chipo worked on various programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance capacity amongst the research and education communities in the latest information tools and advocate for the adoption of new technologies that drive development.