Category Archives: Africa
Mathieu Ouedraogo wins UNCCD’s 2019 Land for Life Award
19 June 2019 — Mathieu Ouedraogo, president of Réseau MARP, NGO in Burkina Faso and long-term team member and partner of W4RA and VU Amsterdam, has won the prestigious Land for Life Award, issued by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). We congratulate Mathieu with all his achievements, over many decades, to support […]
Tackling Global Challenges Collaboratively: theme of the 6th International Symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D”
Amsterdam 23 May 2019 – The annual symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D”, organized by Victor de Boer and Anna Bon, was focused this year on transdisciplinarity — collaboration between academics and non-academics — in search of solutions for the Global Challenges of our Age. The theme was reflected in the talks by the speakers: André Baart, from […]
Don’t miss the 6th International Symposium Perspectives on ICT4D – 23 May
The Symposium “Perspectives on ICT4D” gathers a broad community of researchers and practitioners to discuss and reflect on barriers and paradigms that can improve information sharing for billions of people in the world. With this event we want to facilitate a reflective debate that should include the people at the “other” side of the digital […]
Uncovering cultural differences between African and European storytelling with Artificial Intelligence
For her master research in Artificial Intelligence, Gossa Lô uses Computational Linguistics Techniques and Deep Learning to generate narratives in West African style. Storytelling is a powerful form of communication, that has the ability to pass down information, knowledge and tradition, while captivating and involving an audience with personal experiences and emotions, and in a broader sense […]
Local currency networks in rural communities in Africa: a feasibility study of block chain
Blockchain technologies have received much interest the past few years, as an innovative way of ICT-based commerce. Its decentralized nature, the lack of a “middleman”, or central bank are interesting features. But is this technoology also promising for low resource environment, e.g. rural Mali? Can blockchain for example provide a new payment channel as an […]
AOPP and W4RA’s TMT project on Food Security and Seed Knowledge Systems
AOPP and the W4RA team will continue collaboration on the topic of Food Security in rural Mali, focusing on the information and knowledge sharing, which is necessary to improve value chains for seeds. This project is made possible through a recent grant from Nuffic in the OKP NFP-TMT-RC program, for which we are very thankful. […]
Talking about “small data”: new student project about meteo data services for African farmers
Despite the fact that more than 70% of Africa’s population depends on agriculture for basic life needs, and in Africa’s drylands rain-fed agriculture is widespread, reliable meteorological data about rainfall and weather forecasts — in Europe timely and accurate — is often not available for African farmers. Recent studies in rural areas of Burkina Faso and Ghana have […]
Yacouba Sawadogo receives The Right Livelihood Award for his innovative African Regreening Initiatives
Our friend and partner Yacouba Sawadogo, the Man who Stopped the Desert, has received the prestigeous international Right Livelihood Award for his great achievements in African Regreening Initiatives and farmer innovation. See a Yacouba Sawadogo is one of the innovative farmers of the Yatenga district, who participates in our “Meteo Data Services for Innovative Farmers […]
A low-cost IoT sensor kit to measure surface water quality in rural Africa
Good drinking water is essential for all. However, in e.g. rural Africa the quality of water, for example from wells is not always reliable. Lab water testing and existing tools are expensive and time consuming. Allard Oelen developed a low-cost sensor kit, for the rural context of rural Africa. The IoT sensor measures a number […]