Expanding the reach and benefits of digital agriculture

The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society initiative was established in 2002 to support projects aimed at leveraging ICTs to enhance farmer knowledge and productivity. But did the programme help to close the gender and urban-rural gap in ICT access? Or is there a need for the scheme to be rolled out again

Agriculture numérique, des leviers pour réduire les inégalités

Le programme Genre, agriculture et développement rural dans la société de l'information (GenARDIS) a été lancé en 2002 dans le but de soutenir des projets utilisant les technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) pour renforcer les connaissances et la productivité des agriculteurs. Quel est le bilan du programme ? A-t-il permis de réduire les inégalités de genre, mais aussi entre ruralité et urbanité ? Est-il pertinent de redéployer cette initiative aujourd'hui

Effect of different organic substrates on reproductive biology, growth and offtake of the African night crawler earthworm (Eudrilus eugeniae)

Rapid growth and high fecundity of E. eugeniae makes it a commercial vermicomposting agent. The worm is also a rich protein source (50-70%CP) in livestock diets. The major question, however, is how do we promote earthworm production as a strategy for ecological livestock intensification and integration with crops through earthworm domestication as a source of protein and vermicompost. Reproduction characteristics, growth and offtake of E. eugeniae were studied using four organic substrates including abattoir waste (AW), cattle manure (CM), soya bean crop residue (SBCR) and a mixture of cattle manure and soya bean crop residue (CM+SBCR) aged for 15 days. Irrespective of the substrate, length and biomass of earthworms increased at a decreasing rate between the 1st and 8th weeks. Clitellum appearance was initiated at 31.5±2.4, 32.8±3.2, 33.7±3.3 and 35.5±2.4 days for AW, CM, CM+SBCR and SBCR, respectively, while cocoon initiation was at 69.0±1.4 (AW), 54.9±2.3 (CM), 51.7±1.7 (CM+SBCR) and 60.0±2.4 (SBCR) days. Organic substrate used affected reproductive biology, growth and offtake of E. eugeniae. Higher survivability, total earthworm biomass accumulation and offtake when cultured on CM and a binary combination of CM + SBCR is an indication that a strategy for sustainable crops-livestock integration can be sparked off by earthworm domestication. Earthworm domestication can be promoted using CM or a combination of (CM+SBCR) as substrate

Joint Impact Assessment of CTA's support to WOUGNET (2003-2013)

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) is a Non-Governmental Organization established in May 2000 by several women’s organizations in Uganda to promote and support the use of information and communication technologies as tools to share information and address issues of sustainable national development collectively. WOUGNET and the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), have collaborated over the last decade during which time they have undertaken several partnership activities

A deep reinforcement learning-based algorithm for reliability-aware multi-domain service deployment in smart ecosystems

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00521-020-05372-xThe transition towards full network virtualization will see services for smart ecosystems including smart metering, healthcare and transportation among others, being deployed as Service Function Chains (SFCs) comprised of an ordered set of virtual network functions. However, since such services are usually deployed in remote cloud networks, the SFCs may transcend multiple domains belonging to different Infrastructure Providers (InPs), possibly with differing policies regarding billing and Quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. Therefore, efficiently allocating the exhaustible network resources to the different SFCs while meeting the stringent requirements of the services such as delay and QoS among others, remains a complex challenge, especially under limited information disclosure by the InPs. In this work, we formulate the SFC deployment problem across multiple domains focusing on delay constraints, and propose a framework for SFC orchestration which adheres to the privacy requirements of the InPs. Then, we propose a reinforcement learning (RL)-based algorithm for partitioning the SFC request across the different InPs while considering service reliability across the participating InPs. Such RL-based algorithms have the intelligence to infer undisclosed InP information from historical data obtained from past experiences. Simulation results, considering both online and offline scenarios, reveal that the proposed algorithm results in up to 10% improvement in terms of acceptance ratio and provisioning cost compared to the benchmark algorithms, with up to more than 90% saving in execution time for large networks. In addition, the paper proposes an enhancement to a state-of-the-art algorithm which results in up to 5% improvement in terms of provisioning cost.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 777067 (NECOS project) and the national project TEC2015-71329-C2-2-R (MINECO/FEDER). This work is also supported by the " Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities " of China University of Petroleum (East China) under Grant 18CX02139APeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Perinatal mental health care in a rural African district, Uganda: a qualitative study of barriers, facilitators and needs

Abstract Background Perinatal mental illness is a common and important public health problem, especially in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study aims to explore the barriers and facilitators, as well as perceptions about the feasibility and acceptability of plans to deliver perinatal mental health care in primary care settings in a low income, rural district in Uganda. Methods Six focus group discussions comprising separate groups of pregnant and postpartum women and village health teams as well as eight key informant interviews were conducted in the local language using a topic guide. Transcribed data were translated into English, analyzed, and coded. Key themes were identified using a thematic analysis approach. Results Participants perceived that there was an important unmet need for perinatal mental health care in the district. There was evidence of significant gaps in knowledge about mental health problems as well as negative attitudes amongst mothers and health care providers towards sufferers. Poverty and inability to afford transport to services, poor partner support and stigma were thought to add to the difficulties of perinatal women accessing care. There was an awareness of the need for interventions to respond to this neglected public health problem and a willingness of both community- and facility-based health care providers to provide care for mothers with mental health problems if equipped to do so by adequate training. Conclusion This study highlights the acceptability and relevance of perinatal mental health care in a rural, low-income country community. It also underscores some of the key barriers and potential facilitators to delivery of such care in primary care settings. The results of this study have implications for mental health service planning and development for perinatal populations in Uganda and will be useful in informing the development of integrated maternal mental health care in this rural district and in similar settings in other low and middle income countries

Co-designing with engineers for community engagement in rural Uganda

Co-design is seen as crucial for designing solutions for resource-constrained people living in developing countries. To best understand their needs, user engagement and co-design strategies need to first be developed. In this Design Practice Brief, a process of co-design was created and used to understand ways telecommunication engineers could engage with rural communities in Uganda. It reports and reflects on (i) the experience of co-designing with nondesigners and (ii) creating a co-design structure and developing co-design methods of engaging with community members living in developing countries. In doing so, it offers a format and case study for future practitioners facilitating and conducting co-design with nondesigners and contributes to a knowledge gap in the reporting and reflection of co-design practice. This case study is unique as the co-design practice was achieved remotely (online), crossed disciplines (designers and telecommunication engineers) and cultural boundaries (European and African). It finds that in co-designing with nondesigners, preparation and structure are key, with acknowledgement and management of cultural and discipline differences

Gender and innovation for climate-smart agriculture. Assessment of gender-responsiveness of RAN's agricultural-focused innovations

Ownership of agricultural production resources has generally been shown by research to be male dominated and to have wide disparities between males and females. The disparities are more pronounced in rural areas where women have less income, smaller pieces of land, and have inadequate market for their produce. In dealing with Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) adoption and with agricultural technology adoption, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of focusing on the gender-based needs behind the adoption choice itself. Grounded in the belief that solutions to Africa’s resilience challenges lie in understanding what makes communities thrive in adversity, ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) is a multidisciplinary innovation lab that leverages the creativity and talent of youth, students, scholars and communities to develop and scale innovative ideas. Given how dominant agriculture is among RAN's problem sets for strengthening resilience through innovation, RAN sought to understand how supported innovations had contributed to gender-responsive climate smart agriculture solutions. What lessons could be learned from Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) in their history of engagement with women farmers to co-create a gender-responsive innovation process to strengthen resilience through the agricultural sector? With the support of CCAFS, RAN and WOUGNET conducted a gender assessment exercise to evaluate if the current solutions/innovations are gender responsive or not. Three innovations were selected that are primarily focused towards CSA and that had affordability and ease of use as key objectives. The gender assessment embraced a qualitative research approach. This choice was guided by the need to appreciate respondents’ understanding and experiences or perceptions of the different innovations that RAN has been nurturing and developing over the years. The respondents were purposively selected based on availability and on being located in any of the four Northern Uganda districts of Apac, Kole, Lira and Oyam where WOUGNET has actively engaged with women farmers. From the study, it was clear that men and women farmers are willing to embrace new technologies, practices and innovations in their pursuit of enhanced agricultural productivity and new opportunities. That said, a clearly gendered view emerged from the assessment in that uptake of the innovations was to a large extent driven by socio-cultural norms and expectations related to issues of ownership, work, decision making capacity, and income generation and control. For instance, use of the innovations can reduce time spent on farming activities and can open up time and space to explore new opportunities. However, if gender considerations are not taken into account, such time could be used to negatively impact on the work burden for women farmers as it may be taken that the women are now free to take on new work – even that which would have been previously done by the men in their households