Merci

Thank you,Nawsheen for being so friendly with me and for your message on my blog.

Ken Lohento, responsable du projet Ardyis

Atelier de formation et d'échanges sur l'utilisation des TIC dans le développement de l'agriculture dans les pays ACP

Journée 2:

Rapport de la deuxième journée de travail de l’atelier de formation et d’échanges sur les applications du web 2.0 pour le développement agricole et rural organisé par le projet ARDYIS du CTA.

Conformément au programme de l’atelier débuté ce lundi 07 mars 2011, les travaux de cette deuxième journée de travail, démarrés aux environs de 8h 45minutes, se rapportent essentiellement à l’utilisation du blogger d’une part, puis à l’étude des fonctions avancées du réseau social Facebook.

Après avoir défini sommairement puis expliqué les objectifs de l’utilisation du blogger, le formateur, M. Justin CHISENGA  a ensuite présenté les différentes étapes de la création d’un blog avant d’exposer l’utilisation du blogger de la conception du modèle du blog à la publication de messages sur le blog en passant par l’utilisation des gadgets. Il a été mis un accent particulier sur la différence entre le modèle et le plan du blog.

L’après midi, suite à quelques difficultés techniques survenus en fin de matinée, la suite du programme a connu une légère modification. Ainsi, sur l’initiative de Ken LOHENTO, Coordonnateur du CTA et en accord avec l’ensemble des participants et des formateurs, les travaux ont porté sur une session d’échanges entre les différents participants. A cet effet, sous la supervision de Ken, il a été présenté la synthèse des discussions sur les deux listes (francophone et anglophone) respectivement par Inoussa TRAORE pour la liste francophone et par Tyrone HALL et Samantha CHRISTIE pour la liste anglophone.

Les discussions menées sur les deux listes ont porté entre autres sur les infrastructures des TIC en milieu rural, l’entrepreneuriat numérique comme solution au développement des zones rurales, le rôle de l’état central dans le développement agricole par l’utilisation des TIC, la question de l’énergie, la conception et la mise en œuvre des différentes politiques de développement du monde rural dans les différents pays ACP, etc. Aussi bien sur la liste francophone que celle anglophone, il est à noter la participation massive aux différents débats ainsi que la qualité des différentes interventions enregistrées.

Après cette synthèse, une discussion a été ouverte sur les différentes propositions pour développer le monde agricole grâce à l’utilisation des TIC. Dès lors, les participants ont partagé les différentes expériences vécues dans leurs pays et ont proposé des approches de solutions pour le développement du monde rural.

A l’issue de ces échanges, il a été proposé la réalisation par les participants d’un documentaire sur l’importance de la contribution des TIC dans le développement agricole d’une part, et  la participation de tous pour la rédaction d’un communiqué final pour faire un plaidoyer auprès des différents états de la communauté ACP d’autre part. Les différentes contributions à la réalisation de ces deux projets sont donc attendues et seront transmises à Tyrone HALL ou Ken LOHENTO pour exploitation.

Les travaux ont pris fin à 18h30, après la résolution des difficultés techniques survenues plus tôt,  par une session de création de compte TWITTER par chacun des participants à l’atelier.

ARDYIS Youth Exchange and Workshop on Web 2.0 for Agricultural and Rural development - Day 2: Tuesday 8th March 2011

Training on Tuesday morning started at 08:30 with an over-view of what we were going to do during the day by Mr. Justin, the lead trainer. The first thing that was shown to us was a video, which was about mash-up. Now what we must be wondering is: what this mash up thing is about? The content of that video was basically a song which was composed of different singers singing a song, but it was like pieces of the songs were taken from somewhere and were fitted together (without changing anything), so that the final result would appear as a single song. We must agree on the fact that the song was a pretty nice one to listen to and all the participants seemed to be enjoying it.

After the mash-up video, blogging was introduced to us. Mr. Justin explained about the purpose of having a blog, how we can blog and what are the problems linked with blogging. All participants who did not have a Blogger/Twitter account were asked to create one. The blog account was created on “Blogger” as this was the simplest one to use for blogging. 

The flow of this part of the training was that it was shown to us step by step how to create the account, how to choose a proper name for the blog and the importance of having a proper display name as this will appear next to all the posts that have been published. After all these had been done, we learned about how to write a post, put tags in it and how the blog would appear after publishing it. We then moved to the part where we learned about how to design the blog, add gadgets like search box, feeds, followers etc. It was also shown to us how to download a template for Blogger on different websites and what was the difference between XML and HTML. Looking for a nice template for our blog could take a lot of time as most of the templates are not free, and as Mr. Justin said, “Good things don’t come cheap”! By that time everyone was ready for lunch, but before that we were shown how to add gadgets to the blog, edit posts that were already published, add links to it, and customize the blog by going on the “settings” part.

After lunch, we moved to the afternoon session in which we did the debate that was supposed to be done on Friday as there was a problem with the internet connection, which prevented us to continue the training on Facebook. Mr. Ken Lohento, our programme coordinator, explained that CTA deals mainly with dissemination of information on agriculture and rural development. According to him, most of the people who are engaged in agriculture are old and CTA has invested in this project as youth are the key factor in applying ICT in agriculture and rural development.

A summary was done on the forum that we had on the “youth group” in January and February 2011, which was on two themes: 

• How states in ACP countries are developing ICTs?
• Young entrepreneurs using ICTs: What they are doing and what are the challenges they are facing?

The presentation in French was done by Inoussa Traore from Burkina Faso and that in English was done by Samantha-Kaye Christie from Jamaica. The facilitator for this session was Tyrone Hall, the overall winner of the essay contest, who is also from Jamaica.

After the presentations, we moved to the debate part, where the participants had to react on the presentations which were on:

• Infrastructure
• Energy
• Prospect in agriculture – opportunities for youth
• Goal of the States

Reactions were from the following people:

  Riten Chand Gosai from Fiji

 Chris /mwangi Ngige

  Loeto Ronald Kenosi from Botswana

  Issac Chanda from Zambia

  Aristide Adaha from Benin

  Tyrone Hall from Jamaica

  Akaffou Euphrem N’Depo from Ivory Coast

  Inoussa Traore from Burkina Faso

  Moustapha Waly Diouf  from Senegal

  Gerald Mangena from Zimbabwe

After the debate, which was very entertaining, there was tea break and by that time the internet problem was solved and the participants who had not been able to create a Blogger/Twitter account were asked to do so and the training was over at 18:00.  

Training at CSIR on Tuesday 8th March 2011