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Why Invest in ICTs for agriculture? (CTA Discussion Paper, 2018)

With the ability to reach many farmers with timely and accessible content, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agriculture (ICT4Ag) has the potential to transform farming and food production, worldwide. ICT4Ag supports new methods in the monitoring and management of soils, plants and livestock (precision agriculture), access to online markets, and improved communication between value chain stakeholders, among others. The services provided are vital in connecting farmers with the information they need to improve their agricultural productivity and reduce poverty. Through case studies and examples of ICT4Ag initiatives from across Asia, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, the first chapter looks at how ICT4Ag actually works to drive economic development across developing economies.

Click here for full paper.

Young Lives: How Youth in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe Consume Media (Discovery Learning Alliance, 2019)

Discovery Learning Alliance commissioned the Research, Insight and Evaluation team at M&C Saatchi World Services to help deepen their understanding of the rapidly changing media consumption habits of young people in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. The study offers a new analysis of existing data on youth media habits, alongside newly conducted targeted interviews with relevant experts to produce insights that will help us and others harness the opportunity for impact.

The report gives valuable insight into the preferences, interests and consumption habits of African youth. It also helps to understand what kind of content young people are seeking.

Click here for full report.

Engaging Community Members to Adopt Effective WASH Practices for Nutrition (SPRING brief, 2017)

The first 1,000 days, the period from pregnancy to two years of age, are critical for early childhood development. During this time, children are especially vulnerable to stunting, an irreversible condition that can result in lifelong cognitive and physical deficits. In 2011, stunting, or low height-for-age, affected more than 165 million children worldwide (Black et al. 2013). Mounting evidence indicates that poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices contribute significantly to stunting. Improving WASH practices reduces diarrheal disease, environmental enteric
dysfunction, and soil-transmitted helminth (parasitic worm) infections. Combined, these reductions contribute to decreases in stunting.

In Ghana, stunting is a particularly serious challenge. According to the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS), 19 percent of Ghanaian children under the age of 5 are stunted. Among the regions with the highest rates of stunting is the Northern Region, where the prevalence is 33 percent (GDHS 2014). WASH practices in many parts of the country contribute to this problem. The majority of households (93 percent) do not treat their drinking water by any method (GDHS 2014), while only 14 percent use an improved toilet facility that is not shared with other
households (GDHS 2014). In the two weeks preceding the 2014 GDHS survey, the overall rate of diarrhea reported among children under five was 12 percent, a figure which tends to vary seasonally.

The SPRING project is a seven-year USAID-funded cooperative agreement to strengthen global and country efforts to scale up high-impact nutrition practices and policies and improve maternal and child nutrition outcomes. SPRING has worked for three years in Ghana, where USAID has tasked it with helping to prevent stunting and reduce anemia in the Feed the Future Zone of Influence in 15 districts in the Upper East and Northern Regions.

SPRING’s “WASH 1,000” strategy promotes focused, evidence-based WASH behaviors to eliminate common fecal-oral contamination pathways in children during the first 1,000 days. The strategy takes an integrated, multi-sectoral approach, simultaneously delivering products, services, and information to households with pregnant and lactating women and those with children under two (i.e., 1,000-day households).

Click here for full brief.

Gendered voices for climate action, a theory of change for the meaningful inclusion of local experiences in decision-making (IIED Working Paper, 2018)

Bringing the perspectives of local women and men who have experienced climate impacts into relevant policy arenas is seen as key to just decision-making and meeting the Paris Agreement commitment to a country-driven gender-responsive approach. But there is a lack of robust evidence on how these experiences can increase the ambition, urgency and quality of climate responses at different levels. This paper reviews existing evidence and proposes a theory of change for how the systematic inclusion of women and men with lived experiences of climate change could strengthen climate action.

Click here for full paper.

Nutrition Knowledge Bank (GSMA mNutrition Initiative that provides advice via mobile phones)

A new open-access Knowledge Bank aims to deliver nutrition information to three million people in 12 developing countries.

The Knowledge Bank, part of the GSMA mNutrition initiative to help tackle malnutrition in Africa and Asia, is a collection of content on good nutritional practices and includes downloadable factsheets and mobile messages.

Adequate nutrition is critical to the physical and mental development of children and to long-term human health, but one out of three people in developing countries suffers from micronutrient deficiency. Experts consider poor access to agricultural and health information a major barrier to the uptake of improved nutritional practises, particularly by women and vulnerable groups in marginalized areas.

mNutrition delivers content to people at risk of malnutrition in Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. An expert consortium on nutritional matters—BMJ, CABI, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Oxfam International—is partnering with local organizations in these countries to produce useful and reliable nutritional, agricultural and health information, which is then distributed through mobile phone networks in each country.

The Nutrition Knowledge Bank is searchable by country and subject. The messages and factsheets are available in several local languages and take into account the differing cultural contexts. The topics covered include breastfeeding advice for new mothers, practical tips for rearing dairy cows and growing healthier crops for human consumption.

The Nutrition Knowledge Bank can be found at: https://www.cabi.org/nutritionkb

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