YoBloCo Awards – Organization and

future perspectives

Giorgio Bellinzas CTA

Consultative workshop on “Using ICT to strengthen youth opportunities in agriculture and rural areas”

Johannesburg, 20th May 2012

YoBloCo Awards: aims and rationale

• Highlighting success and challenges faced by the youth engaged in agriculture and in rural areas

• Encouraging the production of information and the use of new information technologies by young farmers’ groups and organizations interested in the “youth in agriculture” question

• Promoting the sharing of information on the issues of agriculture and rural development in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries

Structure and organization

• Two categories:

Individual category

Institutional category

• Selection of winners:

Pre-selection

Public evaluation process

Final evaluation process, undertaken by an independent jury of experts

• Officially launched on July 23th 2011

• Submission closed October 31st 2011

• 91 entries in total, from 24 ACP countries

• 69 individual

• 22 institutional

Some figures

Public Evaluation

• Launched on December 5th 2011

• Closed on December 31st

• 2214 votes were cast by 2080 voters

• 612 comments were received for blogs in the institutional category

• 15 finalists for individual category

Final Evaluation

• Jury of Experts:

Ms. Dorothy K. Gordon (Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ghana);

Dr. Assogbadjo Achille Ephrem (Researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences of the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin)

Peter Ballantyne (Head of Knowledge Management and Information Services at the International Livestock Research Institute)

Evaluation Criteria

1. Clarity and quality of language,

2. Originality of posts (written or not by the blogger),

3. Frequency of posting, quality and consistency of original posts,

4. Presence of comments from readers and replies from the blogger,

5. Presence of agricultural related content,

6. Presence of information on the organization's activities (related to agriculture and youth),

7. Presence of youth in agriculture related content,

8. Presence of blog features (adequate presence of widgets, plug-ins, presentation of the blogger, links etc.)

9. Overall look and feel (adequate multimedia, attractiveness of graphics, legibility of posts, etc.)

Main themes • Agricultural issues in ACP countries;

• Youth involvement in agriculture;

• ICT use in agriculture.

Other topics include:

climate change

education and training

agricultural policy and strategy,

agricultural value chains

gender issues

…

Main challenges for youth

• Land availability and quality (including land grabbing by multinationals)

• Improving the educational system

• The need to develop market access and to promote transparency on prices

• Psychological and cultural factors that hinder youth involvement in agriculture

• Environmental challenges impacting agricultural sustainability

• Engaging youth in policy-making.

• …

Winners Individual Category

1st prize: Nawsheen Hosenally

2nd prize: Sourou H. A. NANKPAN

3rd prize: Anthony Mwangi

Institutional Category

CARIBBEAN: Agribusiness Society of the University of West Indies (UWI)

EAST AFRICA: Farming and Technology for Africa

WEST AFRICA: Syecomp Business Service

Follow-up survey: some findings

• 14% of respondents comes from rural areas

• 54% already had their blog started, while 46% created the blog for the competition itself

• > 90% opened their blog on a free platform, and almost everybody built the blog by themselves

Follow-up survey: impact of YoBloCo

• The contest seems to have contributed to promoting agriculture and youth involvement in the sector

• 72% registered a significant increase in the visits to the blog after entering the YoBloCo Awards

• 66% of respondents registered an increase of feedbacks from the public

Next editions: how to…

• …increase entries from Pacific, Caribbean, Central Africa and Southern Africa

• …increase the participation of audience

• …enhance the voting system

• …enhance the YoBloCo Awards blog

• …

Thank you