We want STRONG ROOTS to grow from the bottom up. Like Honorables Mamadou Simpara and Sounkoutoun Sissoko, MPs for Banamba and Diema Districts, Mali. They will champion VHRI for smallholders in the October session of the Malian Parliament. Like Lassi Dembélé, Counselor to the Mayor, Sukumba. He catalyzes village assemblies like no one. Like Mamadou Doumbia, Head of the Soil‐Water‐Plant Lab, IER. Against the odds, he nurtured the unconventional SotubaGIS adventure inside IER since 2000.

We also want BRIGHT STARS to accelerate the momentum. Like Kofi Annan, Board Chair of AGRA. Like Modibo Sidibé, Prime Minister of Mali. Like Agathane Ag Alassane, Minister of Agriculture, Mali. Like Tiémoko Sangaré, Minister of Environment, Mali. Because from a star’s viewpoint, you get a better sense of the bigger picture, and you can level obstacles and pave the way. Like Digital Globe, a world leader in Earth observation, who pledged to cover 100 smallholder communities in a Mali pilot with WorldView‐2 imagery, “IMMEDIATELY IF WE LIKE” – including automatic smallholder fields extraction, etc. Like aWhere Inc., a scalable, enterprise location intelligence solutions provider that delivers, in real time via internet and mobile networks, powerful VHRI‐ and weather‐based information instrumental to smallholders.

And then we want those who are simultaneously roots and stars in their own right. Like Haby Diawara, who burst in tears with her community hosts at the end of a life‐changing on‐farm experience in Fansirakoro. There she learned, the hard way, for the first time, the real underpinnings of smallholder agriculture – pieces of knowledge she ironically never really received during a land use planning degree at the University. Like Amadou Doumbia and Ouleymatou Sy Savané, who carried on with field work in a dramatic 198 mm rainfall season precursor to Niger’s 2010 food crisis. For they are the harbingers of the human interface between smallholders and satellites, a new critical link inside the information and knowledge chain. Because (let’s not forget it) agriculture in the Tropics may be the most information‐intensive endeavor one can possibly imagine(1). Yet, derelict extension services and technology bottlenecks impede free information flow. Because (let’s not forget it) one of the most severe reasons for poverty is WAITING(2). … SO WHAT?

So when Kofi Annan visited us today with Modibo Sidibé, Agathane Ag Alassane and Tiemoko Sangaré, we gave them glimpses of our vision. A VISION that takes into account the Federal grants of US$ 3+ billion attributed to each of the rivals, Digital Globe and GeoEye, earlier this month. Because the U.S. Government realizes now that VHRI is so valuable that they will make sure that this public service capacity exists in the future, through dynamic business competition – just like Boeing – Airbus. A VISION that builds on Mali’s Agence pour la Promotion de l’Emploi des Jeunes (APEJ) to build the agricultural extension services of the future – literally, a national AGCorps (and, by the same way, seamless community‐level AGStatistics). A VISION that recognizes that the extraordinary potential of public‐private partnerships readily applies to spatial knowledge engineering and delivery, and that innovating geospatial brokers such as AGCommons can translate that potential into impacts. A VISION that finally states that Very High Resolution for Smallholders is a HUGE springboard for Africa’s Green Revolutions. Because it essentially lays the foundation of tomorrow’s agricultural information systems.

Do YOU get it? Because here at SotubaGIS, 7°55’ W – 12°39’ N, we do. And we’re on a mission. And we know you’re coming with us

Credits: 1. John Corbett, CEO, aWhere Inc. 2. PICO Team, 2008

“If you don’t  know where you are going, any road will take you there”

These wise words were spoken to Alice by the Cheshire Cat when she was trying to move around in Wonderland, but serve as a good addage to many of us when we are thinking about the future.

For the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the CGIAR as well as more than 80 people from over 60 organisations all involved and interested in geospatial activities in agriculture, the 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week (AAGW10) gave them an opportunity to come together, share ideas, information and experiences and to ‘map’ out their future contribution to agricultural research and development.

The 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week was held 8th-12th June 2010, at ILRI Campus, Nairobi, Kenya, and was opened by the Minister of Agriculture of Kenya, represented by her Assistant Minister Hon Japhet Mbiuki.

Aptly themed ‘Navigating the Change’ the AAGW10 focused on taking a closer look at the role of spatial information and analysis in supporting improved agricultural research and development.“We know where we want to go–to provide innovative, collective geospatial services that can be applied to agricultural research and development - and during this week we will try to figure out how to get there” said Stanley Wood (IFPRI), Coordinator of the CGIAR-CSI group, at the beginning of the week.

Just as with any good GIS approach, we needed to develop a number of key data layers before being able to carry out a strong analysis, and then to present the results–and this is the process that the AAGW10 followed.

Developing data layers.

The AAGW10 started on Tuesday 8th June 2010 afternoon with a ‘Business as Unusual’ session focusing on the innovative concept and work of the AgCommons project.  Four out of the five Quick-Win projects were presented, showcasing not only interesting geospatial technologies and approaches, but also highlighting key ways in which these can be applied and made to serve the needs of those in the last 10 Km.

On Wednesday 9th June 2010, the program was geared towards ‘Understanding our own location’ which included learning about the activities, approaches and ideas of the CGIAR-CSI representatives from 12 out of the 15 CGIAR centres. Some key approaches we heard and learned about were:

• Methods for downscaling of climate data
• Recommendation domains
• Targeting and priority setting methods
• Impact assessment methods
• Poverty and Agriculture methods and maps
• Plant modelling
• Mapping crops, soils, rainfed/irrigated areas
• MODIS remote sensing

On Thursday 10th June 2010 the workshop ‘Charted Unknown waters’ through presentations from people from various organisations and discussions in 4 Cluster groups. Alot of interesting approaches and information emerged on this day.

In Cluster 1: Use of Remote Sensing and GIS for enhancing food security, Andries Potgieter, QLD Primary Industries Australia, presented methods for identifying “hot spots” in south eastern Africa where sustainable intensification of maize-legume based farming systems for food security is likely to have the highest impact in terms of relieving food security and poverty issues.

In Cluster 2: Mapping for Decision Support, Mikel Maron from Open StreetMap presented Map Kibera which is the first public digital map of Kibera Community in Nairobi, Kenya, widely known as Africa’s largest slum. Once a blank spot on the map, it was felt that without basic knowledge of the geography and resources of Kibera it was impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents. This was rectified by the co-creation with the comunity of an open and free map.

Paolo Paron, Oxford University Fellow, and his found ‘treasure’ were highlights in Cluster 3: Understanding the Basics, where we learned of the proposed use of old aerial photographs stored in Oxford University in combination with current images and data to explore key environmental and social changes over time in certain African countries.

‘Closing the final kilometer: agricultural information to the grower’ a tools-based presentation byJohn Corbett, aWhere Inc. provided interesting insight and direct experience with key tools for‘Location-based intelligence to enhance farmer knowledge’, as was the theme of Cluster 4.

Undertaking the right analysis

After being exposed to such a wide range of tools, methods and approaches and how they are being used by different organisations for different purposes, it was now time to see how these could be applied to key areas of agricultural research for development. Given that a structured set of ARD research areas have recently been identified for the ‘new CGIAR’ by a wide range of stakeholders and are currently in a process of iteration of these into full programs, it was decided to use this as the framework.

The new CGIAR Consortium Research program is currently defined by 7 Mega programs and 2 Cross-cutting Platforms. There will also be certain shared services developed in a way to function across the various research programs. The key analysis activity during AAGW10, therefore, was to see which geospatial information and approaches could/would be of service to the 7 research areas as well as what would be useful within a shared services model.

The Mega programs include:

• Shared Services
• MP1: Integrated agriculture systems for the poor and vulnerable
• MP2: policies, instituions,a nd markets for enabling agricultural incomes for the poor
• MP3: Sustainable staple food productivity increase for global food security
• MP4: Agriculture, nutrition and health
• MP5: Water soils and ecosystems
• MP6: Forests and trees
• MP7: Climate Change

Divided into 8 groups, through random handing out of numbers, the participants were tasked with moving around the auditorium to the 8 stations- 7 megaprograms and 1 shared services- where large flip chart sheets were placed on the walls. At each station groups were asked to develop a list of geospatial tools, methods, approaches and information which could be useful to the particular topic. This ‘download’ exercise was extremely energetic and enthusiastic, with the lists extending onto multiple flip chart sheets of paper.

On the following day this was repeated but with instructions for the groups to think more carefully about which actors-both CGIAR and other partners- could provide such services and write these down too.

Presenting the results

The results from the week have been reported on an ongoing basis through a number of social media outlets. Microblogging through Twitter gave short snippets of what was going on at AAGW10, provided links to projects and tools presented, and even showed some images. Tweets were tagged with #aagw10 and can be found on ICTKM Twitter account and AgCommons Twitter account. A number of blog posts providing more details about activities and presentations during the week can be found on the ICT-KM website here.  To catch a glimpse of what it was like at AAGW10 check out some photos too. Presentations are  available on GoogleDocs linked to the various channels above.

More documentation of the workshop and the  role of geospatial servcies for supporting ARD defined during AAGW10 will also be made available in the channels shown above.

“Maps are cognitive guides. They locate us, helping us to figure out where we are now in relation to where we’ve been, and to plan where we’re going.”

The quote above is from the book “Outcome Mapping: Building learning and reflection into development programs, by Sarah Earl, Fred Carden and Terry Smutylo” and fits well with this post on awards at the 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week.  In the Outcome Mapping approach, an approach which has been used by the CGIAR ICT-KM program to direct and monitor its activities towards impact, we learn about a new way to think of achievements and success . Rather than a  narrow focus on metrics and figures, this approach encourages a focus on one specific type of result: outcomes as behavioural change.

One of the objectives of the Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week is to bring people together to share ideas and inspire each other towards improved approaches, better ways of sharing, and greater application of geospatial tools to real needs on the ground–in essence all of these are desired behaviour changes.

So when there are behavioural changes, it is necessary to recognise these, showcase them and reward them in order to  encourage more of it. And this is just what we did at the 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week, held 8th-12th at ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya.

To reward innovation in approaches as well as in sharing and application of geospatial sceince and celebrate success achieved in these, prizes were given out to a number of participants, in some key categories . And these were no ordinary prizes. Brand new Acer notebooks were awarded as a way of giving special recognition to the prize-winners but also to assist in their ongoing innovation in the field of geospatial science.

The prizes were decided by a jury including: Enrica Porcari(CGIAR ICT-KM), Stanley Wood(IFPRI/CSI Coordinator and John Steffenson (ESRI)- with special onsideration given to the ‘People’s Choice’ votes that were also cast by other participants.

The prizes-were awarded by Enrica Porcari, CIO of the CGIAR to the following:

First time presenter- Kibet Stephen, took a bus from his village outside of Eldoret 300Km from Nairobi to attend the AAGW10. A student at Moi University, this was his first time to present at a conference like this. He presented his work on‘Soil erosion prediction using RUSLE (Revised universal soil erosion equation) integrated with GIS’.  His first presentation was not very smooth, but by the time he presented for a second time he had already improved on his communication skills and got his message across that he was working on something exciting. He was awarded the prize for taking the risk to present his work in this forum and open himself up to critical review. Given his improved second time performance it was also noted that he was a fast learner!

If you are working in a country and region in which livestock are a key pathway out of poverty for the majority of people, would it not be key to try to apply good scientific approaches to help people with their  management against risk? Well, this is just what a  team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) did when they designed and started implementing the Index-based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project. This innovative idea which applies geospatial data and tools to supply a vital service for livestock farmers in the region, was presented by An Notenbaert, CSI representative for ILRI. Representing a great step for geospatial science to be applied to real problems faced on the ground, this was awaraded the prize for  most innovative idea.

” I found a treasure!” said Paolo Paron, Oxford University Fellow at the start of his presentation on‘ACCESS HAPA- Analysis of Climate Change in Environmnetal and Social studies through Historical Aerial Photography Archives’. He was referring to his finding of 1.5 million aerial photographs taken by the British from across Africa from the 1960s, hidden away in storage at Oxford University. His presentation outlined a proposal to digitise and make use of these aerial photographs in combination with more recent images and data to be able to detect changes over time. In this case, the judges felt,  one man’s ‘treasure’ could be a whole continent’s ‘treasure’ and awarded Paolo and his project with the most innovative medium prize for the potential value it could bring to understanding key changes that have taken place.

With a ‘Manifesto against Top-Down approaches’ one would already expect innovation from the‘Seeing is Beliveing in West Africa’ (SIBWA) project that was presented by Sibiry Traore, CSI representative from ICRISAT.  As one of the quick-win projects of AgCommons, this project was meant to uphold the AgCommons mission of  ”identifing and developing data, tools and services that deliver relevant, timely and affordable geospatial information to smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and those working on their behalf”.  But SIBWA did not just do this by taking high resultion imagery to the last 8 kilometers to help scale up productivity enhancement technologies,  it also went the extra mile to involve and communicate with its stakeholders through a variety of innovative means. By recognising that ‘farmers are spatially skilled’, the project focused on participatory mapping and communicating this to others. For this dual innovation, SIBWA and Sibiry were awarded with the prize for overall best presentation and project.

Some other presentations and projects that the judges felt also deserved a special mention included:

• Jawoo Koo (IFPRI) for his great efforts in producing a new website for the CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) community which included lots of innovative and interactive featrures necessary to support such an active and dispersed community
• Why would you want an iPad when you could be aiming for an iPaddy to collect, store and integreate data and services for improved rice production? This innovative idea presented byAndy Nelson (IRRI) intrigued and excited the participants of the AAGW10
• aWhere Inc’s John Corbett showcased lots of interesting mechansisms to help decision-making and monitoring and evaluation–by using the actual tools during his presentations.
• Map Kibera from Open StreetMap, presented by Mikel Maron, was also recognised for its progress from an idea born out of the 1st Africa Agriculture Geospatial week to a fully-fledged and successful operation which strives to address the following: “ Without basic knowledge of the geography and resources of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents”

There was a noticeable difference in both the content and presentation styles of the participants of this 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week. Presentations were more interesting and focused on the context, the rationale and the application of geospatial science, and the content was more innovative and impact-oriented. For this all presenters are commended!

For the workshop organisers, as we review the achievements and successs of the week and the AAGW model we have many outcomes to be proud of. Behaviour is changing within this once-known- as-geeky community. People are more eager to share their knowledge, skills, techniques and experiences; people are more open to learning from and collaborating with others; and people are more focused on the application of geospatial science towards achievement of real development goals.

If we do as the opening quote proposes then and make a map of the AAGW model- we can see that we have achieved a number of advancements, and it can help us to chart what further changes and outcomes we would like to see in the next years. And hopefully the allure of being recognised and celebrated for innovation, will spur on the efforts of those in the geospatial community, especially in Africa.

Kenya’s agriculture minister opens Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week and calls for efforts to take geospatial information to the ‘last mile’

While addressing the 2nd Africa Agriculture Geospatial Week (AAGW) that opened this week at theInternational Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) campus in Nairobi; Kenya’s Minister for Agriculture, Hon Dr Sally Kosgei, challenged researchers and GIS practitioners to ‘discuss steps towards the development of delivery mechanisms for making geospatial information accessible to poor smallholders in the villages across Sub-Saharan Africa.’

In a speech read on her behalf by Hon Japhet Mbiuki, Kenya’s assistant minister for agriculture, during the official opening of the conference on Wednesday 9 June, 2010, Dr Kosgei, noted that  geospatial information can help in providing  ‘relevant and timely agricultural information that will assist smallholder farmers in the continent in their bid to improve agricultural production’.

While acknowledging that Africa still faces the threat of food insecurity, the minister highlighted the need to focus on helping farmers produce enough to feed their people and create economic opportunities. She particularly emphasized the need to ‘provide seed technologies, explain the appropriate use of fertilization, share techniques to manage land effectively and to create a strong post-harvest infrastructure to help farmers increase their income’.  However, she said that such initiatives ‘will only benefit farmers and producers in general if they are appropriately targeted and if farmers are given easy access to relevant information through appropriate technology transfer mechanisms.’

She highlighted the critical role geospatial information plays in enabling good decision-making throughout the agriculture sector by providing essential location-specific information. ‘Farmers need early information systems to mitigate the effects of extreme climatic events’ she said. ‘They need to know which crops are best suited to their land, how to minimize the threats posed by pest and diseases and where to go to sell their products’.

She added that real-time, location-specific (geospatial) information will enable farmers to ‘better  plan and decide more effectively which crops or livestock will perform best on their farms, anticipate and manage disease outbreaks and rainfall shortfalls, as well as decide when to harvest and in which markets to sell their produce’.

In view of the valuable contribution that geospatial information can make to farming systems and practice in Africa, she challenged participants to find ways of moving geospatial technology from a research-based platform to one that  takes such technologies to the ‘last mile’ and makes them accessible to farmers who need this information the most.

She commended the organizers of the conference, who include AGCommons and the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) for their work towards providing farmers with location specific information to strengthen agricultural production.

Over 60 organizations, 13 CGIAR partners and 30 students from universities in Kenya have gathered to explore how location specific intelligence can be used to support agricultural production in this year’s meeting – Navigating the change: Highlighting the role of spatial information and analysis in transforming livelihoods and landscapes in a time of change.

Laban MacOpiyo, the director of AGCommons says that as one of the conveners of the event, the organization will use the ideas and lessons shared from the conference to ‘provide a repository of geospatial information that is easily accessible to farmers in Africa.’ More information about the work of AGCommons in using geospatial information can be found on http://blip.tv/file/2778519

This year’s conference is funded by Harvest Choice, AGCommons, and the information communication technology and knowledge management (ICT-KM) program of CGIAR among other partners and builds on the conference held last year also at ILRI. It aims among others, to share experiences in using geographical information systems (GIS) for agricultural development, encourage sharing and learning from each other’s good practices and provide staff from different organizations with opportunities in using GIS to meet the increasing demands of a changing global agriculture sector.

Story by Paul Karaimu, Corporate Communications Writer, ILRI

Here is the link to live broadcasting of the presentations:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ilri-headquarters

Check the agenda of the week here to find out what is on air..

Follow us on Twitter #AAGW10 and now on Ustream…

An introduction to AgCommons was given by Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer of the CGIAR, and Laban MacOpiyo, Director of AgCommons, which provided a background to the program and what services it offers.

One of the key highlights of AgCommons is the set of quick-win projects (those bolded were presented):

•Seeing Is Believing: unlocking precision agriculture in West African smallholder communities with very high resolution imagery.

•Nodes of growth: Improving legume seed networks in Kenya (Andy Farrow, CIAT Africa)

•Roads Data Development in Ethiopia

•Community Level Crop Disease Surveillance (Hein Bouwmeester, IITA)

•Africa Trial Sites Catalogue: Reaching out to farmers, agronomists and plant breeders with spatially efficient, participatory testing networks (Kai Sonders, CIMMYT)

Some interesting questions and discussion points that came up from the workshop participants with respect to the Quick-win projects were as follows:

• What is the value addition of AgCommons? of such methods?
• How do you ensure the quality of the data that is provided to farmers (and others)?
• Would be good to collaborate with other NGOs, private sector and even other sectors (e.g Public health sector) which may be using innovate methods for collecting, sharing and translating data.

A presentation was also made by Mandhi Sehmi on KenCall, a partner to AgCommons which has developed a farmer helpline.

In order to improve AgCommons and improve collaboration, an interactive discussion session with the workshop participants was facilitated by Laban MacOpiyo to explore the following questions:

1. What do you think of the concept of AgCommons?
2. What gaps are there? What can be done to improve the concept and operationalisation of it?
3. What could/should people and/or organisations benefit from AgCommons?
4. What could/should people and/or organisations contribute to AgCommons?

Some of the comments and suggestions made included:

• AgCommons should be developed as a form of extension
• Needs to cover wide range of data which can help to support increased production, better understanding of markets, crop information as well as livestock information.
• AgCommons should help to address key issues e.g climate change
• AgCommons is necessary as a global approach which brings in the participation of farmers
• This concept can be used to appeal to policy makers and processes
• Need to think about how information is packaged
• While the commons is a good concept-would also be good to think about which information and products people would/could pay for.

At the end of the session Laban MacOpiyo showcased and launched the new AgCommons platform.  The platform:

provides key elements for geospatial information discovery and accessibility: a comprehensive metadata catalog supporting robust search for geospatial data; an overlay library providing a data gallery for previewing contents of the AGCommons database; and the SMS query interface for access to the data via mobile phone.

Laban highlighted the three main components of the platform:

1. Data Search
2. Data Gallery
3. SMS Query Tool

Geospatial experts from the world’s largest alliance of agricultural research centers (CGIAR) will gather in Nairobi from 8-12 June to develop new strategies for using high-tech mapping and analysis to improve productivity and market access for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through better prediction, monitoring and mitigation of droughts, plant diseases and other crop crippling events.

The meeting is focused on the potential benefits of geographical information systems or GIS, which integrate a wide range of data about particular places—such as satellite images, weather forecasts, temperature trends, and soil conditions—to provide new insights that can lead to more productive farms.

Africa Agriculture GIS Week (AAGW 2010) will open with a welcome address from the Hon. Dr. Sally J. Kosgei, Minister of Agriculture, Kenya. Other highlights of the week include the launch of the AGCommons service bureau and its service delivery platform.

The week will also include the 2010 edition of the popular WhereCampAfrica Event

Agenda and background information available at:http://africaagriculturegisweek.org/

Collaborative GIS Web Applications Will Help Agricultural Researchers Make African Farmers More Productive and Profitable

Redlands, California—June 7, 2010—ESRI will be sharing ideas and knowledge on geographic information systems (GIS) for agricultural development at Africa Agriculture GIS Week (AAGW) 2010, to be held June 8–12 in Nairobi, Kenya. Staff will be on hand to meet with delegates and support agricultural programs for rural populations in less developed regions of the world.

“Food security and agricultural productivity initiatives are fully supported by ESRI,” says Geoff Wade, natural resources solution manager, ESRI. “We are excited to be a part of this prestigious community. We look forward to contributing to solutions that ensure that people in every nation on earth are fed and have the opportunity for a sustainable livelihood.”

A training workshop featuring ArcGIS Server will be hosted by ESRI on Friday, June 11. The workshop will cover a complete step-by-step process to create a variety of Web applications for enhanced collaboration between organizations. Attendees will learn how to use their own data to make maps and share them with others. Topics will include authoring maps, effective Web editing, and how to select the appropriate end client application to support different workflows.

AAGW is organized by the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); HarvestChoice, an agriculture investment targeting program; Agricultural Geospatial Commons (AGCommons), a geospatial information program based in Africa; and other partners. ESRI is proud to support these organizations and has worked with CGIAR formally since 2002, bringing GIS technology to its network of research centers worldwide.

Through the training workshop and conference meetings at AAGW, ESRI wants to empower more organizations to share geospatial information through collaborative Web applications. An example is the HarvestChoice AgMarketFinder, a prototype application that helps locate potential markets in East Africa within an eight-hour travel time from a given location. The application was created with ESRI’s ArcGIS Server and the ArcGIS Server API for JavaScript. Data comes from ArcGIS Online and is used with crop production and harvest data from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and transportation networks and waterways from Vector Map, a product available from the Multinational Geospatial Co-Production Program (MGCP).

To register for AAGW and the ESRI-sponsored training workshop, visit http://africaagriculturegisweek.org/. For more information on ESRI’s agriculture solutions, visit www.esri.com/agriculture.

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About ESRI

Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at http://www.esri.com/news.

ESRI, the ESRI globe logo, GIS by ESRI, ArcGIS, www.esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of ESRI in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective trademark owners.

Press Information                                                                         

Contact: Karen Richardson, ESRI

Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-3491

E-mail: press@esri.com

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap [http://www.openstreetmap.org/[ is a free and open map of the entire world, open to contribution and use by anyone. Contributors range from amateur enthusiasts, to GIS professionals, to national governments. OSM was recently very active in the mapping in post earthquake Haiti [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti], and in Kibera [http://mapkibera.org/]

The workshop will start with a general introduction to OpenStreetMap, introduce surveying with GPS and satellite imagery digitization, and use of the OpenStreetMap.org website. We’ll cover editing and tagging with our editors, JOSM and Potlatch. We’ll look at how OSM data can be used on the web, and in other GIS tools from ESRI, Google, and others. The day will close with a survey of advanced topics like API rendering, filtering, and imports.

aWhere

aWhere will provide an introductory look at Agricultural Information System – Weather Surfaces (AIS) and, aWhere desktop software – a lightweight GIS designed specifically for non-GIS specialist use. The AIS provides historical, forecasts and round-the-clock access to the most comprehensive, continuously updated and cleansed weather database available critical for agri-business. For more info on aWhere and AIS: (http://www2.awhere.com/AISEA/homepage.aspx)”

For the programme of the training from Google and ESRI please see this earlier  post.

To register please fill the form here

Please note that a specific registration is required to attend the training and that the  AAGW  registration DOES NOT grant you access to the training sessions.

If you need further information please send an email to info@africaagricultureGISweek.org

We are pleased to invite you to join us at this  five-day event which provides the ideal platform for AAGW partners to share ideas and knowledge on GIS for agricultural development and welcomes participation from others working in this field. To register send an email to registrations@africaagricultureGISweek.org.

Jointly organized by the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the HarvestChoice program and the Agricultural Geospatial Commons (AGCommons) program, AAGW 2010 will host a ‘GIS ShareFair’ (a market place with exhibitors) and training sessions offered by ESRI, Google and OpenStreetMap.  In order to register to the training session please fill out the registration form.

The event will also include the CGIAR-CSI annual meeting, giving CSI scientists an opportunity to present the results of their work.   In addition, a full day will be dedicated to researchers, professionals and students to present their innovative ideas in a variety of formats, with a small prize being awarded in the following categories: first time presenters (including students and young professionals); most innovative idea; most innovative medium for presentation delivery; and overall best.

AAGW 2010 will culminate in WhereCampAfrica a free ‘unconference’ for geogeographers, mobile location experts and social cartographers and others interested in place.  WhereCampAfrica will provide an opportunity for participants to present ideas, questions, projects, politics, and technical issues, while enabling them to contribute to and get feedback from others. An unconference is a conference planned by the participants.

For more information please visit http://africaagriculturegisweek.org/