Web2forDev: Web 2.0 for Development Gateway

The importance of the agricultural sector to national development cannot be underscored. The sector's development continues to be constrained by lack of funding. This coupled with the lack of awareness of decision makers have prevented many from embracing information communication technologies (ICTs) in their operations.

The exposure to the Web 2.0 training over the week (5-9 March, 2012) enabled us to become more aware of the various interactive, participatory tools for generating, packaging and sharing information across the world wide web. Web 2.0 is an excellent medium for networking.

ICT Update magazine is looking for articles for our forthcoming issue on Crowdsourcing. The editors would like to hear from anyone working on agricultural or rural development projects that have experience with crowdsourcing (positive and negative) in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries by using ICTs (mobile phones, computers, GIS, email, internet, radio, TV, etc).

Crowdsourcing allows for mass citizen feedback to collect information that could be difficult to collect in other ways. If you are involved in agricultural projects that made use of crowdsourcing please get in touch with brief details on the technology you use, how farmers are involved, and how it contributes to the rural development in ACP countries. We can then send an article outline and list of questions to cover in the article, or organise a time for a telephone interview.