CSIR-INSTI designs digital apps to support agricultural

In order to promote demand-driven research, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (CSIR-INSTI) has designed four digital outputs to support and provide alternative methods of extension delivery.

The four outputs, namely; the CSIR Technologies; CSIR Space; Kuafo Market Place; and Agritech Mobile Advisor, designed to be hosted on the Digital Agriculture Innovation Hub (DAIH), set up by the CSIR-INSTI, as part of the Modernizing Agriculture in Ghana (MAG) programme.

The MAG programme, is a five-year Ministry of Food and Agriculture project, being funded by the Canadian Government through the Global Affairs Canada, focusing attention on demand driven research and alternative methods of extension delivery, with the objective of increasing productivity through intensive farming.

A final User Acceptance Test meeting was held on the four deliverables for all stakeholders in Accra.

Dr Paul Danquah, National Coordinator of MAG, CSIR-INSTI, explained that the meeting was to finally showcase all the MAG 2020 digitization deliverables by CSIR-INSTI after numerous user visitations for requirement gathering and demonstration of the solutions to farmer based groups in various regions of the country.

He said after the final stakeholders’ consultation, the apps would be rolled out live, as funds were being sought “to sensitize the user community on how to use the technology and then optimize its functionality sometime next year.”

Dr Danquah said the various platforms have information of all kinds of research information deposited, as well as a platform, where farmers could meet both local and international buyers through the marketing of products and services by producers within the agricultural value chain.

The Agritech Mobile Advisor, is also a mobile app that provided a platform for questions to be asked on specific agricultural-related need which would be well addressed by experts on the field.

Mr Majeed Mohammed, Development Officer, Canadian High Commission, commended the CSIR-INSTI for coming out with such brilliant outputs to support the MAG, which was funded with 135 million Canadian dollars, over the five year period, running from 2017 to 2022.

Professor Victor Kwame Agyeman, Director-General of the CSIR, commended the team of INSTI officials who came out with the digitized platforms, and emphasized on the need to create more awareness about the outputs among the public.

Mr Paul Siameh, Director of Agric Extension Services, MoFA, urged CSIR-INSTI to endeavour to explore avenues to maintain and sustain its activities under the project, especially, upon the closing out of the MAG project in 2022.