Webinar: Delivering Climate-Smart Agriculture to Last-Mile Communities, Especially Women Farmers
Thursday, June 24, 2021 2 pm GMT / 10 am EST / 7 am PST
Missed our webinar? You can watch a recording here.
Join Amplio’s webinar on Thursday, June 24, to discuss climate-smart agriculture in last-mile communities. Our panel of experts will have a high-level policy conversation and share down-to-earth solutions, with a focus on empowering women and girls.
First introduced by FAO in 2010, climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has a triple-win goal to increase agricultural production, build resiliency, and reduce emissions. From the outset, technology has always figured heavily into the equation. Today, ICTs for small-scale farmers range from drones for mapping soil moisture content levels to apps that deliver automated seasonal agro-climatic forecasts. And with the smartphone and broadband expansion, mobile technologies have become central to achieving CSA goals.
Big donors are increasingly focused on funding interventions that address climate impact. In 2020, 52% of World Bank financing for agriculture targeted climate adaption and mitigation. ITU recently reported that 85% of the world’s population now has access to 4G networks. But nearly half of those with 4G coverage (6 billion people) remained offline in 2020, mostly due to the high cost of Internet access. ITU's analysis revealed that in 39 out of 43 low-income countries, broadband is still unaffordable.
So how do we address these competing realities? How do we reach people who can’t afford a mobile phone, let alone a drone? How do we ensure that people in last-mile communities, particularly women and girls, are not left behind?
Join Bea Covington, Amplio’s Global Partnerships Director, and our panel of experts to explore this dichotomy and ways we can overcome the growing digital divide.
Speakers
Tawiah Agyarko-Kwarteng, MPA/ID, is a sustainable development consultant who works with the nonprofit and private sectors to empower women and girls, rural populations, and smallholder farmers. As Ghana Country Advisor for Empowered to Educate, Tawiah provides leadership training and mentors female educators. Since 2013, she has engaged with government, supply chain, and nonprofit partners to design and implement The Hershey Company’s cocoa sustainability strategy in the West Africa region. She also manages a consulting firm in Accra. Tawiah previously worked for World Education, where she delivered innovative programs in education, literacy, and health, including CocoaLink, a mobile phone-based farmer extension program. She has an MPA in International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Gretchen Greene, Ph.D., is an environmental economist focused on climate, equity, and agriculture. Specifically, she has worked on how to invest in public programming that will strengthen agricultural production and income without degrading ecosystem services or aggravating inequality. She specializes in communication tools and strategic thinking to reaching diverse stakeholders. Gretchen works with international and Native American communities on agricultural priorities and strategies for economic development. She is also a part-time farmer on a small sustainable farm in Washington State and knows the challenges faced by a small farm operation in a big agriculture world. She has a Ph.D. in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida.
Revi Sterling, Ph.D., is director of USAID’s WomenConnect Challenge, where she promotes the use of technology to create new social norms that empower women. Revi previously served as Chief of Party at NetHope and directed the Women and the Web Alliance, a private/public partnership with USAID, Intel, NetHope, World Vision, World Pulse, and UN Women. She founded and directed the nation’s first ICT for development graduate program at the University of Colorado Boulder. At Microsoft Research, Revi managed university research programs and spearheaded the company’s gender and technology initiatives. Revi has a Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society from UC Boulder. She consults widely on using technology to empower women and girls.