The current impact of digitization in agriculture is below its true potential. Main reasons for this are the current fragmentation of knowledge and technology expertise in the proximity of farms, and the lack of promising business cases for farmers and business models for the technology providers. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that – unlike other industries – farming is more subject to sector- and region-specific conditions. Another barrier is the fragmentation and misalignment between the various types of public and private funding. These difficulties are shared across developed and developing nations. In Europe, to overcome these challenges, the EU H2020 project SmartAgriHubs is building-up a pan-European network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). DIHs are public-private partnerships for innovation, acting as a one-stop-shop for farmers, advisors, agri-food companies willing to benefit from digital technology solutions for their activities, and supports AgTech companies — especially SMEs, startups and mid-caps — to get access to technology-testing, financing advice, market intelligence and networking opportunities. SmartAgriHubs has created an ecosystem of ecosystems, leveraging the infrastructure and competencies of 140 DIHs, connected to more than 2000 Competence Centres (CCs) embedded into 9 Regional Clusters, fostering the adoption of ICT-based solutions for more productive and sustainable agriculture systems in Europe.
Strong of its experience in Europe, the SmartAgriHub is planning to expand its activities in Africa to foster the digital transformation in the African agri-food sector via a tight cooperation between African and European DIHs.
This webinar will be an opportunity to hear from the experience of the SmartAgrihubs and of their DIHs in Lithuania, and discuss options to extend the SmartAgriHub model to Africa, and why not beyond!
Chair and Speakers Bio
Parmesh Shah is the Global Lead for Data-Driven Digital Agriculture at the World Bank. He provides leadership to Bank’s work in these areas and supports the development of global knowledge and learning in these areas to offer solutions to clients and other development partners. His current areas of interest are economic and social organizations and networks of the poor, making markets and public services work for the poor, social entrepreneurship, digital and data-based innovations in agriculture and rural development, promotion of on-farm and off-farm jobs, and public-private and people partnerships for rural poverty reduction. He is currently involved in developing a regional program on scaling up digital agriculture in the Africa region, involving setting up ecosystems for entrepreneurship and incubation. He holds a D Phil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and B Tech degree in Agricultural Engineering from Pantnagar in India.
Dr. George Beers is a Horticultural Engineer. He holds a PhD in Management Science with a thesis on project management. He is a specialist in strategic information management in agribusiness. His core competence is connecting different worlds. Dr. Beers works for Wageningen since 1991 in several research and management positions. He was Scientific Director of the co-innovation program Agri Chain Competences (1998-2001), founder and CEO of the Green Knowledge Cooperation on innovation of the Dutch agricultural education system (2004-2010). Between 1999 and 2004 Dr. Beers held the Chair ICT in Agribusiness at Wageningen University. From 2011-2014 he resided in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia initiating and implementing the Saudi Agricultural Information Centre. Currently he is coordinating large scale EU projects on the field of Future Internet in AgriFood. Since January 2017 he is coordinator of the H2020 Large Scale Pilot on Internet of Farm & Food (IoF2020) and a project on Digital Innovation Hubs for farmers (SmartAgriHubs).
Augustas Alešiūnas is the founder and the CEO of ART21. He is a serial entrepreneur and a business angel in FoodTech and AgTech businesses. Also, he was the first one in Lithuania who managed to attract VC financing for the AgriFood Tech sector. Starting from 2008, investments in his managed companies have grown to more than 10 million EUR. Augustas Alešiūnas’ company provides precise farming and grain management AgroSmart solutions for more than 85% of Baltic market. He actively invests into AgriFood Tech solutions based on Raman spectrometry, AI and blockchain technologies.
Discussants Bio
Dr. Doris Marquardtworks for the European Commission, in the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development since July 2019 focussing on the digitalisation of the agricultural sector and rural areas and at Research and Innovation. She completed her PhD in agricultural policies at the Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany and holds a diploma (Msc) in Environmental Planning from the Technical University of Munich, Weihenstephan.
She held positions at the European Environment Agency, the German Permanent Representation, the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the European Network for Rural Development Contact Point, the Germany-based Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, the Center of Rural Economy in Newcastle, United Kingdom, and the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy.
She has experiences in the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in several EU Member States, including Romania, Italy and Germany. She served as expert in policy design, agriculture, and rural and regional development in the wider European region in projects commissioned by, e.g. the World Bank, UNEP and FAO.
Ms. Lesly Goh is the Senior Technology Advisor, former Chief Technology Officer for the World Bank Group. She is a Fellow at Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) Judge Business School and Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Lesly advises policymakers on the regulatory impact from emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, Cloud and Edge Computing. Prior to the public sector role, Lesly built a solid technology career at Microsoft, Deloitte, and startups. Lesly is on the Board of Director for Singapore GovTech and a member of the WEF Global Future Council on Data Policy and Transformation Leaders Network to support the UN-led Food Systems Summit in 2021. From her extensive experience in public and private sectors, she introduces strategic partnerships for agriculture digital transformation, leveraging data and technology innovations in emerging markets.
Jeehye Kim is a Senior Digital Agriculture Specialist at the World Bank where she leads and carries out World Bank missions to client countries in the Africa region. Her work includes advising WB’s client to use digitally enabled approaches to increase their agricultural projects’ success in sustainable and scalable ways. Applications include mobile-enabled agriculture extension services, mobile money, e-vouchers for agricultural inputs, market price and weather information systems, as well as applications to help smallholder farmers’ access to markets and services. She also builds relationships with industry leaders, executives, development partners, and stakeholders to advance disruptive and digital agricultural technology initiatives, in support of World Bank projects in client countries. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2011, Jeehye worked in both the public and the private sector in Korea and the U.K., respectively. In the private sector, she built expertise in consulting for the high-tech and telecom sectors, as well as electronic commerce and e-government. Jeehye holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Glasgow.
Vinay Kumar Vutukuru is a Senior Agriculture Economist at the World Bank, Kenya based out of Nairobi. He currently anchors the Agriculture Portfolio for the World Bank in Kenya. He has previously worked in the South Asia region on Agriculture and Rural Development initiatives at the World Bank. He supported the scale up of the Bank’s agriculture and rural development program at the national level and in key states like Bihar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand for 10 years between 2009 and 2019 initially based out of Patna and then moving to Delhi. He was also on a development assignment with the India Country Management Unit working closely with the Country Director and the Operations Manager for 2 years on strategic management of the bank portfolio in India including enabling linkages across different sectors and themes. Before joining the bank, he worked in the areas of agriculture, rural development, demand side governance and rural safety nets with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He finished his graduate degree in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Calendar » Connecting the dots to foster the digital transformation: learning from SmartAgriHubs experience in Europe for Africa
Connecting the dots to foster the digital transformation: learning from SmartAgriHubs experience in Europe for Africa
Connecting the dots to foster the digital transformation: learning from SmartAgriHubs experience in Europe for Africa
Webinar
Thursday, April 29, 2021, 10:00 AM- 11:30 AM (EDT)
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Abstract
The current impact of digitization in agriculture is below its true potential. Main reasons for this are the current fragmentation of knowledge and technology expertise in the proximity of farms, and the lack of promising business cases for farmers and business models for the technology providers. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that – unlike other industries – farming is more subject to sector- and region-specific conditions. Another barrier is the fragmentation and misalignment between the various types of public and private funding. These difficulties are shared across developed and developing nations. In Europe, to overcome these challenges, the EU H2020 project SmartAgriHubs is building-up a pan-European network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs). DIHs are public-private partnerships for innovation, acting as a one-stop-shop for farmers, advisors, agri-food companies willing to benefit from digital technology solutions for their activities, and supports AgTech companies — especially SMEs, startups and mid-caps — to get access to technology-testing, financing advice, market intelligence and networking opportunities. SmartAgriHubs has created an ecosystem of ecosystems, leveraging the infrastructure and competencies of 140 DIHs, connected to more than 2000 Competence Centres (CCs) embedded into 9 Regional Clusters, fostering the adoption of ICT-based solutions for more productive and sustainable agriculture systems in Europe.
Strong of its experience in Europe, the SmartAgriHub is planning to expand its activities in Africa to foster the digital transformation in the African agri-food sector via a tight cooperation between African and European DIHs.
This webinar will be an opportunity to hear from the experience of the SmartAgrihubs and of their DIHs in Lithuania, and discuss options to extend the SmartAgriHub model to Africa, and why not beyond!
Chair and Speakers Bio
Parmesh Shah is the Global Lead for Data-Driven Digital Agriculture at the World Bank. He provides leadership to Bank’s work in these areas and supports the development of global knowledge and learning in these areas to offer solutions to clients and other development partners. His current areas of interest are economic and social organizations and networks of the poor, making markets and public services work for the poor, social entrepreneurship, digital and data-based innovations in agriculture and rural development, promotion of on-farm and off-farm jobs, and public-private and people partnerships for rural poverty reduction. He is currently involved in developing a regional program on scaling up digital agriculture in the Africa region, involving setting up ecosystems for entrepreneurship and incubation. He holds a D Phil in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and B Tech degree in Agricultural Engineering from Pantnagar in India.
Dr. George Beers is a Horticultural Engineer. He holds a PhD in Management Science with a thesis on project management. He is a specialist in strategic information management in agribusiness. His core competence is connecting different worlds. Dr. Beers works for Wageningen since 1991 in several research and management positions. He was Scientific Director of the co-innovation program Agri Chain Competences (1998-2001), founder and CEO of the Green Knowledge Cooperation on innovation of the Dutch agricultural education system (2004-2010). Between 1999 and 2004 Dr. Beers held the Chair ICT in Agribusiness at Wageningen University. From 2011-2014 he resided in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia initiating and implementing the Saudi Agricultural Information Centre. Currently he is coordinating large scale EU projects on the field of Future Internet in AgriFood. Since January 2017 he is coordinator of the H2020 Large Scale Pilot on Internet of Farm & Food (IoF2020) and a project on Digital Innovation Hubs for farmers (SmartAgriHubs).
Augustas Alešiūnas is the founder and the CEO of ART21. He is a serial entrepreneur and a business angel in FoodTech and AgTech businesses. Also, he was the first one in Lithuania who managed to attract VC financing for the AgriFood Tech sector. Starting from 2008, investments in his managed companies have grown to more than 10 million EUR. Augustas Alešiūnas’ company provides precise farming and grain management AgroSmart solutions for more than 85% of Baltic market. He actively invests into AgriFood Tech solutions based on Raman spectrometry, AI and blockchain technologies.
Discussants Bio
Dr. Doris Marquardt works for the European Commission, in the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development since July 2019 focussing on the digitalisation of the agricultural sector and rural areas and at Research and Innovation. She completed her PhD in agricultural policies at the Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany and holds a diploma (Msc) in Environmental Planning from the Technical University of Munich, Weihenstephan.
She held positions at the European Environment Agency, the German Permanent Representation, the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the European Network for Rural Development Contact Point, the Germany-based Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe, the Center of Rural Economy in Newcastle, United Kingdom, and the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy.
She has experiences in the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in several EU Member States, including Romania, Italy and Germany. She served as expert in policy design, agriculture, and rural and regional development in the wider European region in projects commissioned by, e.g. the World Bank, UNEP and FAO.
Ms. Lesly Goh is the Senior Technology Advisor, former Chief Technology Officer for the World Bank Group. She is a Fellow at Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) Judge Business School and Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Lesly advises policymakers on the regulatory impact from emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, Cloud and Edge Computing. Prior to the public sector role, Lesly built a solid technology career at Microsoft, Deloitte, and startups. Lesly is on the Board of Director for Singapore GovTech and a member of the WEF Global Future Council on Data Policy and Transformation Leaders Network to support the UN-led Food Systems Summit in 2021. From her extensive experience in public and private sectors, she introduces strategic partnerships for agriculture digital transformation, leveraging data and technology innovations in emerging markets.
Jeehye Kim is a Senior Digital Agriculture Specialist at the World Bank where she leads and carries out World Bank missions to client countries in the Africa region. Her work includes advising WB’s client to use digitally enabled approaches to increase their agricultural projects’ success in sustainable and scalable ways. Applications include mobile-enabled agriculture extension services, mobile money, e-vouchers for agricultural inputs, market price and weather information systems, as well as applications to help smallholder farmers’ access to markets and services. She also builds relationships with industry leaders, executives, development partners, and stakeholders to advance disruptive and digital agricultural technology initiatives, in support of World Bank projects in client countries. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2011, Jeehye worked in both the public and the private sector in Korea and the U.K., respectively. In the private sector, she built expertise in consulting for the high-tech and telecom sectors, as well as electronic commerce and e-government. Jeehye holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Glasgow.
Vinay Kumar Vutukuru is a Senior Agriculture Economist at the World Bank, Kenya based out of Nairobi. He currently anchors the Agriculture Portfolio for the World Bank in Kenya. He has previously worked in the South Asia region on Agriculture and Rural Development initiatives at the World Bank. He supported the scale up of the Bank’s agriculture and rural development program at the national level and in key states like Bihar, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand for 10 years between 2009 and 2019 initially based out of Patna and then moving to Delhi. He was also on a development assignment with the India Country Management Unit working closely with the Country Director and the Operations Manager for 2 years on strategic management of the bank portfolio in India including enabling linkages across different sectors and themes. Before joining the bank, he worked in the areas of agriculture, rural development, demand side governance and rural safety nets with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh. He finished his graduate degree in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.