Conferece paper: Blogging to enhance agriculture and youth interest: Findings of the YoBloCo Awards
1. Blogging to enhance agriculture and youth interest:
Findings of the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo Awards)
by Ken Lohento1, Giorgio Bellinzas2, CTA Ardyis Project
Paper presented at the 2012 Conference of the African Chapter of the International Association
of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD).
Keywords: youth, acp, agriculture, blog, ict, cta, ardyis.
Abstract
Strengthening the involvement of youth in agriculture and addressing the challenges
they face in embracing agricultural professional activities are pressing issues that
determine the prosperity of that sector in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions
(CTA, 2011). The new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can also
play a pivotal role in that context (SPC-PAFPNet, 2010). In the framework of its ARDYIS
projects’ activities, the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU
(CTA) and some partners launched the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo
Awards) in 2011. The main aims were to put into limelight successes and challenges
faced by youth engaged in agriculture, encourage the use of new information
technologies for information dissemination by young farmers and organizations
interested in the “youth in agriculture” question. Opened in two categories (individual
and institutional), the competition helped to identify 92 agricultural blogs from ACP
countries, among which 52 were submitted to public evaluation through the internet.
This paper presents the strong interest that the competition raised during the public
evaluation of blogs, the contents of blogs, the challenges faced by young farmers, the
emerging impacts for institutional and individual bloggers, as highlighted in the posts, in
public comments and in a survey undertaken. It discusses the role blogging can play for
youth and public awareness raising and advocacy on agricultural issues, as well as the
challenges that online votes and blog competitions in development activities can pose.
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2. INTRODUCTION
Blogs (short for web logs) are online journals, maintained by an individual or (less
commonly) by a small group of bloggers. Typically, blogs are constituted by a series of
entries (“posts”) posted to the main page in reverse chronological order (Thackeray,
2010). They have emerged in the late 1990 thanks to the advent of web publishing
software that facilitate the production of information by people without IT technical skills.
Blogs have democratized citizen expression on the web and have developed
interactions between producers and users of information, experts and citizens,
organizations and beneficiaries of their services (IPAO, 2008). Blogs, in particular, have
been proficiently applied to domains such as education and medicine, with tangible
effects on the diffusion of relevant information to a larger – and often younger –
audience (Giustini, 2006; Churchill, 2009). However, very little is known about blogs in
the domain of agriculture and rural development, especially in developing countries.
This paper contributes to filling this gap, using the information and experience observed
through the activities connected with the YoBloCo Awards, a blog competition launched
in 2011 in the framework of the ARDYIS Project, by the Technical Centre for Agricultural
and Rural Development Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), in partnership with various
organizations3. The purpose of the project, whose name is the acronym of “Agriculture,
Rural Development and Youth in the Information Society”, is to “raise youth awareness
and capacity on agricultural and rural development issues in ACP 4 countries through
ICTs” (ARDYIS Project, 2010). In particular, the paper presents the strong interest that
the competition raised during the public evaluation of blogs, the issues discussed in the
blogs, the challenges faced by young farmers as highlighted by the posts and the
emerging “impact” for institutional and individual bloggers. It also discusses the role of
youth blogging in public awareness raising and advocacy on agricultural issues, as well
as the challenges that online votes and blog competitions in development activities can
pose.
The YoBloCo Awards targeted two different categories: the first one (“individual
category”) addressed to young bloggers from ACP countries, who maintain a personal
blog in which they consistently discuss agricultural and rural development issues; the
second one (“institutional category”) addressed to organizations from ACP countries
dealing with agriculture or rural development, such as young farmers organizations,
agricultural NGOs or private companies etc. The bloggers, for both categories, were
required to be aged 18 to 35 years and to write in either English or French.
The blog competition aimed at: (1) highlighting success and challenges faced by the
youth engaged in agriculture and in rural areas; (2) encouraging the production of
information and the use of new information technologies by young farmers’ groups and
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3. organizations interested in the “youth in agriculture” question; and (3) promoting the
sharing of information on the issues of agriculture and rural development in African,
Caribbean and Pacific countries (ARDYIS Project, 2011).
1. Organization of the competition
1.2. Launch
The YoBloCo Awards was officially launched on July 23th 2011, with an announcement
published in the ARDYIS Website5. The announcement was subsequently disseminated
via email, mailing lists and social networking websites (such as Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn), posted on target websites (such as Zunia, e-Agriculture, Eldis) and
advertised on CTA and other partner institutions web-spaces, as well as in CTA print
magazine Spore.
Participants could submit an already existent blog or a newly created one. For this
reason, the entry submissions remained open until October 31st 2011, leaving more
than 3 months for perspective participants to start or update their blogs with agricultural
content. As it will be discussed later, this has been a successful strategy, as many of
the participants were surely urged to create a new blog by the possibility of winning up
to 3000 Euros in cash prizes, and they initiated their blogging activity that many of them
actively continue today.
At the end of the submission process, 69 entries from 21 ACP countries were received
in the individual category, and 22 entries from 10 ACP countries for the institutional
category (see figures 1 and 2 for details). As it can be well noted in figure 1, the entries
were not evenly distributed by region, and this fact had to be taken into account
especially in the institutional category, where regional prizes were awarded. In both
categories, entries from East and West Africa were prevalent. No entries were received
for the Southern Africa and Pacific regions in the institutional category.
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4. Fig. 1: Country of origin of received entries. Fig. 2: Language of received entries.
1.2. Initial selection
The selection of winners were divided into three different phases: (1) a pre-selection, (2)
a public evaluation process and (3) a final evaluation process, which was undertaken by
an independent jury composed of three experts in agriculture, rural development, and
ICTs 6.
The 917 entries underwent a first pre-selection process. Only the blogs that fully met the
quality requirements – as explained in the contest rules (cf. ARDYIS Project, 2011) –
were pre-selected. For example, blogs that did not have enough information (a
minimum of 5 posts was decided for a blog to be pre-selected) and blogs that did not
focus enough on agricultural issues were excluded, along with those entrants that did
not adequately filled the online submission form. Resulting from this initial selection, 36
blogs entered the online evaluation process for the individual category and 16 blogs for
the institutional category8.
1.3. Online public evaluation
The Individual and the Institutional categories substantially differed in many aspects,
including the value of the prizes and the number of participants. For this reason, a
formal online voting system was put in place only for the individual category. The risk to
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5. rely too much on the online evaluation was taken into account: it was decided to allow
the public to vote for 15 finalists, while the final decision about the winners will be taken
by the jury of experts. The number of finalists is in fact large enough to avoid actual best
blogs to be excluded from the competition, just because they lacked of internet
supporters. On the other hand, for the institutional category, it was decided that the
judges will directly select winners to avoid biases, especially because this category had
less entries and could be more sensitive. But the public was invited to comment the
institutional blogs, in order to indicate for example what they liked and disliked. It’s worth
noting that the overwhelming majority of comments positively appreciated the blogs,
which may illustrate fair or subjective appreciations (for example from friends and
relatives). But CTA constantly promoted the evaluation process in various spaces to
give chance to independent votes to be made. The comments in many cases were
useful to the judges but they relied on their own judgement.
A special blog was created for the competition9. Apart from disseminating information
about the competition, it helped to present the eligible blogs and to keep the public
updated about the contest. Through this website, the users were able to access the
online voting page for the individual category and comment on the institutional blogs.
The decision to set up a public evaluation process was taken in order to enhance the
visibility of the competition and the eligible blogs, to engage both the participants and
the audience and to encourage bloggers to keep on producing good material for their
blogs.
The voting system was constantly monitored to avoid possible misuse or frauds (e.g.
multiple votes coming from spam bots), and the possibility of such misuse was also
taken into account after the voting system closure. As initial tool against malpractice, the
voting system made use of captcha. Moreover, the user was required to insert a valid
email address and a free comment about the chosen blogs. Multiple votes coming from
the same IP address were allowed but carefully monitored. This decision followed from
the fact that - especially in a rural environment - different users often access the internet
from the same computer in telecentres and sometimes multiple computers can have the
same IP address.
The public evaluation process was launched on December 5th 2011, along with the
publication of the eligible blogs on the ARDYIS website, and was closed on December
31st. During this period, 2214 votes were cast by 2080 voters (this difference in
numbers is explained with the fact that voters could vote for up to two blogs) and 612
comments were received for blogs in the institutional category.
Undertaking this online evaluation in different manners was also an opportunity for the
ARDYIS project to test various platforms and interactions with public in those kinds of
processes.
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6. 1.4. Final evaluation
The 15 finalists for the individual category, resulting from the public evaluation
process10, were announced on January 25th, 2012. The jury members, independently
filled out an evaluation sheet, in which each blog were marked according to the criteria
based on those announced in the competition’s rule11. A Skype meeting helped jury
members to reach agreement on winners and runners-up. The winners were officially
announced on March 12, 2012.
2. Analysis of submitted blogs
To better understand the content and the quality of the blogs submitted for the public
evaluation, an in-depth analysis was performed12.
2.1. Technical aspects
Wordpress and Blogger (powered by Google) were the most used CMS (Content
Management Systems) used by bloggers. These two platforms are popular for many
reasons: first of all, they are among the easiest and most user friendly CMS available
for free on the internet, and many widgets and plug-ins are also easily available. They
are also rapidly indexed by search engines (especially Google Blogger). Moreover,
these CMS are already very popular, and it is easy to find advices on their use.
Many bloggers have used widgets, plug-ins or features such as:
Facebook connect, Google Friendship connect and Twitter to attract and interact
with friends and new visitors;
Fidjit.com Live Traffic Feed, Maps.Amung.us, Revolvermaps.com, mapping to
see from where their visitors come from;
Flickr.com, Picasa.com to publish photos and galleries;
Youtube, Vimeo to publish their videos;
RSS feeds are also available in most blogs.
2.2. Contents
The posts analyzed can be grouped into three general kinds:
collection/re-post of existing articles already published online or on other media;
original reflections and discussion about existing articles already published online
or on other media;
original reports or reflections on real experience (e.g. in the field, at a workshop
etc.).
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7. In most cases, the blogs were not only related to agriculture or rural development.
However, over the period of the competition, the blogs submitted cover three main
subject areas to a different extent:
agricultural issues in ACP countries;
youth involvement in agriculture;
ICT use in agriculture.
These themes are also the main focus of ARDYIS Project and the YoBloCo Awards, so
arguably the bloggers adjusted their focus to better cover them.
The focus of each blogger depends on the background, the domain of expertise/interest
and the area of focus chosen by each individual or institution. More specifically, the
topics covered by blogs are presented in the figure below:.
Fig. 3: Areas of focus of blogs in the individual and institutional category.
120%
100%
Percentage and 80% 16 16
number of blogs
that talk about main
thematics 60% 12
11
11 11 10
Individual Category
40%
8 Institutional Category
20%
0%
Other themes observed included food security, climate change, environment, education
and training, agricultural policy and strategy, extension, GMO, agricultural value chains,
research and innovation, entrepreneurship, resource management (water and land),
funding, Mechanization and modernization, energy, biofueland gender issues.
The issues were discussed or presented in a variety of contexts: in most cases, the
posts describe activities of institutions or people that entered the competition; in other
cases they were related to news updates or events at National or Pan African or
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8. international levels; and in others they discussed theoretically socio-economic
problems.
The writing styles are also very different from one blogger to another depending on their
professional background, their area of expertise and their target audience. While some
bloggers write with professional journalist style (some bloggers are journalists), others
have more formal and technical styles (for example students or young professionals in
agriculture), and a few have high creative artistic/poetic style13. Others, on the other
hand, have used a more typical informal blog style writing which illustrates young
people who just want to communicate with an audience or with their peers.
Before the competition, some existing blogs covered other themes such as democratic
governance, economy, or personal/life style issues (such as songs, life experience, and
poetry), but most already had agricultural contents.
The following comments are more specifically related to the best 32 blogs received
(blogs that were submitted for the public evaluation).
Between the period of the competition (July 2011 and February 2012), at least 744
posts had been published online on the 32 blogs (about 400 posts from bloggers
competing in the individual category and around 344 posts from those applying in the
institutional category)
The blog that had the highest number of posts for all categories is a blog from Nigeria
participating in the institutional category, with 123 posts; this blog contains articles
written by journalists from a news agency, with articles mainly but not limited to
agriculture. In the individual category, the blog that contains the higher number of posts
had at least 101 postings. A few blogs however had between 5 and 10 posts (in most
cases these blogs had been created after the launch of the competition). But there is no
relationship between the number of posts and the quality of blogs. Some very short
blogs, with about 8 posts were very informative and well written, with original content.
The specific contents of winning blogs are briefly presented in the next page. Other
blogs content are presented in the announcement of results (ARDYIS Project 2012).
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9. Winning blogs
Individual Category
1st prize: Nawsheen Hosenally http://nawsheenh.blogspot.com/
Nawsheen (23) has newly graduated in agriculture. With her blog “Nawsheen World”,
she aims to put forward the main issues and key news related to agriculture in Mauritius
and other developing countries. She also writes about activities she is engaged in.
2nd prize: Sourou H. A. NANKPAN http://www.agrobenin.com/
Graduated in Biotechnology, Sourou (27) is passionate about agriculture and food
production. His blog, “Agro Benin”, is focused on presenting and discussing the impacts
of rural migration on agriculture, consequences of climate warming, government projects,
challenges facing food security and other issues in Benin.
3rd prize: Anthony Mwangi http://youngagropreneur.wordpress.com/
In his blog, “The Young Agropreneur”, Anthony (21) shares his experience as a young
agricultural entrepreneur. He describes his blog as “a resource for information on matters
concerning agriculture in Kenya and the Eastern African region”; it is also “a wake-up call
for the youth to venture into agriculture”.
Institutional Category
CARIBBEAN: Agribusiness Society of the University of West Indies (UWI)
http://technology4agri.wordpress.com/
This blog is an extension of the Agribusiness Society (ABS) and is animated by young
students. The content focuses on technologies which can positively impact agri-
development at all levels. Technologies range from simple devices to high tech and
scientific innovations, including ICTs, renewable energy production, water management
etc.
EAST AFRICA: Farming and Technology for Africa
(http://www.jeuneagrimadagascar.org/)
Farming and Technology for Africa (FTA) is a registered association from Madagascar.
The creation of this blog followed from a meeting between FTA and students of Forestry
and Rural Development at the University of Antananarivo. The blog is an information and
discussion platform for youth in the agricultural sector in Madagascar.
WEST AFRICA: Syecomp Business Services (http://agricinghana.wordpress.com/)
This blog seeks to highlight issues on agricultural development in Ghana and in the sub-
region: policies, market access linkages, youth in agriculture, ICT applications and
funding opportunities. Activities of Syecomp Business Services are also promoted on this
blog.
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10. 2.3. Challenges faced by youth in agriculture
In their posts, the bloggers raised and discussed many issues concerning youth in
agriculture, from their own experience and view point. Below, we present some
examples, using little excerpts from the participant’s blogs:
Land availability and quality (including land grabbing by multinationals)
“For many young persons, land is a big challenge in their activities. In the
countryside and also in rural Bujumbura, agricultural production is often made on
the family land; for this reason, becoming an independent young farmer is
sometimes an impossible dream, given the precarious means of several rural
youth.”
(From: Jeunesse et Agriculture au Burundi14, translated from French).
Improving the educational system (to better prepare youth for the job market and
to develop capacity building in agriculture);
“Agriculture is not exactly attractive. [...] I think young persons can still be steered
to develop interest in agriculture. One effective means of doing that is making the
subject Agricultural Science as practical as possible in secondary schools.
[...] Let students practice the concepts of harrowing, ploughing, tilling, planting,
weeding, manure production and application, harvesting and most importantly
“reaping the fruits of their labor”.
(From: Agrophilia: The Poetic Farmer15)
The need to develop market access and to promote transparency on prices;
“A good chunk of our young farmers in Kenya do not have access to material and
timely information on matters agriculture. Be it market price information or
information concerning inputs like seeds, agrichemicals; most of us have trouble
getting the right information at the right to take sizeable action that may
significantly impact yields, processes, problems etc.”
(From: The Young Agropreneur16)
Psychological and cultural factors that hinder youth involvement in agriculture;
“Most young people, in particular the « educated » ones, continue to claim that
agriculture is an activity for the poor. But if they knew how many people - even
great personalities – live with this activity, they would be surprised. For example
the big quantity of milk that are consumed in large cities of Burundi are provided
by the dairies owned by the wealthy and educated people”.
(from: Jeunesse et Agriculture au Burundi17, translated from French)
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11. Environmental challenges impacting agricultural sustainability;
“When I was a young boy, we used to go to the farm and come back to Nairobi
with a lot of produce that at times we had to use two pick-up trucks to transport
the goods. 15 years later yields disappeared into the air. Today we can barely fill
the boot of a mini van – back in the day, it used to rain more often than like today
where it barely rains and when it does the rains are unpredictable and sometimes
destroys plants since it’s very erratic.”
(From: The Young Agropreneur18)
Engaging youth in policy-making.
“There is the need to attract youth in Agriculture for a myriad of reasons
explained above. But presently what is also very important is to find means and
ways to support those youth who are already in the sector and facing a lots of
challenges. Tailor-made programmes that meet the needs of different categories
of youth (urban/rural, educated/uneducated etc.) in different countries and
regions should be designed and implemented. Moreover, National Agriculture
and youth policies should be reviewed and youth should be involved in decision
making and policy generation, since they should be included in decisions that
would impact them!”
(From: Nawsheen’s World19)
Other problems highlighted by young bloggers in their posts were: the need to develop
agricultural technology; innovation and mechanization of agriculture; the need for
funding and improved financial services (for farming activities in general and
entrepreneurship); the need to develop and reform agricultural advisory services among
others.
2.4. Potential and actual use of ICT by farmers/youth
According to youth, many of the challenges cited above can be resolved partially by the
use of ICTs. For example, in some posts we found proposals to enhance extension
services using information technologies:
“Extensionists, and in this context the youths, can tailor videos to meet the
requirement of the farming class in their regions for use in disseminating specific
information. This kind of human resource investment can yield important results
in the form of increased agricultural productivity and decreasing unemployment
levels among the youths”.
(From: The Youth and Agriculture20)
In others, bloggers discuss how mMoney can secure and facilitate transactions:
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12. “Banks are seen by many as expensive to operate in terms of fees: They charge
their customers for the storage and withdrawal services. Their services can only
be accessed in major towns or even only in Nairobi. M-Pesa is cheap, convenient
and you only need to go to one of these M-Pesa kiosks and agents”.
(From: The Youth and Agriculture 21)
Other uses of ICTs observed in the blog discussions included how:
ICT can improve training and agricultural education;
ICT can improve access to market and enhance marketing;
ICT helps keep farmers informed on price, weather, techniques and innovation;
ICT and social media facilitates exchange, collaboration and networking;
Some blogs (such as the blog from Solomon Elorm Allavi22) mentioned the use of GIS
for land mapping and localization of specific plants using GPS. GPS is also used in
advanced automated mechanized farming systems and other productive ways.
3. Results of a survey on participants:
As a follow-up activity to the YoBloCo Awards, a survey addressed to the participants
was undertaken. The aim was to have a first assessment of the competition from
participants’ point of view to better understand the profile of participants and have a
sense of the immediate impacts for them. The survey was composed of 20 questions
and specifically targeted the 52 participants whose blogs were chosen to be part of the
online evaluation. The responses collected were 36, which constitutes 70% of total
participants and therefore an acceptable sample.
3.1. Profile of YoBloCo Awards’ participants
Among respondents, only 5 live in rural areas (14%), while most of the participants
come from the capital city or other town. Among those living in rural areas, two are rural
organizations.
Most of the people either access the internet from home, from a telecentre (such as
cyber cafés, public libraries etc.) or from their office. Among the participants of the
institutional category, most people were in charge of the information and
communication, while 24% were the CEO of the organization. Other roles include
accounting officer and IT technician.
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13. 34% of participants directly knew about the competition through the ARDYIS web
spaces (including website, official Facebook page and discussion groups) and 23%
through other CTA web spaces. A majority (40%) of respondents knew about the
competition through their networks, which includes family, friends and colleagues. None
reported that they retrieved the information in some paper based magazines or
newspaper. This data largely reflects the advertisement that was organized for the
YoBloCo Awards, which was primarily oriented on the online users.
Newly created and existing blogs
54% of people already had their blog started, while 46% created the blog for the
competition itself. Quite interestingly, the fact that a blog was newly created does not
mean that its quality will be inferior than the already established ones. The results of the
jury evaluation awarded the 2nd and the 3rd prize of individual category to newly created
blogs, and also 2 out of 3 winning institutional blogs have been created after the launch
of the YoBloCo Awards. According to this data, the competition successfully engaged
young people that never blogged about agriculture to adopt this means of
communication. However, in order to better evaluate this outcome, one should also
consider the long term aspects: the ultimate success in this regard is in fact linked with
the ability and willingness of bloggers to consistently update their blogs, and this is
something that will have to be analyzed on a longer run.
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14. Blogging habits and costs
According to the survey results, most people manage their blogs weekly (56%) or at
least monthly (31%). Few people seem to be able to take care of their blog on a daily
basis. Most people declare to use both secondary sources and their own personal
experience (work experience and participation to conferences, for example) to write
their blog-posts. Internet (Google, Wikipedia etc.) is the most used source of secondary
information (69% of respondents declare to use it), well better than newspapers (28%)
and radio and television (9%).
The survey also shows how blogs are in fact simple and cheap tools to communicate
online. More than 90% of respondents opened their blog on a free platform, and almost
everybody was able to build the blog by their own, without any additional cost, apart
from internet connection. Moreover, the cost of the connection is usually paid by the
blogger or, in a few cases, by the organization for which he or she works.
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15. 3.2. ACP agriculture and youth engagement promoted by the YoBloCo Awards
Feedback from the bloggers and from audience illustrate that the contest has
contributed to promoting agriculture and youth involvement in the sector.
Most respondents to the survey observed clear links between their participation in the
competition and a direct impact on their activity as bloggers interested in agriculture.
The first and most obvious indicator is the increasing access to their blogs. 72%
registered a significant increase in the visits to the blog after entering the YoBloCo
Awards, and 16% registered a small increase. Only 6% of respondents did not register
any difference. A quotation from winner participant of the individual category is
explicatory:
“Talking about statistics, I had more than 1000 (thousand) more visitors since the
launch of online voting. Before the online voting, my blog recorded nearly 900
visitors. Today over 2500 consulted it” [Anne Matho].
An increase of interactivity of the blogs can also be registered, thanks to the data about
comments on the published posts. 66% of respondents registered a certain increase of
feedbacks from the public, either significant (25%) or slight (41%). Quite predictably,
this increase was not as high as the increase in the access, and 28% of people did not
even registered any increase in comments.
The survey also investigated on “qualitative” impacts. In particular, it focused on the
increase of various key elements in the bloggers life, such as their interest and
knowledge in agriculture, ICTs and social networks. Most participants felt an increase of
these elements after entering the competition.
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16. The impact on the personal and professional activities of participants are visible through
the words of some of them. For example, the response of a young Ghanian company
that won the regional prize in the institutional category, affirms this:
“Blogging is becoming an exciting engagement for me personally. It is fast
becoming an excellent avenue for publishing my organization’s activities and
marketing of our products and services” [Syecomp Business Services].
Other comments are also enthusiastic:
“In the beginning, I created my blog without a real editorial line. Thanks to the
competition I’m specializing in the topic of ICTs and Agriculture and I’m sure I will
keep on animating my blog, more than before my participation in the competition”
[Inoussa Traoré].
Funding opportunities were also met by others:“Actually, this particular blog
post fetched US$ 500 immediately I had published it. The funds were sent and
already utilized for our beekeeping project and other organization activities.
[Another blog blog post] helped to fund-raise funds for the scholastic material
donations of three schools in rural areas attended by over 1300 pupils from
families of the farmers”. [Kikandwa Rural Communities Kirucodo]
Apart from the declarations of bloggers, the comments left by the public on some blogs
have acknowledged that many posts provide original or much needed information, or
encourage youth blogging on agriculture, as an effective enterprise for advocacy for this
sector; sometimes collaboration/exchange of information among bloggers from different
parts of the world also occurs. Excerpts below illustrate these statements:
“I came across your blog and I like your work here, kudos. I have been
researching on dairy farming in Kenya for a while because I want to invest my
energy and time in it.” [Comment left to The Young Agropreneur].
“Fascinating stuff. Keep us posted with developments in Kenya. There are
several interesting projects in the UK. In my home city of Birmingham, a local
entrepreneur, the guy who set up East End Foods, is building a showcase
experimental hydroponics urban farm slap bang in the city (I wrote a blogpost
about my visit here: [link])” [Comment left to The Young Agropreneur].
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17. “[I like] the bold move of engaging in agriculture and seeking to commercialize it
in the process. The basic description also helps understand the approach in
farming, making quite attractive” [Comment left by a voter]
“[I like those blogs because] they both motivate young people to take action while
encouraging policy makers to create enabling environment; youths are to take
initiative” [Comment left by a voter]
“[I like] the themes covered, in particular food poisoning and issues about Benin
rice, these are important topics. Benin, like several other African countries suffer
from unfair competition from imported rice”. [Comment left by a voter]
“The challenges of agriculture in Burundi must be known first, in order to be
overcome ; this initiative can help in that”. [Comment left by a voter]
In conclusion, the analysis of the survey shows that the YoBloCo Awards is having an
immediate impact on participants’ interest in agriculture and on their blogging activity.
CONCLUSION
It appears that the YoBloCo Awards has been an exciting experience for organizers but
also for bloggers. It seems a first and unique competition of its sort, targeting agriculture
in developing contries, and future editions, as well as increased promotion will certainly
increase participation. The online evaluation has been a learning experience for the
Ardyis project. The competition has helped us to have some insights on people
blogging on agriculture. Through comments on their posts and interactions with the
public, bloggers are raising more awareness on agricultural challenges and encouraging
new youth interest. It has also started to have some impact on entrants even those who
did not win the competition. As a participant commented on the official YoBloCo blog
“We observed a significant increase of visitors [to our blog], with more than 40% of
incoming links from the website ardyis.cta.int”. And another entrant to the institutional
category also noted that:
“We had more than 465 visits to our blog after the beginning of the evaluation
process, and most of them came from the ARDYIS website, Facebook and
Google. This contest permitted to highlight our work on agriculture”. (…) We too
have demands from students preparing their theses (…) and we have even been
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18. asked by someone to conduct a feasibility study for the implementation of an
agro-pastoral project” [GIC Bellomar].
Interactions from the public also illustrate that the citizens’ interest and advocacy in
agriculture can be created or further strengthened via blogging. In the period of the
votes (05 to 31 December 2011), the YoBloCo official blog (WordPress-based) and the
individual vote page (Joomla-based) received 3774 and 1899 visits, respectively. All this
illustrate that effective citizen journalism is possible in agriculture. This is an interesting
conclusion for organizations like CTA working to promote and better profile the
agricultural sector.
We will conclude by quoting the winner of the YoBloCo Awards in the individual
category, Nawsheen Hosanally, holder of a Bachelor in agriculture. After the
announcement of the results, she wrote this revealing notes on her blog:
“Through this blog, I believe that Agriculture can be made attractive to other
youths like me and by sharing my experiences, they would be able to see what it
is like being in the agricultural sector, for one cannot understand agriculture until
he/she gets involved in it. Also, the information which is shared may be useful to
people in Agriculture (Mauritius and other countries as well). Since the launch of
the YoBloCo Awards, the page views of the blog have increased, I have got
many emails which show the interest of people in agriculture and innovations in
this sector, and opportunities and challenges faced by youths in Agriculture have
also been highlighted. Moreover, the YoBloCo gave me the opportunity to know
some of the youth participants (virtually) and we have been sharing experiences,
information and opportunities in Agriculture among ourselves” (Hosenally, 2012).
Further analysis could be carried out on a longer term or in the framework of other
activities to understand how participant blogs are having an impact on a broader
audience.
References
ACP Secretariat. (2012). ACP FAQs. [Online] Available from:
http://www.acp.int/node/7
[Accessed 23th March 2012]
ARDYIS Project. (2010). ARDYIS Project - Rationale. [Online] Available from:
http://ardyis.cta.int/en/rationale
[Accessed 23th March 2012]
18
19. ARDYIS Project. (2011). YoBloCo Awards: Write a blog on youth and agriculture and
win up to 3,000 Euros! . [Online] Available from:
http://ardyis.cta.int/en/blog-competition
[Accessed 23th March 2012]
ARDYIS Project (2012) Results of the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition - YoBloCo
Awards. [Online] Available from:
http://ardyis.cta.int/en/activities/awards/item/136-results-yobloco/136-results-yobloco
[Accessed 23th March 2012]
Churchill, D. (2009). Educational applications of Web 2.0: Using blogs to support
teaching and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology , 40 (1), 179-183.
CTA (2011). Empowering ACP agricultural and rural communities through knowledge.
Strategic Plan 2011–15. Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP–
EU (CTA), Wageningen.
Giustini, D. (2006). How Web 2.0 is changing medicine. BMJ , 333 (7582), 1283-1284.
Hosenally, N. (2012). YoBloCo Awards Results: My first Award. [Online] Available from:
http://nawsheenh.blogspot.com/2012/03/yobloco-awards-results-my-first-award.html
[Accessed 23th March 2012]
IPAO (2008). Usages innovants des TIC en Afrique : La presse au coeur de l’analyse.
Institut Panos Afrique de l’Ouest, IPAO, Dakar / OSIWA, Dakar.
SPC-PAFPNet (2010). Pacific Youth in Agriculture Strategy 2011-2015. The Secretariat
of the Pacific Community (SPC) in collaboration with the Pacific Agricultural and
Forestry Policy Network (PAFPNet).
Thackeray, R. M. H. (2010). Empowering Youth: Use of Technology in Advocacy to
Affect Social Change. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15 (4), 575 - 591.
Endnotes
1
Ken Lohento, a national of Benin, is ICT4D Programme Coordinator at the Technical Centre for
Agricultural and Rural Co-operation ACP-EU (CTA). For about 15 years, he collaborated in various
capacities on ICT uses and policies for development, with organizations such as the Panos Institute West
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20. Africa (PIWA) in Senegal, UNESCO (France), Oridev Association (Benin) and the Association for
Progressive Communications (APC). Among other activities at CTA, he manages the ARDYIS project
which focuses on youth and ICTs. He holds a master of research in information sciences. Email:
lohento@cta.int ; Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lohento.
2
Giorgio Bellinzas studied Social Sciences in Italy and Germany and obtained an MSc degree in ICTs
for Development at the University of Manchester, UK. Currently working at the Technical Centre for
Agricultural and Rural Co-operation ACP-EU (CTA), ICT4D programme, his main interests of research
are ICTs for agricultural development and e-Government applications for transparency.
Email: bellinzas@cta.int; Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/giorgio-bellinzas/7/896/948
3
The partner organizations are the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), African Network for
Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE), Pacific Agriculture and Forestry
Policy Network (PAFPNet), Caribbean farmers’ Network (CAFAN), Yam-Pukri association, African Youth
Foundation (AYF).
4
ACP, meaning “Africa, Caribbean and Pacific”, refers to a group of 79 member states. For more
information cf. ACP Secretariat, 2012.
5
All the information in the ARDYIS Website and in the YoBloCo Awards Special Blog are always
published both in English and in French.
6
The jury was composed of: (1) Ms. Dorothy K. Gordon (Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan
Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ghana); (2) Dr. Assogbadjo Achille Ephrem (Researcher and lecturer at the
Faculty of Agronomic Sciences of the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin); (3) Mr. Peter Ballantyne
(Head of Knowledge Management and Information Services at the International Livestock Research
Institute).
7
92 entries were received in total but 1 had been received too late and thus has not been considered.
8
The eligible blogs were actually 15. As only one entry from Central Africa was received, this entry was
not formally in competition for the regional prize, but it was nevertheless included in the announcement
and a special recognition has been awarded to this institution, which has been invited to attend the prize
giving ceremony.
9
http://ardyis.cta.int/yobloco
10
A committee composed of CTA and ARDYIS Project’s Advisory Committee representatives, monitored
the identification of finalists.
11
Clarity and quality of language, originality of posts (written or not by the blogger), frequency of posting,
quality and consistency of original posts, presence of comments from readers and replies from the
blogger, presence of agricultural related content, presence of information on the organization's activities
(related to agriculture and youth), presence of youth in agriculture related content, presence of blog
features (adequate presence of widgets, plug-ins, presentation of the blogger, links etc.), overall look and
feel (adequate multimedia, attractiveness of graphics, legibility of posts, etc.).
12
This part of the paper is partly based on data gathered by Andrianjafy Rasoanindrainy for CTA.
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21. 13
See for example the original poem “To your warm embrace we return…”, about agriculture and
adoptions of new tools such as ICTs (http://poeticfarmer.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/to-your-warm-
embrace-we-return/).
14
http://bujajeunesseagri.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/les-defis-des-jeunes-agriculteurs-au-burundi/
15
http://poeticfarmer.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/catching-farmers-young/
16
http://youngagropreneur.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/challenges-facing-youth-in-agriculture/
17
http://bujajeunesseagri.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/agriculture-et-elevage-au-burundi-defis-et-solutions/
18
http://youngagropreneur.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/challenges-facing-youth-in-agriculture/
19
http://nawsheenh.blogspot.com/2012/04/youth-employment-and-comprehensive.html
20
http://wwwinfonet-biovision-wereh.blogspot.com/2011/07/embracing-videos-for-extension.html
21
http://wwwinfonet-biovision-wereh.blogspot.com/2011/11/interview-of-week-48-hudson-shiraku.html
22
http://agricinghana.wordpress.com/
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