 Excellencies, distinguished delegates, participants, and dear colleagues, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on your time zones. And welcome to FAO in Geneva, Agriculture Trade Talks session today, the first series of this year. My name is Pinar Karakaya. I am working as an economist at FAO Liaison Office in Geneva, and today I will be moderating the session. At the outset, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to attend our webinar today, given your busy schedules. We appreciate your support and interest in FAO's work. Before starting our event, let me share some details regarding the logistics and housekeeping issues for this virtual session. This webinar will be in English only with no interpretation. It will be recorded and will later be available on our website, along with various related resources relevant to the session. It is scheduled to last about one hour and 15 minutes. We have reserved some time towards the end of the webinar for question and answer session. Please submit your questions in the Q&A module, not in the regular chat box. While posting your questions, please kindly state your name and organization or institution. We will try to accommodate as many requests as possible, either in writing or oral during the webinar. If you have any problems or technical issues, please send the message in the chat box to us for support. That's all for housekeeping issues. Now I would like to take a moment to give a brief information on FAO in Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. As you will already know, FAO supports its members' efforts to formulate trade policies that are conducive to improved food security by strengthening evidence and analysis, providing capacity development, and facilitating a neutral dialogue away from the negotiating table. In this separate, we have been organizing FAO in Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks with a view to share information on relevant and timely topics at the intersection of trade and agriculture. These trade talks are based on an approach we call three eyes, informal, interactive, and inspirational. Excellencies, dear participants and dear colleagues, today we will focus on digitalization and agriculture. This session will enable diverse group of panelists, including the digital agriculture specialists and technology innovators to discuss the role of digitalization in contributing more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agriculture. It will examine some of the opportunities as well as the associated challenges. We will also listen to experts' views with a focus on African region, on the youth and technology, and on the role of the youth in the sustainable agriculture agenda. Today's session will also provide an opportunity for the winners of the FAO, Geneva Trade Platform Hecaton, imagining apps for sustainable agriculture held on the 17th of November 2022 to present the application they designed. This Hecaton showcased how youth can contribute to transforming agriculture to become more sustainable and resilient through digital transformation. Further information on this event can be accessed through our website. Before proceeding with the session, I would also like to introduce today's topic. Throughout the ages, technological change in agri-food systems and elsewhere has brought gains in productivity, incomes, and human well-being. Today, technological solutions are indispensable to contribute to feed a continuously growing population in the face of limited agricultural land, unsustainable natural resource use, and increasing shocks and stresses including climate change. These solutions are needed to support the transformation of agri-food systems to make them more resilient, inclusive, sustainable, and efficient, leaving no one behind. Digitalization in agriculture presents many opportunities. It can raise productivity, it can provide better working conditions and improve incomes and reduce the workload of farming, and it can generate new rural entrepreneurial opportunities. On the other hand, it can also pose various challenges. With this background, I would like to introduce our speakers. Mr. Tambani Malapela, Knowledge and Information Management Officer from the Office of Innovation at FAO. Mr. Ken Lohento, Digital Agriculture and Strategic Focal Point from FAO Regional Office for Africa. Mr. Cesar Wuli, Youth Employment Specialist from FAO Regional Office for Africa. Mr. Mo Sapa, Heads of Sales and Data Success at Eqqlo in Geneva, and the winning team of the FAO Geneva Trade Platform, Hekaton Composito Maximilian Bibelsmann, who is a student of the International Affairs Program at the University of Sengalian in Switzerland, and Varun Bagat, who is a final year master's student at the Geneva Graduate Institute specializing in Sustainable Trade. We will now hear from Mr. Tambani Malapela. He will set the global scene in relation to the digitalization and agriculture sector. As indicated earlier, please post any questions in the Q&A module. Your questions will be answered by the speakers during the session or at the end of our meeting, time permitting. Please, Mr. Malapela, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for welcoming me here. I'm going to offer some remarks here. I'm honored really to be invited to this edition of FAO in Geneva Agricultural Trade Talks and specifically to offer some remarks on the global scene in relation to digitalization and agriculture. For me, this meeting comes very close to the FAO Geneva Trade Platform Hekaton Imagining Apps for Sustainable Agriculture, which was held on the 17th of November 2022, and which I was honored to be a jury to see some of the solutions that were presented at that meetings. What really touched me there was how the youth can contribute to transforming agriculture to become more sustainable and resilient through digital transformation to present their applications that were designed to support sustainable use of resources such as fertilizer and other inputs by the So we are meeting here and we are gaining on this progress in this trade talks and it allows us to deliberate on how digital technologies are indispensable to feed a continuously growing population and also sustainable use of resources, including the challenges that we have. I'm particularly pleased that the focus is really still on the youth and on innovative solutions as a central part of the agricultural transformation and productivity and digitalization in agriculture. Just laying back on the much more broader objectives, such issues are very, very important for FAO digitalization, innovation, digital agriculture, science, technology and innovation focusing on youth and women are very important to us. You might also have had that FAO just recently had a science and innovation strategy, which aims to strengthen the farce work on science, technology and innovation and to accelerate the transformation of agri-food systems so that they become more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for a better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life, leaving no one behind. So ladies and gentlemen, we are having this when we do have global challenges and opportunities of transforming agri-food systems for such issues. We're just about to come out of the COVID-19 situation. We're having geopolitical instability and conflict. We have climate-induced crises. We have biodiversity law, the rising cost of food, the weakening and increasing hunger and increasing inequalities. The effects really do not look good. For example, between 702 and 828 million people were affected by hunger in 2021. We're still looking to see what 2022 would look like. The number has grown about 150 million since the outbreak of COVID-19, 103 million people between 2019 and 2020, which was an additional 46 million more in 2021. Recently, in a couple of days we heard of the earthquake in countries, we are having serious challenges in a global level. Furthermore, food systems are really also facing great from climate change and as we have noted, other sustainable use of inputs. So in order to overcome these challenges, FAO believes that science, technology and innovation should be placed at the center of agri-food system transformation and most importantly digitalization if implemented sustainable is a key driver in the transformation of agri-food systems. Ladies and gentlemen, when you look at making the transformation of agri-food systems a reality and achieve the sustainable development of goals, we need to invest in digital technologies and also digitalization as a way to accelerate some of these gains that we have and also to overcome the challenges that I mentioned above. If implemented properly, digitalization has the potential to increase agricultural productivity and food security while enhancing the sustainability and inclusiveness of the global agri-food sector, triggering new partnership and opportunities for emerging actors. By empowering small holder farmers with innovative technologies that enhance food sustainability and building resilience, we should be able to fight against food losses. So really digital technologies can apply and play a key role in improving security. Precision agriculture, for example, the use of sensor networks and data analytics to help farmers optimize crop yields and improve water and fertilizer management and other inputs management can lead to a more efficient use of resources and greater crop yields which can help to ensure that more people have access to nutritious food. But for these technologies, we need to be inclusive to ensure that when we apply digitalization, we are not leaving anyone behind. Another example is using big data and artificial intelligence technologies to inform decision making on processes on food supply chain from farm to table is another important aspect of digital transformation in food security. This can help identify potential bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the systems, allowing for more effective food distributions. So the rise of emerging technologies such as meat service, artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics also offer more opportunities in agriculture. And I hope some of my colleagues here, as we are going to venture into the debate, they might explore much detail in some of these areas. I would like to take this moment to share a few examples of what FAO has been doing in the area of digitalization. FAO considers digitalization as a key approach to work. For example, digital agriculture is part of the 20 program priority areas of the FAO's work. And also FAO really moves on to the digital for impact as a means of delivery. We have, for example, the FAO's hand in hand initiative which uses your special biophysical and social economic data as well as advanced analytics to identify territories where agriculture transformation and sustainable management of forestry and fisheries have the greatest potential for alleviating poverty and data. So the hand in hand, the hand in hand geospatial platform is a crucial tool for all efforts to build better and create more resilient food systems post COVID. And increasing of number of countries that are participating in this platform shows a successful use and application of data and geospatial technologies in tackling the challenges that we face. Associated FAO's open access use special platform which is a digital public good provides advanced information, federating food security indicators and agricultural statistics, combining geographic information and statistical data on more than 10 domains including food security, farms, soil, water, climate, fisheries, livestock and forestry. So this platform unlocks millions of data layers from different domains and sources to serve as a key enabling tool for digital agriculture experts, economists, government agencies, and other stakeholders working in the food and agricultural sector. Related to this is the digital villages initiatives which aims to convert digital villages across the world into digital hubs to support the acceleration of rural transformation and reduce the digital gap, including the gender and rural divide. So this initiative is being rolled out globally in close partnership with FAO regional offices and our members across the globe. As you can see from my small enumeration of these initiatives, you can see that FAO is trying to embed digitalization into its work by ensuring that we are not leaving everyone behind. The theme of our discussion today talks about the opportunities and challenges. The digitalization is coming when already the societies have challenges that are existing. If not implemented with conscious care, digitalization can exacerbate the already existing divides or inequalities such as gender divide, rural divide, rich and poor divide. We should ensure that when we implement digital technologies, we should be cognizant of the challenges and the gaps that exist. These are just a few examples of digital agriculture and innovation interventions focusing on FAO's or FAO's digital for impact portfolio. So FAO remains committed, ladies and gentlemen, to strengthen global collaboration on the future of food and farming and enhancing digital transformations in the food agriculture sector with all the parties. We are really excited to be part of this discussion in FAO Geneva to bring all stakeholders into this discussion. FAO notices and understands that working in this area, we need to work with like-minded organizations and partners in addressing the needs of our members. I will share with you an interesting picture that really I liked very much. It offers a bit of an, I don't know whether you can see the picture. So when you see this cartoon picture, it shows the future of agriculture is changing. From this picture you see where we come from and where we're going. This is just an example of one area which is mechanization. We see at the end of the picture that the future of agriculture is likely to be very digital, very mechanized. So FAO has a vital role to play the digital ecosystem for sustainable agri-food system. So the notion of sustainability needs to be translated in digital terms and we are all just at the beginning of this journey. We need to ensure that when we get to this area, we are not leaving anyone behind. Let me see if I can share this picture. So the constructive dialogues like these, joint actions like these, hackathons bringing youth together, exchanges of best practices in the use of digital technologies, must be key components of shaping the most targeted policies for the future of our agri-food system where we're all likely to have a role to play. As you have seen in the my cartoon that I just showed, humans certainly have disappeared. We do not want to have a situation like that. So we are also participating as FAO with the global initiatives within the UN system on ensuring how we keep young people, how we keep youth and humans as part of the agri-food systems. So the future of the technology and field systems lies in the next technologies, lies also in the next generation. The awareness and acknowledgement of the problem has increased the chances of making a change for a better and better future and likelihood of an effort that can be made to reverse the harmful consequences of technologies that might have to family farmers and small holders is put in place today. So I hope that our discussions today addresses the investments bought from opportunistic perspective and from a challenges perspective. I especially look forward for exchanges today and what comes next. Thank you. We would like to thank you very much Mr. Malapela for this comprehensive overview of the topic, your pertinent points concerning digitalization and agriculture, including what FAO is doing in this area, including FAO's major initiatives relevant and associated with digital life. Now we will hear from the winners. Varun and Maximilian will present the application they designed and named the Green Crop App, which aims to support fertilizer used by farmers and to support domestic fruits making. Please Varun and Maximilian, the floor is yours. Hi, is the slide visible? Yes, we can see it, perfect. So greetings to everyone. I was joining from Geneva and around the world. As highlighted, Maximilian and I will be presenting the app ideation that made us win the FAO GDP student hackathon held in November last year, and we named it Green Crop, primarily because it dealt with the sustainability challenges associated with fertilizers. This is what we aim to cover in a very brief presentation today, beginning with the very rational of why we thought of developing an app in this field, moving forward to the key phases of the application, how it functions, the input requirement in terms of data, etc. The potential scaling up of the app and the foreseen limitations will be covered in the Bay Head section. So, coming to why the app is needed and why we thought it was necessary to sort of pitch an idea of having an app in this domain. As we all know, there has been a shortage of fertilizers in the global market since about an year now, and both FAO and WTO have estimated that this fertilizer shortage will persist into 2023. And such a condition makes it very tough for regions like Africa to secure the requisite fertilizer supply, and then maintain the food production. This global shortage of fertilizers comes at a time when there has been an increasing dependence on fertilizers by farmers for growing their crops. And as we all know, this over usage and over dependence on fertilizers has and can further lead to reduced production per unit of fertilizer. This means that more and more fertilizers would be required to ensure this to match and ensure the same yield as before. This would result in increased costs for farmers and lower profits. In terms of environmental degradation, it's a well known fact that fertilizers can and have a detrimental impact on environment. All those factors and conditions in mind we knew that we had to develop an app which could in some way target these issue and provide a much more sustainable take on the issue of fertilizers and the concerning areas. So the key points of the app include our target users are the critical stakeholders of the agriculture sector, both farmers and policymakers are objective as I just mentioned is to address the critical issues and promote sustainable practices. And we will present it in subsequent slides that these sustainable practices are not just for fertilizers per se, but for the larger agriculture sectors and we'll just show how and we aim to achieve this by including a scientific measure for providing us an optimal fertilizer usage for farmers and then a dialogue platform for knowledge sharing and best practices among the policymakers. We identified Brazil as a pilot project country, because we noticed that it has an high import dependence on fertilizers, and then given the sort of contemporary scenario for the geo for the global market of fertilizers the kind of the government had last implemented a national fertilizer plan to sort of reduce its dependence on import, as well as usage of the fertilizers domestically. So such conditions made Brazil as a perfect place in our opinion to roll out our app. So we identified into Brazil forward while designing the app. So once this application has been downloaded, this is the first base that any user or person will see there will be two language options English and Portuguese this has been kept in mind with Brazil as a pilot project country. The user can select their profile either as a farmer, or a policy maker and then they region from a drop down list, and then some of their data. In case a user has selected a policy maker profile in the registration page, this is the home page they will be directed to the end of the first option of database policy framework, they will have access to all the relevant frameworks that have been enacted. And both the national as well as international framework. So just to highlight this would include all the policy frameworks such as the framework which FAO enacted in 2019 with multilateral support for the usage of fertilizers so all the policy frameworks that have been enacted relating to fertilizers will be there so having they have an easy access to the data and they do not need to look anywhere else. And finally, they will also be a dialogue platform for the policy for the policy makers to interact and engage with their colleagues at the regional at the national, as well as the international counterparts and the representatives from FAO on the matters of fertilizers and agriculture at large. Lastly, the policy makers will also benefit from a series of informative videos on refining this skill sets. There will be more on the videos on this slide. So under the informative videos they will have a multiple of options as you can see on this slide under the recent facts and finance. The policy makers will be able to sort of be up to date with the latest developments in this particular field of fertilizers and the largest sustainable agriculture. The idea of success stories of policy makers idea was that with the short clips of policy makers that were successful in implementing sustainable practices pertaining to both fertilizing larger agriculture domain. Other policy makers would be encouraged and motivated to do the same in their region. Lastly, under the strategic communication option. The policy makers will see videos as to how they can improve their interpersonal skills. And also they will be given certain strategies as to how they could interact with the farmers at the local level. So as to motivate them and encourage and ensure rather a wider adoption of sustainable practices. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. So now we would see the interface of the farmers. Starting with their homepage where you can see the key sub product of them, which is the fertilizer calculator, which would indicate the optimal quantity of fertilizers to be used while growing the crop. The calculator would derive this value after taking into account various parameters that we will talk after this slide. Furthermore, farmers will benefit from the convenient access to the small videos of easy to adopt sustainable practices. Additionally, having testimonials of farmers that have adopted such similar sustainable matters, I thought based on the videos or through their own innovative spirit will be presented and celebrated as success stories. If there are any questions asked an expert option provided in the app to the farmers will give them the option to reach their local offices or the regional offices. In case of a question or problem. And the next slide please. The fertilizer calculator is now looked into more detail. First of all, before putting in the relevant nutrition values of the soil in the case that they are known, the type of crop, the growing season, the area of the field and which fertilizers preferred to be used are asked for to create an accurate amount for fertilizer usage. So when you fill that out, you will come to the next slide, which is the soil report. So in the case that the farmers have the relevant data available. They will have to put in the pH value nitrogen value phosphorus potassium so for as well as sync values, which are just an example of which can be relevant, but it is depending on the type of crop and other factors also. But it is not necessarily the perfect fertilizer calculator for every crop. And then once they fill that out, they get the report available. They can either download or just view. And also additionally, they have the chance to get more information on sustainable farming, which will bring them to the video section. Talk about afterwards. So the video section is where the farmers get the chance to watch the easy to adopt sustainable practices, as well as the best practice example videos. And even today the FAO already published videos around that topic on their official YouTube channel, which are the ones that are being used as examples on this slide. So now we will talk about the input requirements that will be necessary for that. The first input requirement is for for farmers to refine the existing fertilizer calculation mechanism, because as we said it depends on which crop is being used and there would have to be an expert looking into the detailed calculator. We just gave an example of how one could look based on the available information on the internet, but just to make it more accurate. And also the second option is the requirement of soil reported for accurate results, which means that not every farmer has those soil reports available and they make the result a lot more accurate, which is why they are very important for the app. And also there's the need to create the videos on the one and the ones for the policymakers as well as for the farmers. And that is also a task that has to be done before the app can be used. And we also think that in general the success of the app will be dependent greatly on the active participation of local and national policymakers to support the promotion of sustainable practices within the farmer community, which is the overall goal of the app. And then the next slide please. Yeah, so the way ahead is on one hand the future prospects. And where we see the app in later stages could have a messaging feature for the policymakers to interact on a one to one basis both nationally and internationally. Furthermore, the subsequent versions of the app are envisioned to seek feedback from the farmers at the end of the year, indicating the usage of the fertilizers and the overall output so that you can compare how much fertilizers they used in which year and what the results were based on that. This can be later than used also to show other farmers how effective this can be. Then coming to the limitations of the app. The one problem could be that there are a lot of variables that cannot be estimated. For example, a vast exchange of weather, or also past attacks. So, this can also affect the yield. And additionally, the tailoring of the sustainable policy frameworks could be another limitation because that's also dependent on local governments and is how to calculate before on how effective this will be done. And yes, thank you for your time. And if you have any questions, you can fill them out and we will talk about it later. Thank you very much Varun and Maximilian for this very excellent presentation. Following your presentation now, Mr. Mosavov will present a real life example of the process on how their company brings and brought an application into life. During my introductory remarks, Mr. Safav is the head of sales and data success at Ekplov. Ekplov is a market data and intelligence startup company based in Geneva, Switzerland with the mission of digitalizing agricultural markets. Please, Mr. Safav, the floor is yours. Thank you very much for having me. I want to echo some of the sentiments of the other speakers and being honored to have been invited to speak here and to give you a perspective, a different perspective I guess from the private sector. I'm just going to share my screen. So, yes, as Pinar mentioned, so outflow, our core mission I suppose is incredibly relevant to the basis of this webinar. It is to digitalize agricultural markets. My role within that so we have been in business since 2013. And from 2019, there was a new management wave, a restructuring of the company, a renewed vigor and a renewed vision. And I was part of that movement. So I have been working really as head of sales and data success, which means I direct the commercial strategies that are relevant to new client acquisition. The relationship management of both clients and data partners. So I've been really seeing the evolution over the past three years in terms of our product development, which is very much reliant on the data partner network that we have. Because essentially what we do is collect market data from proprietary network of 140 to 150 companies across the full value chain of the agricultural industry. So, to give you an idea, so why are we here. So we have two key challenges that we see that I think are very unique to the agricultural industry actually. These are an asymmetric value distribution and unprecedented market volatility. So agricultural practice is quite old school. A lot of knowledge and information sharing can be informal, quite casual, really dependent on who you know. And so if you're trying to create an informed decision, the lower you are in the value chain or the less people you know, the more challenging that becomes. So for a local farmer or a smaller producer or an exporter, they may not have the access that some of the larger companies do. And that makes it quite, quite challenging. And so in this sense we see an asymmetric distribution, as I say, and the fundamental breakage in the data sharing and data democratization in the industry. When you answer that, the fact that markets are incredibly volatile. You know, a lot and the FAO will obviously know much more than me but there are a lot of geopolitical challenges that that really are directly impacting food supply and food security. And a very tangible example is that is obviously the events of last year and still unfolding in Russia and Ukraine. And so the need to have reliable data in order to mitigate the food supply risks has never been more important. So just to give you a bit of a graphic and a visual to try and describe that a bit more holistically. So we're really trying to streamline the collection, the cleaning and the presentation of data in order for different players across the market chain to make informed decisions. And most importantly, to do that digitally, of course, and to keep the supply chain resilient. So, again, coming back to the idea of some of the smaller players, you know, they really, they really can be in a position where they are becoming price takers, not actually creating or generating their own business due to the issue with distribution. And that makes the whole process of the supply chain quite unresilient. And so, giving them a fair and democratic right to a wide range of data sets is really at the heart of our long term vision. So on this slide, you can kind of see the wide range of data sets that we cover. For your interest, the darker squares are the proprietary privileged information that we collect from this network. The core business has always been focused on a number of data sets, which are the physical cash price of goods, mainly grains, oil seeds, veg oils, some pulses and thoughts. The cost to ship those goods, which we acquire from shipping companies and freight forwarders, and the S&D lineup information, so which vessels are carrying which agricultural goods in and out of ports around the world. And from that strong foundation and from the strategic relationships and partnerships we have created, we are then able to direct our commercial strategy and our product development based on the market trends. So, where we've started to build additional use cases for people like risk managers, we are able to direct efforts into things like algorithmic forward curves. So using a bank of factual data, we are then able to speak to our clients, analyze a total addressable market, really get feedback and involvement with these clients or users to see if the market requires potential data sets or tools to support them. And another good example of that is a CFR matrix CFR calculator that we created with one of our strategic partners. Really, we highlighted that as a pain point for something that they were doing, you know, on a day to day basis. So, utilizing and crossing our cash price data set with our freight, we were able to generate a tool for them, which then became commercially viable to other use cases across the industry and supply chain. And so one of the big pieces of advice I'd give in terms of commercialization is the importance of developing a use case and also really getting market feedback as to the real need to that. So, so when I say the use case, I'm talking about, you know, how can you make their life easier on a day to day basis, right? And those are the kind of tools that we've been able to create with the strong data bank that we have. We also have a number of other data sets that are a lot more relevant when it comes to things like supply and demand food supply and that kind of thing. And just for your interest, the long term goal for us really is to cross these data sets. So have an idea as to, you know, why the cash price is where it is dependent on the movement of goods, depending on the weather and depending on national stocks. So, so really, that's what we're trying to get to because the market has informed us that that's what they would want to see. So, just to give you a very tangible use case of an ongoing project at the moment, we were very honored to successfully win a grant with Inno Swiss in the past 18 months. And the idea is to develop in unison with HES and University of Luzon an app for farmers. And the idea again is coming back to the challenge that we've seen with data not being readily available to people at a more local level is again, as you can see, we've highlighted with them a big challenge for them to get access to reliable information. The goal of the tool is to use natural language processing to scrape open sources and privilege sources and develop the tool that is customized to an individual at a farmer local level. So, for instance, if you're working in West Africa, you're unaware of what's going on in the market, we can scrape a lot of local information and then actionably demonstrate that on an app that would be readily available so you can make an informed decision. So that that in a nutshell is the kind of goal so using that kind of machine learning artificial intelligence is a much smoother and automated process. So we're currently developing that and like I say the result will be to have this user friendly mobile application from vetted sources that are customized to the individual user. So I just wanted to give a bit of a shout out to the team and also a bit of encouragement to those that are obviously working in commercializing tech within ag because we're a very small team. We're very dynamic where we're diverse and global. And I think just in the lens of commercialization, you know, with the right expertise and the right communication and the right passion. There isn't really a limit to what can be achieved. So, yeah, just wanted to give you the idea that even within those three or four years we've been able to scale up and grow, not just our own internal team but our data partners and obviously the projects that we work on. And finally, just to give you kind of an idea and in a nutshell, some of the companies that we work with and that really validate the work that we're doing. And obviously a bit more context as to why we do what we do and what our goal is in the long term. So thank you for listening and happy to take any questions. Thank you very much Mr. Safa for your points from a private sector perspective. It's really interesting to hear what is doing in the area of digitalization, including the recent project you have been working on. And today we also have a digital agriculture and strategy expert from a few regional office for Africa, Mr. Ken Lohento and Mr. Lohento will provide the regional perspective from Africa. On how digital technology can play an important role in the region in terms of sustainable agriculture agenda. Please, Mr. Lohento, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you very much. Once again, let me share my screen. I think it is this one. Yes, thanks very much for the opportunity indeed. And greetings to everyone. So I work for the regional office for Africa. So headquartered in Ghana. So I would like to share with you some insights on how the digital agriculture landscape is involved in Africa, particularly relating to sustainable agriculture. So I'll be more focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa, that is the focus of the regional office for Africa, because we have another office that covers North Africa. So most of the example that I will be giving will be relating to that specific geography. So first, as you may see on the screen, we have about 400 active applications, platforms, and on digital agriculture according to various estimates. And these applications are actually coming across all the different use cases of digital agriculture. So we have most of the services or platforms that are serving advisory services. Market linkages is the second use case where we have more usage of digital agriculture. We also have a variety of platforms that are addressing access to finance. Supply chain management is another area where we are having more and more applications. Again, we also have one specific use case that we call macro agro-intelligence, basically meaning the use of a variety of data platforms, for example, by government, but sometimes also by private sector, so that they can really draw intelligence from the data that have been shared. So I think the colleague that just presented highlighted some of the use cases, particularly some that may be related to macro agro-intelligence. So in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the region where we have most usage of digitalization in agriculture is obviously, as you may suspect, is Africa. And a region where we have the least is Central Africa where we have just about 6% of the active digital agriculture platform. So if we want to improve things in that area, these are some of the area where that we need to be active. Some of the data that I have been sharing are more or less data of 2020, so maybe currently we have more advances, but basically the picture is that one. Now, I want to let's say zero in bits or be more specific when we talk about sustainable agriculture. We have seen different use cases in the previous slide. And when we really want to more talk about sustainable agriculture, if we follow the model, the framework of FAO, which has identified five key principles of sustainable agriculture. We can classify existing platform in those five categories. So we have platform, we do have platform that are supporting the improvement of the use of natural resources for more efficiency, which is one of one of the key area of sustainable agriculture. And I have put there some example, for example, in Tunisia, we have the RoboCare, which is a platform that is supporting pest management using also artificial intelligence and others. We have also at another layer, for example, considering the need to protect and enhance natural resources, we have a number of platform that exists. Even at FAO, we have, for example, what we call the E-locust platform that support addressing and eradicating diesel locusts in the crop production. So this is something that we have been using in different geographies, particularly in East Africa. We also have an organization called IGAD, which has a number of systems supporting climate change. Let's say addressing climate change issues. So these are some of the platform we have that are supporting sustainable agriculture. So by and large, as you can see on the screen, in every area or in all the key area that are related to sustainable agriculture, we do have platform currently in Africa that we are using. Some of them are not from Africa per se, but they are operational in Africa. But we have some challenges, particularly when we talk about using digital tools for, let's say, improving sustainable agriculture or for achieving sustainable agriculture. And I would like particularly to take the example of technologies that are supporting climate smart agriculture. So what we call digital climate smart agriculture services and highlight some of the key challenges that we have in that area in Africa, particularly, but I think it is more than in Africa. We also have some of those challenges elsewhere. One of the key challenges that we have is that because many of the platform that are supporting climate smart agriculture are quite new, actually. So we don't have enough knowledge on and best practices, as well as lessons learned in that area. So how do we use digitalization to address climate smart agriculture. We don't have enough lessons learned in that area. So this is something that we may want to work on. We have a lot of pilots here and there, but we don't have large scale implementation because of a variety of reasons that may include access to finance challenges for government, for example. We have some projects that are not going to scale, sometimes even us. I mean, donors, we funds project just for two years, one year, and then it does not always favor implementing at large scale. We have also issues relating to R&D and technical capacity, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa in poorer countries to develop digital climate smart agriculture solutions. For example, when we are talking about satellite services, geospatial services, many developers or many stakeholders in Africa that don't have enough scale really to develop effective services. Sometimes when you do hackathons in Africa, they may provide prototypes, but these prototypes, if they really want to go to scale, they face challenges because they have limited capacity. So at the level of universities, for example, there are a lot of support that we can bring so that at the university level, at the incubators level, we have the capacity really to better develop those kind of services. And we have also an issue relating to the sustainability of business models, particularly when we are talking about startups. This is a critical issue that is, let's say, impacting the effectiveness of the solutions that we are developing during hackathons or the solutions that our young entrepreneurs are putting on the market. And of course, we have a lack of funding for all that is needed to climate smart agriculture. I think we have all heard reports, particularly from the IPCC or the GCA, the global, I forgot the full definition, and they have highlighted that currently we have a lack of 7 billion USD that are needed really to bring additional 300 million smaller farmers globally by 2030 into, I would say, the effectiveness of the usage of climate smart agriculture. So we have a lot of funding needs and this is why, for example, at the last COP, I think that was organized, there have been a lot of calls for more funding for climate smart agriculture in general. So these are some of the challenges that we are facing and FAO has been also very working with a variety of companies. For example, we have a program at the regional, regional office for Africa that we call Digital Village Initiative. And in that framework in Senegal, for example, we are working with a company called Tool B when we're doing the pilot, and they have provided some climate smart agriculture services. We also, okay, maybe I will now just give other quick, I would say, recommendation to close. By and large, there are some, I would say, five key areas where we need to bring more support if we want to support digitalization for climate smart agriculture and digitalization for agriculture as a whole. I think we need to work around innovation to support better innovation, particularly for young entrepreneurs so that we can strengthen their offering and strengthen the opportunity that they may have. Supporting data-driven digital climate smart agriculture and R&D, working more to promote partnership, multi-stakeholder partnership, even at, let's say, African level between the government, the startups, the research entities, the farmer organization or the organization supporting agriculture system, include more women. And this is the key issue, particularly when it comes to digital agriculture entrepreneurship. We don't have enough women that are at the head of those companies. So this is something that is an issue. Even at the level of rural areas, we don't have enough capacity to leverage utilization for the small businesses. This is the area that we need to address. And of course, working on capacity-building, promoting enabling environment for digital agriculture, et cetera. So I would like to stop by saying that we have a lot of opportunities to really impact small-coder farmers' agriculture and growth in Africa through digitalization. Currently, it has been estimated that we only have a 6% of the market of digital agriculture that has been captured for now. So we see that then we have a large cap, particularly for businesses, there is a huge opportunity. So for now, about only 20% of small-coder farmers are reached by digital services. It does not mean that they are really impacted, but at least they are reached because when you want to talk about impact, it is another business. You need to really have more specific data. And we really need to improve the business models. For example, better promote bundling of services. I think that entrepreneurs are better understanding that in Africa now, particularly young entrepreneurs, but we need to continue leveraging those, I would say, successful business models. And lastly, we really need to support entrepreneurs, especially the young entrepreneurs, so that we strengthen the local ecosystem, so that we strengthen the local offering as well, so that they can be more competitive and offer services that can also be globally effective. Thank you. I'll stop here for now. And if we have questions, I can respond to them. Thank you very much. We would like to thank you very much, Mr. Lohento, for those pertinent points in relation to the digitalization and agriculture with a focus on the sub-Saharan Africa and how effective supporting in the region. Now our last speaker is Mr. Cesar Wuli. His remarks will focus on the youth and technology and their role in the sustainable agriculture agenda. Please, Mr. Wuli, the floor is yours. Yeah, thank you very much, Pinar, and to all the speakers that have come before me for all those insightful points. As rightly said, so I work with the FAO's regional office for Africa also based in Ghana and function as a regional youth employment specialist within our decent employment in agri-food systems team. And this afternoon I'm happy to contribute around the subject of youth and technology and their role in the sustainable agriculture agenda. This has been touched on a little bit by some of the speakers before me, but I wanted to just take a step back and really also talk about some of the key drivers of the sustainable agriculture agenda, which Mr. Lohento sort of defined, you know, in his remarks just before me. So a few things. One, we know that globally, you know, there's a growing population that expected to reach nearly 10 billion by the middle of the century. Along with this growing population will be rising food consumption needs, which we must find ways to sort of address in order to safeguard the health and the productivity of the growing population. These first two points sort of relate to sort of the future, but if you even take the presence and the immediate past, like Mr. Malapela mentioned, you know, we have a situation of worsening global hunger. And over the last two years, you know, about 46 million people, additional people have been affected by hunger and bringing the total number around the world to over 800 million. We also have a situation where, you know, we're experiencing an age and farming population around the world, but even specifically in sub Saharan Africa, where the global, where the average age of a farmer is somewhere between 50 and 60 years old, which tells you that there's a need to sort of replenish the labor force within the sector. And so when you take all these factors and combine them, they collectively point to the growing need for sustainable agri food systems. And what that really means what I want to focus on is the need to address the hunger and nutrition challenges of today, without negatively impacting our ability to solve those same problems tomorrow, as far as the environment and food security are concerned. So, I'm supposed to change yet. So, focusing on youth, you know, why are you well positioned to contribute to this agenda around sustainable agriculture a few facts. One is that youth account for nearly 20% of the global population. And when you focus on sub Saharan Africa you see that youth actually constitutes over 60% of the population. And what this represents is the strong labor force potential, what we call a demographic dividend that can be leveraged to address the agri food systems challenges, both of today, while also building resilient food systems for tomorrow. The other reason youth are important is because they are already well positioned to drive the transition to more sustainable practices in agriculture, because food systems are the largest employer for young people as we speak today, and specifically in Africa. But the issue with that is, you know, most of those jobs that youth have in agri food systems are not yet green or not green enough, and informal probably don't pay a living wage and so I'm not decent when we say jobs are decent we're talking about the extent to which they are safe and able to pay living wages. So there's a need to create more green and decent jobs within agri food systems and youth are well positioned to take these jobs. And then finally, but not the least, it's obvious that youth have longer work in the lives ahead of them than older adults and so any investment that is targeting the future of food systems would smartly be placed if it is made in youth. So those are some reasons why youth are well positioned to contribute to the sustainable agriculture agenda. Now the question is, you know, we're talking about youth and technology so how can you, how can technology essentially boost youth contribution to the sustainable agriculture agenda. I want to talk about a few opportunities that, you know, yeah, that are relevant here. And I think of this in terms of the three days, right, so technology is able to de risk, digitalize and diversify youth participation in agriculture. When we talk about the risk and we know that youth, young women and men have had, you know, maybe the smallest opportunity to live and work in a crude capital to invest in agriculture. And so the little money funds that young people are able to invest in agriculture and agri business need to be protected the risks around agriculture need to be minimized in order to save God those investments and guarantee a return. And so what digital technologies are able to do is essentially reduce those risks so you have things like the provision of weather information you have the extension services, you have remote sensing and monitoring technologies. All of these sort of allow youth to access data and information to make better decisions on the farm, and ultimately reduce crop failure if you're talking about production I'm sure we can have this conversation and you know around different nodes of value chains, but for the purposes of illustration I focus on production here. Right and so these technologies this information again reduce the risk of crop failure because youth will then have information and data for decision making around when to prepare how to prepare the land when to plant, when to water how to apply inputs we talked about precision agriculture especially on when to harvest and things like that. The other risk that is reduced by technology at those environmental risks, especially when you focus on precision agriculture. You know when you look at farm farmland analysis it's easy to apply fertilizer you know our hackathon winners are focused on fertilizer. Traditional practices just to apply fertilizer across the entire farmland at specific periods of time, but there might be specific sort of points or areas on the farm that need more or less fertilizer than others. And so having information and data through the remote sensing and monitoring technologies allows for these very precise application of inputs, which then ultimately reduces agriculture's impact on the environment. The second D here has to do with the digitalization of farm business operations, while also increasing access to market and profitability for young agripreneurs. And the point here really is, is, is how the incorporation of digital technologies can essentially reduce labor physical labor requirements on farms and free up time through this optimization process for youth to invest in scaling up their ideas or invest in other aspects of value chains. So we have a lot of mobile and web based services like Mr. Lohento started to, to share that improve access to finance they improve access to markets. They improve access to digital technologies. And these, these digital technologies or these solutions by further digitalizing, you know, agricultural production and management practices contribute to the overall sustainability of the agricultural sector. The other sort of thing I want to talk about around digitalization is that access to market. So, you know, one of the things that young people in agriculture struggle with right is price transparency is transparency around what are the best markets for the sale of the produce. You have the African continent of free trade agreement that is now enforced. How do you understand or come to understand which markets in Africa are best positioned to absorb their products and their services. It's through digital technologies and digital tools, right. So digitalization really does create huge opportunities in terms of access to markets and profitability for youth. And then finally, technology enables the diversification of youth participation and agricultural value chains. One of the challenge we one of the challenges we tend to see is that there's a heavy concentration of young people at the production end so the upstream end of agricultural value chains. I think everybody on this on this call understands that value chains are very diverse and opportunities exist. Many opportunities exists all along the value chain whether you're talking about crop or animal value chains. And so, digital technologies sort of allow young people to be able to identify or plug into those different aspects. So, again, you can sort of tap into mechanization you can tap into aggregation. You can tap into the provision of financial services, you can tap into the provision of weather related information, you can tap into transportation and logistics management. You know, these are all things that are data driven and technology driven. And so they, you know, again, they provide new opportunities for youth to plug into the more downstream aspects of agricultural value chains. And ultimately, a more diversified value chain is a stronger value chain, right because it's more complete and it's more competitive. So taking together technology has a strong potential to make agriculture more attractive to and profitable for young people. It has a strong potential to ensure sustainable management of land, water and natural resources, and then boost youth involvement in agribusiness and the sustainable agriculture agenda. To conclude, just want to talk about how some of the best practices for fostering youth, increased youth participation in the sustainable agriculture space. What we do, you know, I am the regional coordinator for what we call the opportunities for youth in Africa program. And we take an integrated approach, right, to fostering youth participation in agriculture and agribusiness, and that integrated approach comprises capacity building on one level, access to land markets and services. And this includes financial and technology services, and then also creates an enabling environment by working with policy makers and governments to essentially invest in making things more conducive for youth to participate in agriculture. So at the capacity building level, we have, you know, investments in training for existing and aspiring youth agripreneurs, but also incubation and acceleration programs for youth-led agribusinesses. So essentially converting ideas into reality, and then converting pilots into full-scale projects. In terms of access to land and markets, we also do a lot of work around business to building business to business linkages that enhance youth access to finance markets, innovation and so on. We also build in youth to youth linkages by creating those mentoring opportunities for youth that have achieved some success, you know, in agriculture and agribusiness to pass on that knowledge to other young people and reduce the risk of failure, like I talked about earlier. And then finally, as far as our work with policy makers and governments is concerned, you know, it sort of brought us around lobbying for even basic amenities. In many parts of rural Africa, we still don't have stable electricity, and you can't have any realistic conversation about digitalization and digital agriculture without basic things like electricity. So there is sort of a push for the provision of these kinds of amenities for research and development, which Mr. Alejandro talked about, and infrastructure, including roads. When you talk about access to markets, you know, most of the rural agricultural practitioners need a better way to access mainstream markets, whether it's an urban center or peri-urban centers. And so we continue to sort of take this integrated approach because doing one thing and leaving the other sort of tends to limit the extent to which you can achieve impact. And so this is just supposed to be sort of an example of a model that perhaps other stakeholders on the call could embrace in the efforts to foster increased youth participation in the sustainable agriculture agenda. And so I'll leave it here for now and also sort of happy to continue the conversation through the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Wuli, for those interesting points. They were really insightful. We will now move on to the questions and answers section. Since we started a little bit late, we will extend the session a little bit more with additional 10 to 15 minutes. I see that there are already questions in the Q&A module and some of them have been already answered. And we have two more questions. The first question is addressed to Mr. Ken Lohento from Thomas Watai. The question is as follows, are there any cases enough, are there cases in Africa when telecommunication firms support the provision of digital climate smart agriculture services? If yes, could you provide some examples? Yeah, thank you very much, Pina. So we have many telecom operators that are providing those kind of services. And actually, if you consider numbers, the most farmers are rather reached by telecom operator services. And in many cases, the telecom operators, they work with the government, even though they can also work with private sector. Now, to give some example, in Mali and Niger, also Bukina Faso, I think the three countries were involved at some point in time. There has been a program called Garbal, which is a satellite-based information for pastoralists. And Orange, which is originally the French telecom operator that is also operating in Africa, they have worked with the organization, the Dutch organization SMV, to provide that service. So a consortium has been put in place so that the three different institutions can collaborate and deliver services to pastoralists. We also have the case of ATO telecom. So the telecom operator of Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, they have a platform that they called, I think it is Helpdesk 8028, which is an advisory service platform, but it's also it can be considered as a service that support climate smart agriculture. The service is offered with the support of the ATO telecom, which is the telecom operator and agricultural transformation agency of Ethiopia. Basically, the government is collaborating with them to deliver that service. And because telecom operators, generally they have millions of users in the databases, those who are the clients receiving SMS services and the like, they can easily reach out and reach stakeholders, many stakeholders, many stakeholders. So yes, in Africa, we have many platforms that are supported by telecom operators, and generally they collaborate with government or private sector for the delivery of those services. Over. Thank you so much, Mr. Lohento. And I will pass to the last question today because we are almost out of our time. And the second question is from Nick Stone. It is as follows. How do we ensure that we can create dignified jobs for youth using digital? Can you give examples? Maybe Mr. Wuli, would you like to, would you like to refer to that question? Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Nick, for the question. I will use our program as a case in point. I think the starting point for creating dignified jobs for youth is to involve, is to sort of take a context specific approach when designing solutions. Right, so ensuring that you're listening to youth voices or we are listening to youth voices when we design programs or interventions that are meant to create opportunities as far as employment and entrepreneurship go for young people. So in terms of creating these things, these opportunities using digital, within the OYA program, we, we, or we've done and that has worked very well, especially in the COVID period, is to organize virtual incubation programs, actually hybrid incubation programs. That sort of, first of all, you know, allow us to be able to reach young people who are not in city centers, right? So when you have these kinds of programs, young people in a city like Nairobi, you know, can obviously join physically, but in other counties like CIA might not be able to join physically. So taking this hybrid approach allows us to be able to rope in a larger number of young people and sort of bridge the digital divide. That's a perfect solution because there are young people in parts of various countries that don't have access to stable internet, right? And for those situations, we do have on the ground delivery of technical assistance of trainings and capacity building programs that ensure that these solutions reach young people. And what are the solutions, right? So there are training programs and incubation programs that enable youth to understand business development, investment readiness, financial literacy, value addition. Basically the essential elements to building a sustainable business and building a sustainable business means you're also building a dignified business or getting a dignified job. And so this is probably one of just one example of how we sort of leverage digital to create dignified jobs for young people in agriculture and agribusiness. I hope that answers the question. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Wuli. We would like to thank you to all participants for their questions and comments. And now I would like to wrap up the session. Excellencies, distinguished delegates and participants and their colleagues. Today we have heard about the importance of technological change and digitalization for the sustainable agriculture agenda, particularly the solutions it can offer in the face of the contemporary challenges of our times. We have also heard the challenges associated with this transformation and how to address those challenges. I would like to express my gratitude to all the speakers who dedicated their valuable time to be with us today. Before concluding, in addition to what we heard from our FAO colleagues on FAO's work in the area of digitalization, I would like to refer to one of the flagship reports produced each year by FAO, the SOFA, the state of food and agriculture. The 2022 edition, which is of relevance to today's topic and might be of relevance for future work in this area, looks at how automation, including the most recent digital technologies in our agri-food systems can contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals and offers recommendations to policymakers on how to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks. With case studies from all over the world, representing technologies at different stages of readiness and appropriate to agricultural producers of different scales and levels of income, the report investigates the drivers of these technologies and identifies several barriers preventing its adoption, particularly by small-scale producers. As highlighted in the foreword of the report by the FAO Director General, without technological progress and increased productivity, there is no possibility of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. And it must be ensured that the process takes place in a way that is inclusive and promotes sustainability. While concluding, I would like to express our gratitude to your participants for taking your time and joining the session of the FAO in Geneva Agriculture Trade Talks. I thank you all for your attendance. FAO in Geneva will continue to organize dialogues on the topics of agriculture and fisheries in collaboration with the markets and trade division and the fisheries and aquaculture division this year. We will be announcing the teams and days for the upcoming series in the course. I wish you all a very good day. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Bye-bye. Thanks Pina, thanks everyone. Cheers, bye-bye.