This document summarizes the YoBloCo Awards, which highlight success and challenges faced by youth engaged in agriculture and ICTs in African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries. It provides details on the structure and organization of the awards, including categories, selection process, and evaluation criteria. Winners are announced, and the document discusses initial impacts, such as increased blog traffic and opportunities for knowledge sharing, as well as ideas for improving future editions of the awards.

1. 3rd IAALD Africa Chapter Conference
Johannesburg, South Africa
21-23 May 2012

2. CTA : Who we are
• CTA is a joint institution of
the ACP and the EU
(Cotonou Agreement).
• 50 staff from 27 countries
• 27 years of commitment to
advancing agriculture and
rural communities in ACP
• Key role for partners

3. CTA’s Mission
• To
 advance food and nutritional security
 increase prosperity
 encourage sound natural resource management
• via
 providing access to information and knowledge,
 facilitating policy dialogue and
 strengthening the capacity of agricultural and rural development
institutions and communities in ACP countries

4. Strategic Goals
• To support well informed, inclusive agricultural
policy processes and strategies that empower
smallholder producers, women and youth
• To promote the development of priority value
chains, especially for smallholder producers
• To strengthen the information, communication
and knowledge management capacities of
institutions and networks : ICT

5. Promoting opportunities for
youth in agriculture and ICTs

6. Agriculture, Youth and ICTs
• “We recommend that our skills to learn new
technologies are properly valued, particularly in
using ICTs” – Declaration of rural youths
participating during the IFAD Farmers’ Forum, 18
February 2012, (Italy)
• “There is considerable scope for encouraging
youth participation in ICT as a way of supporting
agricultural business ventures” (dixit PafPNET/SPC)
• Youth spearhead innovation in Agriculture and
ICTs

7. YoBloCo Awards: aims and rationale
• Highlighting success and challenges faced by the youth
engaged in agriculture and in rural areas
• Encouraging the production of information and the use of
new information technologies by young farmers’ groups
and organizations interested in the “youth in agriculture”
question
• Promoting the sharing of information on the issues of
agriculture and rural development in African, Caribbean
and Pacific countries

8. Structure and organization
• Two categories:
 Individual category
 Institutional category
• Selection of winners:
 Pre-selection
 Public evaluation process
 Final evaluation process, undertaken by an
independent jury of experts

9. Some figures
• Officially launched on
July 23th 2011
• Submission closed
October 31st 2011
• 92 entries in total, from
24 ACP countries
• 69 individual
• 23 institutional

10. Public Evaluation
• Launched on December 5th 2011
• Closed on December 31st
• 2214 votes were cast by 2080 voters
• 612 comments were received for blogs
in the institutional category
• 15 finalists for individual category

11. Evaluation Criteria
1. Clarity and quality of language,
2. Originality of posts (written or not by the blogger),
3. Frequency of posting, quality and consistency of original posts,
4. Presence of comments from readers and replies from the blogger,
5. Presence of agricultural related content,
6. Presence of information on the organization's activities (related to agriculture
and youth),
7. Presence of youth in agriculture related content,
8. Presence of blog features (adequate presence of widgets, plug-ins,
presentation of the blogger, links etc.)
9. Overall look and feel (adequate multimedia, attractiveness of graphics, legibility
of posts, etc.)

12. Main themes
• Agricultural issues in ACP countries;
• Youth involvement in agriculture;
• ICT use in agriculture.
Other topics include:
 climate change
 education and training
 agricultural policy and strategy,
 agricultural value chains
 gender issues
 …

13. Main challenges for youth
• Land availability and quality (including land grabbing by
multinationals)
• Improving the educational system
• The need to develop market access and to promote transparency
on prices
• Psychological and cultural factors that hinder youth involvement in
agriculture
• Environmental challenges impacting agricultural sustainability
• Engaging youth in policy-making.
• …

14. Winners
Individual Category
1st prize: Nawsheen Hosenally
2nd prize: Sourou H. A. NANKPAN
3rd prize: Anthony Mwangi
Institutional Category
CARIBBEAN: Agribusiness Society of the University of West
Indies (UWI)
EAST AFRICA: Farming and Technology for Africa
WEST AFRICA: Syecomp Business Service

15. Follow-up survey: some findings (1)
• 14% of respondents comes from rural areas
• 54% already had their blog started, while 46%
created the blog for the competition itself
• > 90% opened their blog on a free platform, and
almost everybody built the blog by themselves

16. Follow-up survey: some findings (2)

17. Follow-up survey: initial impact of
YoBloCo
• The contest seems to have contributed to
promoting agriculture and youth involvement in
the sector
• 72% registered a significant increase in the visits to
the blog after entering the YoBloCo Awards
• 66% of respondents registered an increase of
feedbacks from the public

19. Elements of impacts
“Blogging is becoming …an
excellent avenue for publishing my
organization’s activities and
marketing of our products and
services”
:“Actually, this particular blog post
fetched US$ 500 immediately I had
published it.
“[I like those blogs because] they both
motivate young people to take action
while encouraging policy makers to
create enabling environment;
[Comment left by a voter]
YoBloCo gave me the opportunity to know some of the youth
participants … and we have been sharing experiences”

20. Issues for the next edition(s)
• Strengthen participation in the YoBloCo
Awards (as suggested by participants in the
20 May pre-event)
• Increase entries from
 Pacific, Caribbean, Central Africa and Southern Africa
 rural areas; youth and farmers organizations
• Enhance the YoBloCo Awards
• Follow up with best participants

21. Contact
Ardyis project :
ardyis_project@cta.int
http://ardyis.cta.int
www.facebook.com/ardyis