1. YoBloCo Awards –
Organization and
future perspectives
Giorgio Bellinzas
CTA
Consultative workshop on “Using ICT to strengthen
youth opportunities in agriculture and rural areas”
Johannesburg, 20th May 2012

2. 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

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. Final Evaluation
• Jury of Experts:
 Ms. Dorothy K. Gordon (Director-General of the Ghana-India
Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Ghana);
 Dr. Assogbadjo Achille Ephrem (Researcher and lecturer at the
Faculty of Agronomic Sciences of the University of Abomey-
Calavi, Benin)
 Peter Ballantyne (Head of Knowledge Management and
Information Services at the International Livestock Research
Institute)

7. 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.)

8. 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
 …

9. 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.
• …

10. 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

11. Follow-up survey: some findings
• 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

12. Follow-up survey: 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

13. Next editions: how to…
• …increase entries from Pacific, Caribbean,
Central Africa and Southern Africa
• …increase the participation of audience
• …enhance the voting system
• …enhance the YoBloCo Awards blog
• …

14. Thank you