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.

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 ACP4 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

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.

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

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.

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.).

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.

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

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

Percentage and number of blogs

that talk about main thematics

Individual Category

Institutional Category

16 16 16

11 12

11 11 10

8

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).

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.

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)

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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

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]

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

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.

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/