The Final Week of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2021 was held online, on May 17-21. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has participated in the WSIS Final Week.
The Forum was co-organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in close collaboration with all WSIS Action Line Facilitators/Co-Facilitators.
The WSIS Forum represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ multistakeholder community. This year’s Forum served as a platform to track the achievements of WSIS Action Lines, in collaboration with the UN Agencies involved, and provide information and analyses of the implementation of WSIS Action Lines since 2005. The platform provided an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships.
The Final Week consisted of policy statements, interactive high-level dialogues, the WSIS Prizes ceremony, a ministerial round table, and a series of WSIS Action Line facilitation meetings.
MCIT project “ICT for Comprehensive Community Development in Agriculture (ICT4CCDA)” was selected as one of WSIS Prizes 2021 Champion Projects. ICT4CCDA was among the top five projects that received the largest number of votes, out of 360 leading projects in 18 categories in development areas, and 1,270 nominated projects under the International and Regional Cooperation Category.
The overall goal of ICT4CCDA is to use ICT applications to spread specialized agricultural knowledge in the Arabic language, in Egypt and the Middle East, among over 21 million users. The project also aims to manage specialized knowledge portals through agricultural experts, and use smart knowledge applications to provide ICT-based agricultural services to support the state's efforts in improving agricultural productivity, maintaining food security and increasing income.
The project was launched by the Central Department for Community Development at MCIT, in collaboration with partners including the UNDP, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment, the National Research Center, the Sudanese Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), KariaNet project of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the International Development Research Center (IDRC).
