The Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation El Sayed El Kosayer and the Minister of Communications Amr Talaat have held a meeting to discuss digitizing and posting the agricultural services on Digital Egypt platform, using modern technologies in the agriculture sector, and training the Ministry of Agriculture’s personnel before moving to the New Administrative Capital. The meeting was attended by officials from the two ministries.

El Kosayer stated that the cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) includes developing the Ministry of Agriculture’s website, to reflect the Ministry’s work, efforts and services, inside and outside Egypt. Cooperation also includes achieving the digital transformation and expanding the agricultural services that need to be automated, as well as the agricultural census that was conducted manually every ten years.

Moreover, cooperation includes developing the agricultural guidance using modern technology, through mobile phones (mobile applications) to help farmers with agricultural transactions; pest and insect control; and planting, irrigation and harvesting schedules. This is in addition to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the accurate electronic inventory of agricultural and animal activities, which will help provide correct information to help make right decisions, El Kosayer added.

The Minister of Agriculture also stressed the need to achieve rapid results in a short period of time. He praised the well-paced achievements in the farmer’s card system, developed to become a payment card (Meeza), to be done by maximum early next year.

For his part, the ICT Minister said that a number of projects are implemented in cooperation with different State sectors, with the aim to adopt modern technologies to develop the work system and build Digital Egypt. He highlighted the significance of the Egyptian agriculture sector and its vital role in the national economy.

He underlined the significance of cooperation between the two ministries to develop the agriculture sector through using IT, and meet the Ministry of Agriculture’s automation needs.

Talaat said that the two ministries cooperate to use AI to develop the agriculture sector. A pilot project is implemented in collaboration between MCIT Applied Innovation Center (AIC) and the Agricultural Research Center, with the aim to use AI in different areas, including agricultural inventory, using the spectral footprint, as well as to help farmers with weather forecasting and boosting the rationalization of irrigation water consumption.

Furthermore, the ICT Minister presented MCIT efforts, in cooperation with the state agencies and institutions, to achieve the transition to a participatory government and train the employees at the State’s administrative apparatus. He referred to the cooperation between the two ministries to build the capacities of the Ministry of Agriculture’s personnel.

The meeting was attended by the Deputy ICT Minister for Administrative Development, Digital Transformation and Automation Khaled El Attar, the Deputy ICT Minister for Infrastructure Raafat Hindy, the Advisor to the ICT Minister for Research and Development Noha Adly, and a number of MCIT officials.