Ministerial Conference on Higher Education in Agriculture in Africa (CHEA)

15th – 19th November 2010. Kampala. The Government of Uganda and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), with support of national, regional and international partners hosted a regional meeting of African Ministers, Members of Parliament, senior officials responsible for education, agriculture, science and technology, finance and planning, private sector, civil society, and farmer representatives, to discuss strengthening higher education in agriculture, so that African universities and other education institutions can contribute more effectively to the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) processes. The conference aimed to consolidate recent developments by strengthening high level partnerships and policy support for re-engineering African higher education in agriculture and science.

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has earmarked US$23m for agriculture research in Africa. The move was announced by the forum’s Executive Director, Prof. Monty P. Jones, on the sidelines of the just-concluded regional forum meeting of African agriculture ministers in Kampala, Uganda. “For the next three to five years, we shall give up to 23 million dollars to help in research extension as well as promoting new innovations through higher education,” Jones said in an interview. Read the full article

The faculty of Computing and IT was invited to exhibit innovative student projects aimed at solving different challenges to people in the Agricultural sector. Some of the projects exhibited included the ‘Integrated Farm Management System’ – which largely avails data to farmers about their products on a mobile phone, and the ‘Cloud Enabled Mobile Financial Management System’ – which helps farmers monitor their income and expenditure by entering daily data into their mobile phones.

Download the conference program, theme background papers, and Ministerial Communique in English [click here] and in French [click here]