Breaking Silos in Data sharing and collaboration: Great Vision Powered by Will
Despite the Government of Ethiopia’s attempts to achieve food security for its population, crop production and yield are still below capacity for several reasons. One of these is the inadequate management of the country’s soil resources, particularly because of the absence of a comprehensive centralized soil data repository available to the relevant government ministries, national and international agricultural researchers, extension providers, and farmers alike. Not only are critical soil and agronomy data not structured to be accessible, the lack of appropriate data sharing policies and frameworks has hindered both collaboration among researchers and institutions and the scaling-out of applications and lessons learned. Thus, CoW organized itself into a team of willing experts to break silos in collaboration with and data sharing to support the development plan of Ethiopia by embracing digital solutions. During its initial endeavor, the CoW focused on creating awareness so that partners and individuals could share their data. Through iterative discussions and meetings, trust was built among the CoW members to exchange datasets and necessary ideas to transform the data into usable formats. This initiative could be as examplenray to other agricultural sectors which are constrained by data sharing barriers.
Shaping the National Soil and Agronomy Data-Sharing Policy
By showcasing the need for and possibility of fair and transparent data access and sharing, the CoW has influenced national action that will change the course of agricultural research and development roles in Ethiopia. The CoW’s initiative and persistent efforts placed the data sharing and access agenda at the center of Ethiopia’s agricultural development discourse. One of the critical impacts of COW’s data-sharing guideline is the inspirational role it played in encouraging the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) to constitute its national task force to support the development of a national soil and agronomy data sharing policy. The task force and GIZ engaged CABI and the Open Data Institute (ODI) to support developing the policy. The draft policy was enriched through a multistage consultative process that engaged diverse stakeholders. Currently, the policy endorsed by MoA and ratified as national soil and agronomy data sharing directives.
Creating enabling environment for Data quality and FAIRyfying agricultural data
Interoperability of data is a fundamental challenge in the big-data landscape that undermines data-sharing efforts and hinders the optimum use of available data. Different people and organizations collect data using dissimilar and non-compatible methods and formats. In response to the challenges, COW developed national data standard guidelines aligned with the FAIR data principles and a strategy on how standardized data collection and analysis can be materialized, leading to the creation of a total of six soils/agronomy standards. These data standard guidelines are being implemented by the national agricultural research and development institutions who are engaged in agricultural data collection, storage and analysis. CoW are providing ToT to facilitate wider adoption and implementation of the data standards by various institutions.
EIAR-CoW Partnership: Training of Trainers program on Soil and Agronomy Data Portal
Rescue legacy soil and agronomic datasets
Despite the collection of agricultural data in Ethiopia over the last 60 years, there are still enormous soils and agronomy related data scattered across different organizations. Most these data are available in the hand of individuals so that they are vulnerable to permanent loss. Cognizant the problem, CoW put much effort to rescue national level legacy soil and agronomy data and put into central repository for wider public use. As of yet, CoW was able to collate and rescue about 20,000 soil profile data and gather crop response to fertilizer data for over 39,360 points for some major crops. It is now underway to develop functional soil and agronomy database under the big national Agridata hub platform.
Supporting Ethiopian Agricultural transformation through complimenting digital solution
Ethiopia has made significant progress in laying the groundwork for digital agriculture solutions. However, Ethiopia’s digital agriculture is still in its infancy, with very few digital service providers and a handful of government-led digital initiatives. Most of the digital solutions focus primarily on digital tools and advisory services for smallholder farmers. Less attention is paid to reliable digital data creation, big data storage and sharing, data analytics, and other critical digital content development components. In this regard CoW showcasing in digital content development to support different digital agro-advisories. For instance, developing content for fertilizer advisory.
Founding Organizations
The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)
CIAT delivers research-based solutions that address the global crises of malnutrition, climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation.
German Agency for International Cooperation or (GIZ)
GIZ is an international enterprise owned by the German Federal Government, operating in many fields across more than 130 countries. As a federal enterprise, they support the German Government in achieving its objectives in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development. GIZ offers demand-driven, tailor-made and effective services for sustainable development.
Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR)
EIAR was established as the first nationally coordinated agricultural research system in Ethiopia with a mission to formulate national agricultural research guidelines, coordinate National Agricultural Research System, and undertake research in its centers and sub-centers located in various agroecological zones of Ethiopia.
Ministry Of Agriculture (MoA)
MoA was established in 1907 during the reign of emperor Menelik II. MOA has been redesigned in 1991 with the establishment of he Government of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia In order to execute the Agriculture Development led Industrialization (ADLI) policy that aimed at transforming the country's economy is one of the national policies and strategies. It is aimed at transforming the country's economy in to a well developed and prospered one.
Crop Response to Fertilizer data collected and cleaned
Soil Profiles Collected
Legacy Soil Profiles Extracted and Cleaned
Current number of CoW members