Egypt Climate Smart Agriculture Innovation and Tech-based Entrepreneurship (EgCITE)

Project Summary:

To foster the adoption of climate-smart agriculture technologies and practices in the project area and to strengthen the nation-wide agriculture information system and early warning services.

By creating and supporting innovative agrifood solutions, EgCITE will contribute to other existing World Bank lending projects such as the Upper Egypt Local Development Program, Catalyzing Entrepreneurship for Job Creation, and Greater Cairo Air Pollution Management and Climate Change Project.

List of Activities:

• EgCITE Platform 

The Egypt Climate Smart Innovation and Tech-based Entrepreneurship (EgCITE) Program will be conducted through a dedicated portal, called the EgCITE Platform. This platform aims to be a virtual one-stop-shop for Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) information. Its objective is to enable data driven innovation and facilitate knowledge sharing among all stakeholders. The KGGTF funds will support the design of the platform and the curation of knowledge that will be shared. 

• i-Challenge EgCITE

This activity will support a series of tailored innovation competitions that is aimed at crowdsourcing innovative ICT based solutions that address climate change, and food security and water-energy-food Nexus related challenges. It will also leverage and support competitions conducted nationally by the Government of Egypt (such as ClimaTech Run). The competitions will be tailored to the country context and needs and will create a pipeline of tailored innovative solutions that can be supported through NWFE and specifically in CRAFT component 2.2.

• Climate Smart Innovation (CSI) Academy

The Climate Smart Innovation (CSI) Academy is an online training modality that will provide tailored e-learning courses. This activity will aim to create at least one e-learning course on climate smart agricultural technologies. For instance, to increase the efficacy of agricultural and climate change related interventions, the use of GIS and remote sensing technologies is key, a bilingual e-learning course and seminars can be created to: familiarize the trainees with spatial data availability, support them with modeling techniques that can be applied to the agrifood sector and teach them how to collect data using mobile data gathering tools.

• Knowledge Exchange Activity 

This activity will enable the implementation of technical study tours between Egypt and Korea. The Government of Egypt (GoE) has launched a number of national projects that can greatly benefit from the Korean experience. For example, the GoE has launched 100,000 Greenhouse Project to maximize the use of its resources and increase agricultural productivity and promote export growth. Moreover, in alignment with Egypt Vision 2030, Egypt has launched Digital Egypt, an all-encompassing vision and plan that focuses on digital transformation, capacity building and digital innovation.

Outcomes:

Outcomes of EgCITE :

• Improved access to information leading to better-informed decision-making for all stakeholders;
• Enhanced knowledge sharing, facilitating exchange of best practices among stakeholders, contributing to the advancement of CSA practices;
• Increased collaboration, by providing a hub for information, the platform could foster partnerships and collaborations between different sectors, including government, private sector, academia, and civil society;
• Helping to build the capacity of farmers and other stakeholders to implement CSA practices effectively; and
• Enabling data-driven innovation.

Collaboration with K-Partners and Others:

Partnerships will be forged with the public sector and other development partners to implement the EgCITE activities. Partners include The Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) and National Information Society Agency (NIA) and the Global Knowledge Exchange & Development Center (GKEDC), GIZ, FAO and the Egyptian Joint Team on Innovation, which includes public sector, private sector and CSOs.