A silver anniversary marks a milestone for any organization. It seemed appropriate then, that the 25^th anniversary of CTA’s existence was celebrated in style in Brussels, Belgium during the CTA seminar whose theme was “The role of Media in the agriculture and rural Development of ACP countries.”

A total of 150 participants from Africa, the Pacific and Caribbean attended the annual seminar which took place in Brussels. Representatives from the ACP and EU embassies based in Brusssels were invited to the ceremony which was held at the historical palais des colonies in Truven Brussels.

The CTA annual seminar 2009 was characterized with a number of Panel discussions which were usually followed by instructive discussions on the role of Journalists in Agricultural development. Scientists, researchers and heads of media houses from Africa, the Pacific and Caribbean had a feeling that Journalists always majored on reporting politics, scandals and sports rather than Agriculture. They added that the journalists mainly did it to satisfy politicians. The response from Journalists was quick, they said that the logic applied to current events and the information collection and processing techniques are universal, in other words, they are not specific to any given sector.

The media which is one of the strategic links in the information dissemination and transmission chain between the various stakeholders in agriculture and rural development in African, Caribbean and pacific countries is aslo key in information dissemination on agricultural issues. At the 2009 CTA seminar a number of topics were tackled on how the media can be brought on board to report on developmental Agricultural issues other than majoring on agriculturl disasters like floods,tsunamis and famine. These topics included:

1.    Mainstreaming Media in development: The way to go.

2.    How can media better serve rural communities?

3.    Media and ARID issues

4.    Media and climate change

5.    Media and Gender equality

6.    Contribution of media to Agricultural policy programming and knowledge management.

7.    Building the capacity of media in Agriculture and rural development

8.    Media, emerging and new media service and ICTs.

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), one of the participating organizations from Uganda, had the privilege to make a presention on the role of web 2.0 tools for sustainable agriculture in Uganda. This panel presentation which was derived from a broad topic of “Media, emerging and new services and ICTs”  was very important during this seminar. It was noted that web 2.0 tools/technologies were a new form of media not only in Africa but also in the pacific and Caribbean. The web 2.0 tools that were mainly discussed included twitter, YouTube, Face book, RSS, blogs, wikis, word press and Google alerts. The presentation focused on how these various web 2.0 tools can be used by farmers for sustainable agriculture and what potential they had in terms of increasing production, diversifying productivity and reducing risks for farmers.

However, participants from various organizations were cautioned to only use web 2.0 tools that the promote the cause of their organization’s goal if the benefits are to trickle down to the users.  This is because web 2.0 tools are too many and more are emerging.

With this year’s theme “The role of media in agricultural and rural development of ACP countries” it was clearly noted that sustainable agriculture is the only basis on which  humanity can be sustained. Meaning that if agriculture is unsustainable, then the human species in unsustainable too. Therefore,involving the media in information collection, sharing, packaging, and dissemination is very important in achieving sustainability of Agriculture in ACP countries.

The seminar took place at a time when the rest of the world was participating and celebrating  in two key agricultural related events of  Blog action day  with the theme “Climate change ” on 15/10/2009 and world food day with the theme “Achieving food security in times of crisis ” 16/10/2009.

For more details about the CTA seminar please visit their website: http://www.cta.int

Follow CTA on twitter at: http://twitter.com/Media4Dev

Writen By Maureen Agena.