African Agriculture and ICT: An Overview of the FACET Project

Under the FIELD-Support LWA which is managed by the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and implemented in partnership with ACDI/VOCA, Action for Enterprise (AFE), and University of Maryland's IRIS Center, the Fostering Agriculture Competitiveness Employing Information Communication Technologies (FACET) aims to help USAID missions and their implementing partners in sub-Saharan Africa use information and communications technology in sustainable and scalable approaches to improve the impact of their agriculture-related development projects.

Key objectives of the project include finding sustainable and scalable ways to employ Information Communication Technologies (ICT) that do not rely on donor subsidies, building upon best practices, and using cross-border solutions to agricultural program challenges. To achieve its objectives, FACET has two components: knowledge sharing across missions using ICT to increase successful activity; and short-term technical assistance to projects to help them improve their uses of ICT, especially in ways that may be helpful to other projects as well.

This is the first in a series of Briefing Papers produced that aim to give an overview of the project and its components, discuss applications for ICT interventions, and document lessons learned in the field.