In 2008, West Africa has faced simultaneously four crises: climate crisis, food crisis, energy crisis and financial crisis. It is now our tremendous challenge to deliver solutions with immediate effects, and to prepare actions that will structure a safer future. Above all these solutions must be accessible in rural areas: Africa is the most vulnerable continent and our rural populations could play an important role in positively affecting climate change, food and energy crises.
Given the above, four key questions must be addressed. Which innovative solutions could be proposed in a short term? Are they duly validated before to ensure their promotion? Will they generate revenues for rural populations? How to fund their deployment?
The Centre for Rural Innovation would like to contribute to finding answers to these pressing questions. As a place for research & development, the Centre aims to conduct pilot projects up to their commercial validation. It will then act as a business development support to rural populations by developing sustainable commercial activities.
African climates are highly severe, exposing vulnerable sectors such as water resources, agriculture, health, and forestry. Considering that its population is characterized by a low adaptive capacity to climate change, building this capacity is mandatory for our governments.
Moreover, the size of our continent (about 20 % of the world’s land area) and its amplitude of climate variability make the region an important component of the global climate system itself. Building up Africa’s contribution towards remedying global warming also constitutes an important part in the worldwide plan for climate change mitigation.
In many African countries, the majority of consumers spend more than half of their income on food and energy. On the one side agriculture is threatened by climate evolution, high prices for fertilizer and pesticides. On the other side, the economic impact of rising raw material and energy prices undermines the fight against poverty.
The Centre would like to develop, validate and spread innovative solutions in West African rural areas, focusing on 4 areas of actions:
- ClimateChange: reduce causes, promote adaptation & Clean Development Mechanisms;
- Vital Resources: develop lasting solutions to food vulnerability & water scarcity;
- Sustainable Energy: promote clean energies and reduce energy access price;
- Knowledge Society: enhance information & communication technologies for development.
Indeed, Knowledge Society is one of the centre pilar. It allows spreading validated solutions in rural areas, thanks to telecommunication systems, while Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used to help famer understanding their environmental framework and managing their environmental resources. Thanks to the partnership with Planet Action, the projects developed by the Centre can be easily localised, planned, and monitored.
While promoting the Centre development to the Government of Ivory Coast, GIS have been perceived as a mandatory tool for understanding the environmental status & planning the country development. Therefore BeDevelopment has been solicited to identify and promote solutions enhancing the scientific & environmental community access to earth observation data from satellite.
