Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Zambia’s E-Voucher System wins UN praise

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Farmers Queuing up for Electronic Voucher Cards Collection in Mansa District
Farmers Queuing up for Electronic Voucher Cards Collection in Mansa District

THE United Nations (UN) has applauded Zambia for having launched its first ever Virtual Farmers’ Market (VFM), an e-commerce platform in the agriculture sector under the E-Voucher System which does not only aim at expanding the distribution of farming inputs but promotes efficiency in marketing their produce.

UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed said she is pleased that Zambia is piloting the first Virtual Farmers’ Market, an app-based e-commerce platform that allows farmers to have their surplus and buyers’ demand for crops to be matched, advertised and traded.

Ms Mohammed said the opportunities and challenges of recent and ongoing technological advances are offering profound potential for accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.

She said in order for technological progress to be managed well and make Artificial Intelligence (AI) a force for good, there is need for the UN Member States individually and collectively to learn about how to harness the power of technology and its use to address the complex challenges of the time.

Ms Mohammed stated that technological advancement has the potential to improve food security, reduce waste and help local economies to grow by enabling access to markets and financing.

The UN Deputy Secretary General made her remarks at the ongoing 72nd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at a joint meeting of the ‘Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and Second Committee on the Future of Everything.’
“New technologies can benefit lives throughout the world. Academia, governments, civil society and the private sector need to partner to leverage the power of technology and be aware of the many pitfalls we must avoid.

Technological advancements can improve food security, reduce waste and help local economies to grow. In Zambia, the first Virtual Farmers Market is being piloted. This app-based e-commerce platform permits farmers’ surplus and buyers’ demand for crops to be matched, advertised and traded,” Ms Mohammed said.

She observed that in other parts of the world, seed-planting drones are being tested to enhance agriculture productivity, curb deforestation and mitigate climate change.

In infrastructure development, the UN Deputy Secretary General said Mobilised Construction has become the technology company that is changing how dirt roads are being built, monitored and maintained across Kenya in Africa and across the developing world.
Ms Mohammed however explained that creativity and imagination of the youth should be nurtured to find solutions for old and new development challenges cautioning that if technology is changing the nature of work, there is an equal need to protect workers and help them to adjust.

“We need to close the digital divide between developing and developed countries, between the poor and the wealthy, between men and women and girls and boys. We must at all cost avoid exacerbating inequalities and ensure no one is left behind in this age of rapid technological change,” Ms Mohammed said.

The UN on Wednesday was introduced to ‘Sophia, a humanoid robot’ and the UN Deputy Secretary General had interaction with the robot on a range of things affecting the world.

Ms. Mohammed asked ‘Sophia’ about what the UN can do to help people in many parts of the world who have no access to the internet or electricity and in response, Sophia said: “The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.”

And quoting renowned science fiction writer William Gibson, Sophia said: “If we are smarter and focused on win-win type of results, artificial intelligence could help proficiently distribute the world’s existing resources like food and energy.”

Sophia is Hanson Robotics’ latest and most advanced robot.

10 COMMENTS

  1. The UN as President Trump said is a basket case of bureaucracy! The same bureaucracy that was pondering what to do resulted in 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi being slaughtered back in 1993-1994!

    The UN are a bunch of hopeless sat.an.ic cretins! Why is it just them who have answers? What about the farmers, have the farmers said they prefer Evoucher or a system in place that sees all inputs reduced across the board- why is fertilizer so expensive in Zambia- let the govt reduce fertilizer to K150 per bag and then there will be no need for this useless FISP!

    May God judges these sadistic UN animals accordingly!

  2. Anything that shows the PF to be achieving is BAD!!! upnd donkeys will condemn this development down to the last bit. What a conundrum we find ourselves in, an opposition that ia hellbent on destroying the country as long PF is in power, is this the democracy we fought for in 1991???

    • Just ba siye chabe. They even condemn the reduction of mealie meal price. One of them was even hoping that the reduction becomes unsustainable.

  3. The good thing about the system is that once the e-voucher expires, the farmer will no longer receive subsidized inputs. Unlike now where someone has been receiving inputs since independence. Some people have been using party position to access free fertilizer and seed by switching to every party that comes into power.

  4. Koma UN commenting on their supreme leader HH. You would see the remarks hailing the UN from Tonga Land. You read the remarks about the Commonwealth and so called Amnesty International.

  5. True, UPND donkeys! They were even against bituminous roads that they are also driving on! “We can’t eat roads”, their self-proclamed ” best” economist in Zambia, leader, chanted to them at their Nshima/cattle eating rallies! But surely, any sane economist knows that higher efficiency/ effectiveness in transporting inputs/produce leads to reduced costs on the part of the farmer, in addition to increased investment in rural areas and hence increased productivity leading to cheaper agricultural produce on the market, and for processing purposes, leading to cheaper exports, hence more foreign exchange! Utwile?

  6. Yaba Everything in zambia appears to be about politics lol why can’t people read this and perhaps think about it critically in regards to how it’s actually helping the farming industry no? Instead ? let’s just hate opposition political ideologies we cling to based on tribal attachment coz that lol that will bring development ?

  7. This is a wrong judgement from UN once again, it’s not about being in the opposition seat and shooting anything good by the govt down, it’s we the farmers who are complaining about this arrangement. It’s easier for a big org like UN to carry out a snap survey before going to the press. The story on the ground could be quite the opposite.

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