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LIRNEasia research utilized in FAO report
In April 2012, LIRNEasia participated in a regional FAO workshop held in Bangkok. The workshop brought together representatives from the agriculture ministries/ departments of 10 countries in Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam), FAO personnel as well as the private sector, including operators of Mobile Agricultural Information Services (MAIS). [...]
LIRNEasia 2012-14 Research Planning Meeting
LIRNEasia Research Planning Meeting for the IDRC funded “Inclusion in the Information Society” project 20th and 21st December 2012 Session 1: Introduction to the research project | Helani Galpaya | Session 2: Telecommunications in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka Bangladesh + Sri Lanka| Roshanthi Gunaratne, Shazna Zuhyle | India| Payal Malik | Session 3: Electricity in [...]
LIRNEasia lead economist at Sri Lanka IT conference
LIRNEasia’s Lead Consultant Economist, Harsha de Silva, gave a keynote speech at the 30th National Information Technology Conference being held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from 9th to 11th July 2012. Talking from an national economic development perspective, Harsha articulated the role of ICTs in growth as a transformative economic catalyst that can provide a platform [...]
LIRNEasia & PTA event in Islamabad: What can telecommunications do for Agriculture?
LIRNEasia and the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority co-hosted an event titled “What can telecommunications do for Agriculture?” in Islamabad on 3rd July 2012. The event was intended to stimulate cross-sectoral conversations between the telecommunications and agriculture sectors in Pakistan and was the first event of its kind in Pakistan. The presentations from the event are [...]
Information needs and communication patterns of farmers and agricultural micro-enterprises
A new report on the information needs and communication patterns of smallholders as well as agricultural micro-enterprises is now available on our website. The report is based mainly on the findings of smallholder and agricultural-micro-enterprises surveys, which were carried out as part of the Teleuse@BOP4 study. Some findings from the qualitative component of Teleuse@BOP4 have [...]
Regional FAO Workshop on the use of Mobile Technologies in Agriculture
At the invitation of FAO, our CEO, Rohan Samarajiva, Research Manager, Nilusha Kapugama and I spent two days (April 3-4, 2012) in Bangkok participating in a regional FAO/ NECTEC workshop on the use of mobile technologies for food security, agriculture and rural development. The workshop brought together representatives from the agriculture ministries/ departments of [...]
Reducing friction: Towards inclusive and efficient agricultural supply chains
LIRNEasia‘s agricultural supply chain work from our current 2010-2012 research cycle was shared with the media at a dissemination event in Bangkok, Thailand. The event was intended to highlight some of the findings from the meta-study of ICT interventions in Thailand conducted for LIRNEasia by Deunden Nikomborirak. Presentations by the speakers are included below. Rohan Samarajiva, PhD., [...]
ICTD 2012: The role of ICTs in post-conflict Sri Lanka
ICT infrastructure in the former conflict areas in the North and East of Sri Lanka is not far behind the rest of the country. One can get a mobile signal almost everywhere; 3G is available in parts of the Northern and Eastern province and even ADSL in Jaffna. But access differs. The latest 2009/10 household [...]
Mobile Payments and Immobile Regulators
I am borrowing the title from a presentation by Chanuka Wattegama, from the Distance Learning Center and who is also a Research Fellow with LIRNEasia. The presentation in question was made at an industry workshop on mPayments and mBanking in South Asia in Colombo, which I attended as well giving a presentation on the potential for mPayments in agriculture. [...]
Talk at FAO on the role of mobiles in rural development
Yesterday, I was in an FAO panel at the Global South-South Development Expo 2011, speaking on the role of mobiles in rural development using case studies from Sri Lanka and India. When I mentioned that one should have some concerns about the quality of information and the lack of accountability in the plethora of mobile [...]
Afghanistan auctions first 3G license
Afghanistan has received 3 bids for the first 3G license. The new license for 10MHz of 3G spectrum was intended to have been awarded by November 2011, but has gotten delayed and the bids are being assessed only now. The existing GSM operators (Roshan, Etisalat, MTN, AWCC ) would be allowed to obtain a license [...]
New Taliban tactics of switching off phone towers
When I was visiting Afghanistan in early 2009, operators complained to me that the military and the NATO force would, from time to time, shut down their towers in some remote areas to restrict communications doing a military operation. Now its seems the Taliban themselves have learned the trick. LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Punctually, at [...]
Video: Farmers’ perspectives of the livelihood benefits of reduced information asymmetry in agricultural market price information
Since 2009, farmers in Sri Lanka, have been able to benefit from a new service called Tradenet which provides agricultural market price information through mobile phones. The service is a joint initiative between Sri Lanka’s largest mobile phone operator (Dialog Axiata PLC.) and a not-for-profit called Govi Gnana Seva (GGS). GGS which means “Farmer Knowledge [...]
Photo exhibition at LIRNEasia@5
As part of LIRNEasia’s 5th year anniversary conference, “research -> policy -> knowledge based economies“, a photo exhibition was commissioned at the event to capture different aspects of the use of mobile phones by those at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The images which were sourced from Flickr from both budding as well as [...]
Pradip Baijal: No lessons learnt from telecom
Despite the phenomenal growth of India’s mobile sector, broadband growth has severely lagged behind. Pradip Baijal, the former Chairman of TRAI comments on some of the reasons for this sluggish growth. We always spoken about infrastructure sharing for last mile. The most important infrastructures that can be shared is backhaul infrastructure. BSNL and other operators [...]
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