The Food Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s the technical division is emphasizing on the implementation of information data management platforms, for agriculture, food, and nutrition security in the Indian Ocean countries, including Seychelles. This is part of the regional project, SANOI, which started in 2021 and will end in 2025, and is funded by the EU.
Following the evaluation of the national capacity in terms of data collection, processing, analysis and management, the SANOI project seeks to respond to the capacity building and technical support requests expressed by the national stakeholders in support to national data collection initiatives planned for 2024.
Seychelles has three different types of initiatives planned for 2024.
- The nutrition survey by the Ministry of Health.
- Routine data collection on all the registered farms by the Agricultural Extension Services of the Agriculture Department.
- The agricultural census by the Agriculture Department.
A group of 20 participants from 5 Government entities attended a one-week Workshop on the Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI), at the Guy Morel Institute. The participants included Senior Officers from Agriculture Department, and the training was from the 13th to the 17th May 2024
Main objectives of these sessions were to train the officers from Ministry of Health, NBS, Seychelles Fishing Authority, Agriculture Department and DRMD in CAPI methodologies, specifically use of the kobo tool box software. The participants learnt about the overall concepts, the ecosystem, platform, and the requirements for computer-assisted data collection, including setting up the system on tablets.
The facilitators imparted knowledge on how to develop questionnaires for survey, census and real time data collection on production and nutrition. The training also covered different data types within a socio economical survey and the best optimization practices for fast, consistent, and reliable questionnaire administration. The participants were exposed to practical exercises on coding of questionnaires using the kobo toolbox, as well as implementation of real time validation and data input control mechanism to enhance data quality.
The participating institutions had the opportunity to develop their respective CAPI project which will be deployed in the context of the planned data collection for 2024: the nutrition survey, routine data collection by Agricultural Extension Services of Agriculture Department, and agricultural census.
Additionally, the project team reviewed the technical documents and identified specific solutions that would meet the requirements of the national partners regarding these data collection initiatives. For Seychelles specific context, the free solution offered by kobo toolbox software, one of the current leading data collection platforms, and the most widely used data collection tool in humanitarian emergencies, is an ideal tool for the proposed data collection initiatives.
The expected outcome of this training is that the Agriculture Department Officers will be able to better capture real-time data using new technologies, and also to facilitate everyday tasks. Moving to adopt this type of technology will surely bring more efficient feed backs and better results in the aspects of monitoring, and research on better mechanisms to promote sustainable farming in the country.