On 9 December, the second African Conference on Precision Agriculture (AfCPA) concluded after almost three days of sessions designed to bring together experts in precision agriculture (PA) from across Africa and around the world to discuss the PA discipline within the African context, and how best it can be applied for the benefit of African farmers
AfCPA is a biennial event organised by the African Plant Nutrition institute’s (APNI) through its partnerships with the International Society of Precision Agriculture (ISPA), the African Association for Precision Agriculture (AAPA), and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P).
The ongoing mission of AfCPA is to build a forum dedicated to ‘connecting the science and practice needed to put precision agriculture in action for Africa’. The conference was structured as a hybrid event with the main conference site in Nairobi, Kenya, and 10 other in-person satellite sites distributed across north, west, east and southern Africa. The sessions were also available globally through livestream. At the close of the conference, the second edition featured over 140 presenters speaking to an audience of more than 700 registrants representing 34 countries, out of which 18 were in Africa.
“We anticipate that the reach of AfCPA 2022 will continue to grow as registrations to access on-demand, recorded content will remain open from the conference website for the next 90 days,” said Steve Phillips, AfCPA programme chair and APNI principal scientist.
The main programme from Nairobi featured seven keynote speakers, 20 plenary presentations, and three in-depth panel discussions. Satellite sites offered local plenary sessions which extended the scope of the conference and gave researchers an opportunity to discuss region-specific issues.
Planning has already begun as organisers look forward to the next AfCPA conference anticipated for 2024.
