E-Agriculture, youths and Persons with disabilities (PWDs) are set to take top priority at Guyana’s upcoming Caribbean Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Roadshow set for July 9-14, 2018.

At a press conference hosted by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications on Wednesday, the agenda for the event being hosted in Guyana for the first time by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), was unveiled.
According to Ministerial Adviser on ICT, Lance Hinds, the roadshow will feature workshops, discussions and presentations on how ICT can enable various sectors in Guyana to further their development.

Some of the many topics include e-agriculture, 21st Century Government, ICT for PWDs, digital financial services and cyber security and future casting. One of the most anticipated topics is e-agriculture, which will be the focus on July 9 and 10 at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, primarily aimed at policy-makers and opportunities available in e-agriculture.

Then continuing on Saturday, July 14, the group will visit the county of Berbice to speak with farmers and entrepreneurs on the similar topic.
This visitation will see the Guyana Drone Operators Association (GDOA) providing information on the use of drone technology in agriculture for mapping, monitoring and drought assessment.

Explaining the motivation behind this, Hinds said: “If you’re going to compete in a new market…the manual processes that we’ve been doing for, I dare say, 200 years, is not going to get you into the market because it costs too much to do it. So, the idea is to see how the tools we can use, whether they are farm bots or any of those things, [can] help [persons] to plant faster, cultivate faster.”

Meanwhile, also on July 9, overseas consultants will visit to address PWDs, to teach them how to utilise technology to improve their lives and be integrated into the work force.
The ministry is working to assist PWDs from regions outside Georgetown to attend the function at the conference centre, as matters addressing tech devices tailored to support special-needs children are to emerge. The ICT Roadshow will also visit out-of-town areas such as Annai on July 11and Berbice on July 14 to speak about the benefits of ICT for job opportunities and how it can positively affect communities.

“If, as a goal, we are going to use ICT as a productive sector, well therefore we have to understand how the machine works; we have to understand how the internet space works. How it is developed, how it is designed, how it runs every day. So this is part of the education that we’re trying to begin to transfer to those communities,” Hinds explained.
Meanwhile, on June 13 a Youth Day Fair will be hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre and will see a number of exhibitions on technology talked about throughout the week being put on display.

Other topics for discussions for the event include 21st Century Government, which will be presented by regional as well as local entities such as the National Data Management Authority, Ministry of Finance, and the Bank of Guyana (BOG). Focus will also be placed on artificial intelligence and robotics, while on the subject of digital finance there will be talks on the use of block chain as a record-keeping mechanism.

“We are about to become a significant oil and gas economy as we all know. It means that ICT is becoming far more critical than it was critical already; and as part of our readiness to operate in the oil and gas economy, the need for the ICT infrastructure that is required is certainly something that is necessary,” Hinds said.

The premium sponsor of the event is Digicel which, on Wednesday, reaffirmed its support for all initiatives designed to promote innovation through ICT. Since its initiation in 2009, the ICT Roadshow has been held 23 times in 18 Caribbean territories, including Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Throughout its course in Guyana, it will seek– primarily — to educate and raise awareness on the effective use of ICT to deliver improved services to its citizens and other stakeholders.