CTA’s ICT Observatory resulted from the CTA Seminar in Wageningen in June 1995 as an instrument to advise CTA on ICT strategies and applications relevant to ACP agricultural and rural development and to identify – from a group of experts – ICT policy issues, experiences and projects. The main goal of the Observatory is to strengthen the formulation and implementation of policies of information and communication technologies in the field of agricultural and rural development.

More specifically it has the following objectives:
• to improve the common pool of knowledge and expertise available in this area
• to provide a mechanism for monitoring technical developments which can benefit those working in agriculture, rural development and natural resources management
• to raise awareness of ICT-related issues among policy makers.

In this eighth consultative experts meeting (26-28 October 2005), this focus will be on ICT use in natural resources management with special attention given to four issues related to land tenure/access issues, namely:
• ICT use in the context of customary land tenure / cadastre development;
• ICT use in the context of pastoralist / rangeland issues;
• ICT use in the context of community-managed forest issues; and
• Participatory GIS applications.

The participants at the meeting will be the initial beneficiaries and they will be expected to put knowledge acquired at the meeting into practice in their workplaces. Therefore those they provide services to will also benefit. In addition, findings from the meeting will be made available on the website for a wider audience and workshop outputs will be directed at policy makers.

Meeting organised by: