07.2018: The official Kick-Off event of SAMS in Ethiopia and the first User Centered Design workshop took place in Addis Ababa from July 13th – July 20th 2018.
After a first side visit of possible partner beekeepers in the region of Hawassah / Wondo Genet (south of Addis Ababa) the official opening ceremony of the SAMS project has been held on July 16 2018 in Addis Ababa. Ms. Corinne Bansbach (GIZ Deputy Country Officer in Ethiopia) and Angela Zur (GIZ Feldafing, Project Coordinator) inaugurated the official opening ceremony. During the following speeches by partners and important stakeholders, Mr. Bekana from the Ethiopian Apiculture Board mentioned that the sector development has a hugh unused potential which can be boosted through ensuring a higher quality of honey and honey related products. A better coordination and networking plan between all relevant actors is highly needed to do so and to strengthen policy environment and capacity development.
In addition to the consortium members from the University of Kassel, the University Padjadjaran, Holeta and Iceaddis, experts from the Ethiopian Apiculture Board (EAB), Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), Netherlands Development Organization (SNV), Apinec Agroindustry PLC., Babich Agroforestry PLC. and additional GIZ projects such as the Sesame and Avocado Alliance as well as from the Biodiversity and Forestry Programme attended the ceremony.
After a successful opening on Monday, a second field trip to the Bee Research Center of the Oromia Agricultural Research Institute in Holeta has given the experts a better insight on structures on Research Institutes all over Ethiopia, about technical requirements and bee test sights and potentials.
These side visits were afterwards again connected to the User Centered Design workshop which were held with the Core Team on July 11th to clarify important aspect to ensure a successful implementation of the project in Ethiopia. On June 28th the second day of the UCD workshop took place with scientists and local Businesses as well as beekeepers.
UCD is the main concept to develop soft- and hardware components, which are easy to use and therefore main success factor for technology implementations. The UCD process will ensure, that the ICT solutions and developed concepts and services within SAMS are based on specific user needs related to different contexts of use so that the target user groups really benefit of the system. Do fulfill the goal the system needs to be conceived, developed and continuously refined based on the actual requirements of the future users and their context of use. Since the methods of UCD are suitable to organize an effective and efficient collaboration between the partners it is the main approach to development the individual SAMS products. Therefore, a team of local experts will continuously analyze, within the different user research phases, the requirements in Indonesia.
Based on the findings, the first Needs Assessment report with specific information on technical, regulatory and educational requirements as well as on management aspects and bee species has been developed and will be the baseline for the ongoing User Research process.