Inspire
Demonstrating the power of big data analytics through inspiring and innovative projects
What is the Inspire Challenge?
Global agriculture is increasingly driven by data. Advances in computing power, data storage, and data communications over the last 30 years have given rise to powerful tools for helping make farming and food systems more precise, profitable, and adaptive. Newer digital innovations — including machine learning, the expansion of connected sensor technologies, and robotics — promise more dramatic changes in the farming landscape in the near future.
The Inspire Challenge is CGIAR’s signature digital innovation process. It leverages the global footprint and deep food security subject matter expertise of CGIAR with expert industry partners to link digital technologies to impact in developing economies.
The Challenge:
- Bridges the deep subject matter expertise of CGIAR researchers with the capabilities of external partners
- Challenges research organizations to partner with industry in order to leverage public good data
- Robust, established application and review process evaluated on the following:
More info:
How to apply
Challenge 2020
Challenge 2019
Challenge 2018
Challenge 2017
SCALE
INNOVATION
IMPACT
PITCH QUALITY
DATA USE
SUSTAINABILITY
Digital Innovation and COVID-19
In response to the unfolding food security issues brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, CGIAR’s Platform for Big Data in Agriculture awarded US$100,000 in Rapid Response grants to big-data enabled projects working to tackle food system challenges.
The Platform’s Rapid Response Grant application process was made available to current or previous Inspire Challenge winners to build on their learnings as pilot or scale-up projects and leverage their innovative, data-driven designs to respond to the situation with agility.
Read more about the winning projects.
Challenge categories
Applications must fall under one of the following Challenge categories:
Revealing Food Systems
Measuring & Building Resilience
Sustaining Farm Income
Sensing & Renewing Ecosystems
Grants that make a difference
The Inspire Challenge has so far awarded 28 grants to 21 projects, a combined total of USD3.225 million.
In 2017 and 2018, five projects received an initial grant of USD100,000 each, and in 2019 the Platform awarded the same amount to an additional four projects.
Demonstrating CGIAR’s continued commitment to scale and sustainability of projects, additional scale up funds were awarded to three of the five 2017 winners in 2018, and in 2019, four winners from both 2017 and 2018 were also awarded. The total amount of scale-up funds granted to date is USD1.125 million.
In 2020, seven projects received an initial grant of USD100,000 each.
GRANTS AWARDED
USD IN TOTAL GRANTS AWARDED TO DATE
USD AWARDED FOR PROJECTS TO SCALE UP
See all the winners
Since its first round of awards in 2017 the Platform´s portfolio of 21 projects has already begun showing impressive early results on the life of smallholder farmers in the developing world:
2019 scale up winner
PlantVillage Nuru
A phone App for cassava pest and disease monitoring using AI. Now expanding diagnostics to other crop diseases.
Early results: The free phone application works offline and has proved twice as accurate as extension workers. The app has been downloaded by users on all continents. The project is now expanding from cassava diagnostics to additional crop diseases. An accurate model for potato diseases is expected to reach 200,000 farmers in India during 2020.
2019 scale up runner
Revealing informal food flows through free WiFi
Free WiFi helps characterize informal food flows in traditional markets in Hanoi
Early results: In 2019, the team collected data from over five million smartphones to analyze for improving market policies and food safety. The data has revealed 56% of users are women. The project has been adopted by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam for assessing and predicting unfolding food security shocks from the CoVid-19 crisis at a national level.
2019 scale up runner
Integrated data pipeline for small-scale fisheries
Near real-time data highlights temporal and spatial changes in fish production
Early results: The project has put near real-time data in the hands of fisheries officers, researchers, and local stakeholders by creating an automated data pipeline. In 2019, 300 tracking units were deployed on fishing boats around Timor-Leste, and 11 new local data collectors were trained. The project is currently expanding to Egypt, Nigeria, and Zambia, with plans to scale up in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Malawi, as well.
2018 scale up winner
SEEING IS BELIEVING
Picture-based advisory services make crop insurance work for smallholder farmers in India
Early results: Pictured-based advisories have improved the correlation between insurance payouts and the damage that farmers experience. Farmers are therefore willing to pay more for a combined advisory-insurance package. If insurers can promote the adoption of risk-preventive measures by farmers, they could potentially reduce insurance premiums.
2018 scale up runner
AFRICA FARMERS CLUB
A Facebook group and Messenger chatbot to connect and inform livestock farmers in Kenya
Early results: The project has built a Facebook community called Africa Farmers Club and mobile chatbot service. A survey of chatbot users revealed that 92% of the 2,473 respondents that were farming at the time of the survey said the Africa Farmers Club had influenced the way they farmed.
2018 scale up runner
MARPLE DIAGNOSTICS
Mobile and real-time diagnostics for devastating wheat rust in Ethiopia
Early results: The project has developed an affordable, mobile in-field pathogenomics platform called MARPLE (Mobile And Real-time PLant disEase), which provides extremely rapid diagnostics ( < 48H). The data generated by the pilot has been incorporated into national early wheat rust warning systems in Ethiopia, enabling more effective control of disease outbreaks in farmers’ fields.
Join the Challenge
The Inspire Challenge team seeks co-investors and thought partners to strengthen the incubation to acceleration pipeline for digital agriculture:
Co-invest
In the 2020 Inspire Challenge through a partial or full award sponsorship
Co-create
A 2020 Inspire Challenge category
Co-lead
In the development of the next generation of innovative solutions in agriculture
Co-Investors
The Inspire Challenge is made possible with contributions from:
