The #BDPNAIROBI2018 convention was both inspiring and informative. We had over 400 attendees and 150 of those were speakers in some form or another – a clear sign of just how much people want to personally engage and join in the conversation about building an effective and sustainable data ecosystem. Thank you to everyone who participated and engaged, in person and online.

Here are the highlights from the 2018 CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture Convention: Decoding the Data Ecosystem.

To solve a complex problem, you need to have the whole system in the room.

Finding the right mix of data, actors, analysis and action to build resilient food systems is certainly a complex problem. I think we learned a few things together about how to address it.

The food systems framework–and the actors in the system–help link data to impact.

The team interviewed some 50 food system actors about their data and information practices, with an eye towards leveraging the Convention as an opportunity to converge food security research and concrete actions in the system.

Building new digital impact from research must be guided by innovation strategy.

CGIAR’s digital innovation process, the Inspire Challenge, is getting better at targeting innovation. In 2017, only about 8% of submissions targeted smallholder farmers. In 2018 it was over 70%. If we aim to solve agricultural problems faster and at greater scale, we need to measure our progress and change tack as necessary. Generating new ideas is important, and so is finding the ways innovations can take up a place in the larger data ecosystem for food security.

In addition, the Platform awarded US$500,000 in total to three of the five winners from the 2017 challenge to help them expand the scale of their innovation. They had 12 months to implement their pilots and had to demonstrate the proven viability and potential for impact and present their results in front of a panel of judges to compete for the Scale-Up grant.