Technology:To improve efficiency and competitiveness

The 2nd eDairy Conference and Exhibition closed this week with a call on stakeholders in the dairy industry to embrace the use of ICT in the day-to-day running of the sector as this will improve the sector through quality assurance and information sharing.Opening the conference which attracted over 50 participants from Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, the chairman Rwanda National Dairy Board, Emmanuel M. Ndahiro, noted that technology provides new ways of solving supply chain challenges and the improvement of efficiency and competitiveness in the management of the dairy enterprises.  "Information management, traceability, quality assurance, automation and digitalization are all key concepts of modern food supply chains which ICT can provide,” he observed.During the conference, it was noted that with a digitalized system of keeping information that relates to farmers’ dairy supplies, the cumulative decimals that would have been rounded off on the respective products are counted and increase profitability.  In Limuru, Kenya, it was observed every dairy farmer who is member of the dairy cooperative is given a Smart Card on which the data of the supplies is captured. "After 5 days, the farmer just presents the smart card, logged in the computerized system and gets paid. When we introduce such a system here, it will improve dairy profitability, data harvesting and geographical data mining which will make work for planners and policy makers very easy,” reiterated Ndahiro.This year’s theme was "ICT as a driver for Agribusiness within the dairy sector.” The first eDairy conference was held in Kenya.