The COVID-19 Pandemic which has been with us since November 2019, has affected and impacted us in different ways. It has impacted on our food system, science and technology. There has been lots of speculations as well as right information embedded in the different media outlets in the world. Some of this information has instead of helping people cope better and adjust, put fear in some, driving people to resort to all sorts of things as coping mechanisms.
In response to the pandemic, Africa Technology Assessment Platform has created her first brainchild; a series of conversations tagged Which Way Forward. This conversation series will be a means of getting people to share their experiences on how the pandemic has affected their general way of life and whose voices they have trusted more for information during this time. It will also be a time to interrogate and explore the different aspects of a range of possible futures, including the role of technologies, corporations and agro-ecosystems in shaping that future.
We hope that through these conversations, we will be able to create a pathway to the future especially on what we want to see happen in Africa in relation to our food systems, agriculture, science and technology.
These conversations will take up a mixed approach, we will be having the first sets as virtual meetings and subsequently a combination of physical and virtual meetings depending on the allowance we get on restrictions on gathering in different localities.
Africa Technology Assessment Platform (AfriTAP) was created to bring civil society groups to work together to track, assess and advise on the risks and implications of emerging technologies on the people, agriculture/food system, health and wellbeing, economy and the environment.
AfriTAP is part of a larger technology assessment platform (InterTAPs) has its desk offices in Nigeria (representing the Anglophone African groups) and in Burkina Faso (for the Francophone African groups).