This time our guest blogger is Carolyne from Dar es Salaam. After a visit by Rails Girls and Super Sisters she decided to found her own project encouraging the women in her community to get more interested in technology. We are really happy to share Carolyne's story with all of you!

Hi!

My name is Ekyarisiima Carolyne from Tanzania, i am the founder of the APPS and GIRLS project.

Apps and Girls project was founded in June 2013 after the Rails Girls and Super sisters workshop in Dar es Salaam.

I was very inspired and motivated by what these women were doing and had much time with Erika Halonen and Meri Saarivirta to whom i shared my idea of training women on how to use internet and social networks on their mobile phones to do and improve business, help their children to do home-work and know about their health. So far we have 10 women registered waiting to begin their trainings.

They were really of great help and advised me on how I should expand my idea to reach to young girls too.

This was really a dream come true, I really wanted to do something to help women in my country but was not confident if this can be possible but here I am now very determined to get more women to embrace technology in Tanzania.

You educate one woman, you will have educated the whole nation 

When I officially lauched APPS and GIRLS on JUNE 29 2013 at KINU hub, I managed to get 8 ladies that day. I introduced what I was planning and they were into it too!

Since the project’s main goal is to get more women and young girls into technology and use it to earn income for themselves, we empowers girls and women through trainings, workshops, bootcamps and mentorship.

July 25th we had our first event "JOOMLA WORKSHOP FOR WOMEN" HAAA! this was amazing! 35 ladies participated, and 8 men as well!

It was an intense workshop for 8 hours and ladies were all enthusiastic to learn Joomla,

We had 3 trainers who made sure everybody in need was atteded to and by the end of the day they had a smile on their faces.

"I am so excited about this Joomla, i did not know that it also needed to be installed on the computer" said Neema one of the participants.

That day i got 10 ladies who wanted mebership, it was realy waesome.  Inorder to acheive our goal, we plan to arrange a follow up session of that training early August and launch a competition for women where  whoever that comes up with a Joomla product that will benefit the community and has financial benefit will get the prize!

Check out Apps and Girls on facebook!

An international team of researchers has developed a computer model to predict global crop failures several months before harvest.

Since 2008, widespread drought in crop-exporting regions has resulted in large increases in food prices on global commodity markets. With climatic extremes also expected to become more common, being able to predict global crop failures could help developing nations that are reliant on food imports - making them more resilient to spikes in food prices.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change this week (21 July), involved analysing 23 years of climate forecasts and satellite observations to develop a computer model for predicting crop yields.

The researchers then tested how well their model predicted the actual yields at the end of each season for four staple crops: wheat, rice, maize and soybean.

They found that climate-induced crop failures were reliably predicted in up to a third of the global crop area. The results suggest that computer models such as this could be used to produce crop estimates up to five months before harvest and help establish a system to predict global crop failure.

"This presents the first assessment of the reliability of cropping prediction on a global scale," study co-author Toshichika Iizumi, a researcher at Japan's National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, tells SciDev.Net. "It demonstrates that we can predict food production ahead of the harvest, which is a valuable food security tool for dealing with changing climates."

Yet the reliability of the model's predictions varied substantially by crop, with wheat and rice yields being the most predictable. For the major wheat-exporting countries, the model's forecasts were reliable for up to 35 per cent of the harvested area.

However, soybean and maize yields showed little predictability. Maize is a key crop across much of Africa and Latin America, suggesting more work is required to improve crop predictions for many developing nations.

But Chris Funk, a research geographer at the University of California Santa Barbara, United States, says these findings could still help the developing world mitigate at least some food price shocks.

"In most of the world, wheat and rice are the dominant food source for rapidly expanding populations of urban poor," he tells SciDev.Net. "These populations, who may spend up to 70 per cent of their income on food staples, are highly vulnerable to rapid price increases."

The model also showed varying predictive powers between regions and countries. For example, reliable crop predictions could only be made for three per cent of the harvested area of Thailand, the world's second-largest rice exporter.

"Even though these cropping predictions may not be perfect, they still have the potential to improve the efficiency of activities for ensuring food security in food-dependent countries," says Iizumi.

"This includes diversifying the countries from which food is bought, balancing combinations of imports and stockpiles of food, and prioritising emergency food imports."

Lindsay Stringer, director of the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, says that, while the information provided by predictions is helpful, the challenge for many African countries is putting it to good use.

"Focusing on food production is only part of the puzzle," she tells SciDev.Net. "There are also issues in terms of capacity gaps and institutional communication challenges. These cause problems in mobilising personnel and resources to act upon forecast information, and having necessary structures and processes in place to facilitate urgently needed action."

Link to study abstract