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GRAFT Papua New Guinea: Decentralised energy solutions to tackle post-harvest challenges in PNG​

ONLINE LEARNING WEBINAR

Webinar in partnership with:

DATE:
Thursday 8 December 2022

ONLINE WEBINAR TIME:

9:00am EST/1:00pm CET/10.00pm PGT​

90 minutes duration

What you will learn?

  • How the GRAFT program supports tech innovators to scale across borders and build meaningful commercial and strategic relationships.

  • The major challenges facing PNG’s cocoa sector, and the approaches and technologies industry leaders are taking to tackle them.​

  • How pioneers in the rural energy space are positioned to take the lead in solving commercially-valuable and socially-impactful challenges globally.​

Who should attend?

  • Startups, scaleups, and mature enterprises interested in scaling rural energy and (agri)tech solutions to new markets​.

  • Corporate agribusinesses interested in learning about applying principles of open innovation to solve meaningful challenges in their supply chains​.

Featured Speakers

Jens Jaeger
Director of Policy & Bus. Dev, Alliance for Rural Electrification

Brad Jackson
CEO, PNG Agricultural Co.

  • Brad Jackson is a community development specialist with over 3 decades of experience assisting Indigenous communities throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific to build their local economies. Brad takes people on a journey to identify markets, to change the way of business so that more money finds it way into the pockets of local people.

    His methodology develops business and financial skills as part of a working system to ensure those new skills transform into ongoing behaviour; it contributes to improving the overall enabling environment for businesses to operate and attract the necessary capital to grow and scale and positively impact many more people; it guides the overall process to ensure it remains relevant to local people and the markets being served.

Bikash Gubhaju
Market Development Advisor, MDF PNG

Phoebe Norman
Project Leader, Beanstalk AgTech

  • Phoebe has been working in the food innovation and agriculture sector and was appointed as head of programming for Global Table; Asia Pacific's largest agribusiness, sustainability, and food innovation summit that connected global industry leaders, innovators, startups, policymakers, and corporates who are committed to transforming the food industry through innovation, investment, and trade.

    Prior to this Phoebe had over 20 years in corporate marketing management roles and spent 10 years in London leading international teams across three industries: investment banking, law, and technology working all over Europe, the UK, and the Middle East.

    Phoebe is on the Australian Advisory Council for Thankful4Farmers, an organisation that aims to bridge the gap between consumers, brands, and agricultural communities and to raise funds to create a sustainable transformational impact for the agricultural and food security industries.

Featured Innovators

Cody Plante
Project Director, Village Industrial Power

Iain Munro,
Strategy Director, Ryse Energy

Dr. Willington Ortiz, Sen. Researcher, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment & Energy

  • As an undergrad, Cody began working with biomass energy technologies at the prototype phase with Village Industrial Power. He later assisted early pilots in Sub-Saharan Africa with these technologies and worked on the development and implementation of business models to support early sales.

    This journey led him to explore the various ecosystem considerations required to support new technology adoption. While in Kenya, he developed and piloted his market linkage solution for dried foods, Fair Fruit Exchange.

    This solution, when deployed with decentralized food processing technologies, addresses key barriers to market access for smallholder farmers.

    On a similar premise, he has recently been working with cloud-based software technologies to create business process efficiencies and reduce technical debt, such as Depbot.

    Cody holds a Sustainable Innovation MBA degree from the University of Vermont and studied Technology, Innovation & Entrepreneurship as a Special Student at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering.

  • Dr. Willington Ortiz is a research fellow at Wuppertal Institute since 2009. His research is primarily dealing with the role of bottom-up/grassroots dynamics and structures in the emergence and diffusion of sustainability innovations. His empirical research has been focussing on bottom-up initiatives in the global south advancing innovative solutions involving decentralised renewable energy and agroecological practices.

    Most of this empirical work has been linked to the Initiative WISIONS of sustainability, which is a program of the Wuppertal Institute that support local energy practitioners in the global south in the development and validation of decentralized energy solutions.

What is GRAFT Papua New Guinea?

GRAFT PNG is the first challenge-led AgriTech initiative in PNG to enable local value chain leaders to solve their most pressing challenges by leveraging the best of the global innovation ecosystem. The purpose is to build visibility and partnerships for PNG agribusinesses to the global innovation ecosystem, with a focus on intensively-planned and supported tech trials, and to build the case & roadmap for AgTech innovators across the world to grow in(to) PNG's agriculture sector.

Webinar Delivery Partners


Beanstalk is an agri-food innovation agency that works with clients to navigate and adopt leading practices and technologies with purpose and clarity, whilst leveraging their agricultural industry experience and global network to scout, trial, and scale solutions for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow, and today.​

Market Development Facility is an Australian Gov. funded multi-country initiative that promotes sustainable economic development, through higher incomes in partner countries by connecting individuals, businesses, governments, and NGOs with markets to enhance investment and strengthen partnerships for growth. ​

The Alliance for Rural Electrification (ARE) is an international business association that promotes a sustainable decentralised renewable energy industry for the 21st century, activating markets for affordable energy services, & creating local jobs & inclusive economies.​

Watch Past Events


PNG: Innovation Webinar 2

  • Join us for a webinar to discuss the role of innovation – especially in rural energy generation, storage, and distribution – in solving issues of productivity, quality, and market access across PNG’s cocoa sector​.

PNG: Innovation Webinar 1

  • Join us for a webinar to discuss the role of innovation – especially from India – in solving issues of productivity, quality, and market access across PNG’s cocoa sector.

PNG: Launch Webinar

  • GRAFT PNG 2022: An innovative challenge program started by Market Development Facility (MDF) in Papua New Guinea, in partnership with Beanstalk AgTech. This 1-hour webinar introduces more widely our open innovation initiative to the agribusiness sector in Papua New Guinea and beyond and shares some of the learnings to date to tackle innovation challenges across the agrifood space.

News


Vietnam’s agriculture industry stands to reap huge benefits through widespread adoption of digital agtech solutions. As Vietnam is a relative agtech newcomer, the presence of established agtech firms in the country can create strong impacts.

March 8, 2022

In the agricultural technology (agri-tech) sphere, Indonesian firm Koltiva has been well-known for creating tailor-made software solutions for rural farmers and multinational companies. Koltiva’s competitive advantage continues to be the combination of proprietary technologies (agritech,

February 16, 2022

Vietnamese shrimp production remains robust despite the pandemic, with shrimp products comprising 50% of the nation’s $8.8 billion worth of seafood exports in 2021.

February 8, 2022

The Israel-based agritech startup Sufresca creates edible, biodegradable coatings that can extend the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables by up to several weeks under ambient, cold, and changing conditions.

December 23, 2021

AgNext Technologies is an Indian agritech startup that digitizes food quality assessments with a set of end-to-end quality management solutions.

December 7, 2021

The persistence of unsustainable farming practices has contributed to resource degradation and lagging agricultural productivity in Vietnam.

December 7, 2021

Vietnam has the third largest shrimp industry in the world, holding a global market share of 11%. However, industry growth is sluggish, and its low-price foreign competitors are moving quickly; Indonesia, India, and Ecuador have recently overtaken Vietnam’s shrimp production volume.

November 26, 2021

Vietnam is vulnerable to climate shocks including typhoons, heavy rains, droughts, heat stress, and cold shocks, all effects that spell financial disaster for the country’s millions of uninsured small farmers.

November 18, 2021

Everypig Telehealth App For Pork Prepares Expansion In The Vietnam Market With Graft Challenge Vietnam 2021

EveryPig was founded in 2018 with the mission to serve animals, producers, and consumers by improving animal health and increasing transparency in the food chain. Or, as EveryPig founder and CEO Chris Bomgaars puts it, “We want to recognize health problems fast enough to save pigs’ lives.”

November 11, 2021

After a competitive and inspiring online challenge, the selection committee of GRAFT Challenge Vietnam has chosen nine leading agritech scale-ups from overseas to enter the Vietnamese market.

August 4, 2021

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