Capitalizing on the good practices and lessons learned from the European Smart Villages Initiative

As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digitalization, implementation of projects on digital transformation of the agri-food sector and rural areas is high on national agendas in the 18 Member Countries covered by FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (“REU focus countries”). The Smart/Digital Villages projects have been launched in Europe earlier and serve as a foundation for the regional FAO’s initiative on developing Digital Villages across the REU focus countries.

This FAO Regional Project on Digital Village Initiative is implemented jointly by UN FAO, L’Association Européenne pour l’Information sur le Développement Local (AEIDL), American University of Central Asia (AUCA) and Central European University (CEU).

The aim is to provide support to knowledge transfer on digital innovations among FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (REU) focus countries in general, and between Europe and the countries of Eastern Partnership in particular, by:

1. Transferring the FAO’s course on experience capitalization to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, serving as a foundation for regional activities on good practices collection and exchange;
2. Documenting good practices on the use of digital innovations in agriculture in countries part of the Eastern Partnership;
3. Collection and implementation of the visualization of the REU’s regional and national datasets, relevant to the FAO’s Digital Village Initiative in Europe and Eastern Partnership Countries.