FAO officially launches the SusaHamra application and platform as a digital monitoring and early warning system to manage the red palm weevil in Jordan.

The Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa (RNE) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture in Jordan, concluded a Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop on the SusaHamra application and platform under the framework of the FAO Red Palm Weevil (RPW) Eradication "GCP/RNE/012/MUL" program.  The workshop took place in Amman from May 28 to 30 and was attended by 50 officials from six NENA countries (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria). The workshop aimed at improving participants' technical skills in RPW visual inspection, trapping techniques, and data gathering and validation by the "SusaHamra" app and platform. The workshop program focused on discussing the most recent updates of the FAO regional strategy for RPW management, presenting the national strategies for monitoring, and managing RPW, and identifying any gaps in the current monitoring systems and proposing ways to enhance them. In addition, discuss the possibility of enhancing and adopting the “SusaHamra" app and platform as a national monitoring system in the other participating countries.

The workshop witnessed the official launch of the SusaHamra tool in Jordan as an official national RPW monitoring system. With this, Jordan becomes the second country in the region after Tunisia to adopt the SusaHamra system.

The FAO RPW eradication program “GCP/RNE/012/MUL” is a five-year project that aims to contribute to the ongoing efforts to manage the RPW in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region. The project was designed to develop the necessary strategies, plans, tools, and technologies to assist NENA countries in sustainably managing the RPW through three major thematic areas: i) governance ii) capacity building; and iii) transfer of knowledge and technology.