The MALTESE project will organise its upcoming Training in Malta from 5 to 8 May 2026 in Sliema. The programme will focus on digital tools, entrepreneurship, community planning, circular agri-business, smart irrigation, and mentoring, while giving participants hands-on experience with JackDaw, Map Whiteboard, and the Rural-Urban E-Market.
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Supporting greener farming in Malta through digital skills and practical training
Towards the end of February 2026, the PoliRuralPlus Malta Pilot 9 Team at AcrossLimitsparticipated in the GreenFit Project’s focus group at the Valletta Design Cluster in Malta, organised by Malta Youth in Agriculture (also a former implementer of a PoliRuralPlus cascade project – AgriTech Ideathon) and Merill Rural Network.
The event created an important space for dialogue around the realities facing Maltese farmers today, especially as they work to adapt to growing environmental, economic, and technological pressures. One of the clearest messages to emerge from the discussion was the need to make digitalisation more accessible and affordable for the farming community. Farmers highlighted that while digital tools can play a major role in supporting greener, more resilient, and more efficient agricultural practices, the cost and accessibility in adopting these technologies remain a major barrier. From precision farming solutions to data-driven planning tools, many innovations have the potential to improve sustainability and productivity, but they are often out of reach for small-scale producers unless the right support mechanisms are in place.
This is where PoliRuralPlus pilots can complement all these efforts.
Through the project’s Malta Pilot 9, AcrossLimits will organise a series of training sessions and events in Malta and Gozo between April and July, also in collaboration with the ongoing MALTESE Poliruralplus Cascade project financed through the Develop Call. These activities are designed to support farmers and other rural stakeholders in exploring practical pathways towards more digitisation within agriculture. The sessions will focus on three key areas:
By combining knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, and stakeholder engagement, the Malta Pilot aims to ensure that innovation is not only discussed but translated into practical value for rural communities. The goal is to help farmers better understand the options available to them and build confidence in using tools and approaches that can support their long-term sustainability.
The Greenfit focus group also reinforced a wider message that is central to PoliRuralPlus: successful rural innovation depends not only on technology itself, but on the ecosystems that enable people to access, understand, and apply it. Training, collaboration, and targeted support are therefore essential if digitalisation is to deliver real benefits on the ground.
We are pleased to see these conversations taking shape in Malta and look forward to continuing the work with local actors over the coming months.
Stay tuned for more updates from the Malta Pilot and the wider PoliRuralPlus community.
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On 27 January 2026, the MALTESE partners completed the second day of the Kick-off Meeting in Vienna by turning plans into a concrete delivery roadmap. The consortium agreed the approach for incubation activities and stakeholder engagement, refined the MVP scope and first technical sprint for the Digital Hub, and aligned on KPI tracking and monitoring arrangements. The meeting concluded with an updated milestones calendar and confirmed next steps for the first implementation phase.
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Today, 26 January 2026, the MALTESE consortium met in Vienna for Day 1 of the project Kick-off Meeting. Partners aligned on the project’s objectives, governance and coordination routines, and reviewed the initial workplan across the work packages. The afternoon focused on the Digital Hub roadmap and the structure of the training and communication activities. The day closed with an agreed list of actions and responsibilities to launch the first implementation phase.
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PAMEA participated in the PoliRuralPlus JackDaw Code Camp 2026, held in Prague on 13–15 January 2026 and hosted by the Faculty of Information Technology at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The three-day event brought together developers, geospatial experts, and applied AI practitioners for an intensive development sprint focused on advancing the JackDaw platform and extending the GeoLLM concept to new regions and application domains.
During the Code Camp, PAMEA engaged with the technical community around geospatial AI and natural-language interaction with maps and spatial datasets, exploring how relevant components and working methods can inform MALTESE implementation planning. Key takeaways will feed into the next steps of MALTESE, including the Digital Hub roadmap, data and tool integration priorities, and the preparation of training content connected to practical use cases.
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As we are closing 2025, we thank to all partners and stakeholders for your trust, energy, and contributions since MALTESE started. Every meeting, activity, and piece of feedback helped strengthen the project and its results.
We wish you and your teams health, progress, and good news in 2026. See you in the new year with fresh updates and next steps.
MALTESE Team
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We are very proud to announce that our proposal “Malta Agro-Leadership & Tech Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Empowerment – MALTESE” has been invited to GRANT AGREEMENT preparation inside the call launched by the PoliRuralPlus project, funded from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101136910.
The Evaluation Summary Report (13,5 points out of max. 15) confirms the strong alignment with the call, a coherent plan, and a well-composed consortium (PAMEA, SELFHOOD & SEMABLU).
MALTESE will support rural – urban integration in Malta through a practical digital hub that brings together the:
– JackDaw GeoAI advisory chatbot,
– participatory Map Whiteboard, and
– Rural-Urban E-Market for producers and consumers.
All solutions are open source and include a replication toolkit so other regions can reuse what works. The project follows New European Bauhaus (NEB) values by pairing sustainability and inclusion with good design.
We highly appreciate the trust placed in our MALTESE consortium and we are eager to begin the implementation in Malta and enlarge it further across Europe.
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