[UgaBYTES] DISCUSSION SUMMARY---AFRICA KNOWLEDGE NETWORK (AKN) launched in Dar es salaam, Tanzania

[Mwathi Francis]

BACKGROUND

The Africa Knowledge Network was launched on 3rd July 2009 in Dar es
Salaam/Tanzania. The Africa Knowledge Network is being implemented by
United Nations in its five regional commission including Africa. The
main goal of the project is to empower poor and  isadvantaged
communities through the transformation of existing ICT access points
/Telecentre in selected countries around the world into knowledge hubs
of global knowledge networks. It intends to increase the involvement
and engagement of disadvantaged  ommunities - with an emphasis on
women - by encouraging and promoting the dissemination, in existing
access points, of knowledge that pertains to key areas of sustainable
development such as employment, education, gender and health.
Currently, at regional level the project involves Rwanda, Burundi,
Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia with the plan of extending to
other African countries in near future. The following are some of
activities the project will focus on:

•Conducting participatory research,
•Building the capacity Telecentre users, Telecentre managers and Network leaders
•Strengthening public access,
•Creating content and applications appropriate to local context and languages.

A steering committee composed of 3 members from 3 different countries
was elected: These are
•Paul Barera, chairman  (Rwanda Telecentre Network)
•Aggrey Omondi ,Member(Kenya Network of Telecentres)
•Janet Achora, Member (Women of Uganda Network)

Other participants included
1.	Roselinie Murota-SAFIRE Zimbabwe
2.	Sulah Ndaula -UgaBYTES
3.	Felicia Ncheye - TTN Tanzania
4.	 Daniel Methusela - Telecentre Tanzania
5.	 Jean Paul Nkurunziza - BCTN Burundi
6.	 Gillaume Ruberintwari  - telecentre Burundi
7.	 Dean Mulozi - SATNET Zambia
8.	 Ivan Gaayi - Nabweru telecentre Uganda
9.	 Peter Balaba - Nakaseke telecentre Uganda
10.	 Sozi Mhalanga - UNECA Ethiopia
11.	 Abebe Chekol - UNECA Ethiopia
12.	 Kassahum Belete Consultant Ethiopia
13.	 John Mahegere - COSTEC Tanzania
14.	Fred - Access Centre Network Kenya

The discussion started on July 6th 2009 following an e-mail post by
Paul Barera and went on till 25th July. Initially mailing list members
wanted to know the strategy and primary actions of with initial views
being that the telecentre community would want to know to participate
in this initiative. Polly Gaster of CIUEM Mozambique sparked of the
discussion by wondering if the Africa Knowledge Network had any
relation to the OPen Knowledge Network (OKN) that was started with an
aim of generating, collecting and disseminating of local content.

The OKN project was very ambitious and one contributor Esta Kiwazi of
a Telecentre in Uganda mentioned that ‘it rekindles fond memories’ as
through the initiative her Telecentre- Gabula Atudde- got it’s first
computer and set the ball rolling for ICT projects which has been a
spring board to many other current activities .The OKN project though
did not meet its expectations.  Despite OKN’s failure especially in
Africa it had considerable success in Asia. There following points
which AKN would find helpful were noted as the keys to the success:

1.  On the outset, the Asian partners did not use the OKN tool; rather
they concentrated on the needs of people, and of the knowledge people
possessed to address their own needs.
(So, it was not a project around a million dollar technological tool;
but about knowledge and people's ability to communicate that knowledge
among themselves).

2.  In communicating their own knowledge across the borders, they did
not begin sharing with their counterparts in Africa or in some other
continent, but they began sharing with their neighbors within the
village and in their neighboring villages.
(So, they were not excited about the software that filtered the
so-called 'content shower' through the WorldSpace radio equipment,
rather they were excited about the possibility to share information
across communities using simple tools such as emails, bulletin boards,
and printed newspapers).

3. Their desire to communicate their precious knowledge was not to
earn revenue, but to save costs; to advocate for their rights; to
bring authorities to take note of anomalies; to buy and sell; to
become an idea bank; and to gain some recognition for the simple
achievements they were able to make; and, that's how they began
experimenting with knowledge sharing through the OKN; and through
which what they call, their own supply and value chain, thus giving
their own knowledge a chance.

During the discussion participants wanted to receive AKN project plan
of action either through online means or through national anchors in
national agenda setting where the project documents would be
customized to suit the interests of individual country initiatives and
the results factored into AKN’s programme. AKN also needs to carefully
identify the gaps that the existing model of telecentres and work to
fill them to avoid ‘reinvent the wheel’ as one contributor said. This
meant repeating what has been done by other initiatives which would
most probably lead to higher unnecessary costs and creation of
confusion at local level.

In a bid to help in drawing strategies for AKN participants learnt of
the following three points that were learnt from the OKN experience.

a.  The use of  existing telecentres/CMCs/community radios as a base
for OKN activities rather than setting up something separate, hoping
that this strategy would be mutually beneficial and good for the
community. This was meant to give a better chance of sustainability,
and continuation "post-project".

b. The language issue drastically reduced the possibilities of sharing
locally produced content - in this case not only the fact of having
many national languages, but even use official languages doesn't
exactly help.

c. During the study visit to India, as well as experiences with Latin
America, it was realized that that it's impossible to generalize
strategies from continent to continent, as the contexts are so very
different.

Other initiatives that were mentioned and whose experiences were
featured were Drishtee, Brosdi, Development Alternatives, TERI,
Datamation Foundation, MSSRF and ICTA.

Apart from concerns on whether the AKN initiatives had a clearly set
strategy and guidelines other two concerns that kept coming up
regarding the AKN initiative were.

•Fear of Reaping what was done or being done by other initiatives
•and Fear of not Involving   Telecentre and Telecentre networks in the process.

In responding to this Paul Barera reiterated what had been suggested
earlier saying the
first activity of the project would be to conduct an assessment at
regional level to assess and to capture what is on the ground at
telecentre level in terms of content and services and to identify the
gap. A strategy therefore would be built on these findings. He also
added that as far as involvement of beneficiaries (Telecentres and
Network) is concerned, first a workshop was held in Kampala to develop
appropriate strategy, mechanism and tools for transforming selected
ICT access points/Telecentres into knowledge hubs. The mechanism,
strategies and tools that were agreed form the guideline of project
implementation.

As the discussion drew to a close it was clear that the AKN strategy
development needed to answer the following questions in respect to its
description so idea behind it’s creation would be understood.

•What does the team understand by knowledge, and what role do they see
for local content?

• Will the project support the people-based social processes that make
up knowledge transfer, or learning, and if so how?

•How will the project identify the point at which an access point
becomes a knowledge hub? Will it be through having physical and
electronic resources in place - which a lot of places already have -
or will it be more ambitious and try to assess how effectively the hub
supports the learning processes - and if so, how?

•	Finally, who is the project targeting?

The discussion also featured views from United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa (UNECA) representatives. The African Knowledge
Network (AKN) is an UNECA lead initiative.

Contributor to the discussion included Meddie Mayanja ,  Kiringai
Kamau ,   Ndaula Sulah, Gladman Kundhlande, Paul Barera, Wagner
Gerhard, Polly Gaster, Sarah mpagi, Sandra Nassali, Abebe Chekol, Dean
Mulozi, Nkurunziza Jean Paul, Peter Balaba, Esta Kiwazi,   Roselinie
Murota, a CMC Center representative,  Pete Cranston,  Felician Ncheye,
Basheerhamad Shadrach, Mwathi Francis and Vignesh Sornamohan

At the end of the discussion most members agreed to allow the AKN
initiative take root as ‘the need for linking organizations to each
other and between rural communities is immense and we should not
discourage initiatives that designed to achieve these objectives’
according to the words of one contributor.



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Francis Mwathi
Support Community Facilitator
UgaBYTES Initiatives (www.ugabytes.org)
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