[UgaBYTES] AFRICA KOWLEDGE NETWORK launched in Dar es salaam |Strategy

[Pete Cranston]

Hi

Thanks everyone for this rich and interesting exchange. I have been reading
the Project Document and want to comment for two reasons:

1. Learning: people have suggested AKN could benfit from the learning from
our experience with OKN that could be useful. I have promised to dig out
learning reports, which I will do. Some of our work on content for
telecentre.org might also be useful. Specifically here I try and share some
learning about global vs. local

2. Local Content: as I announced on this list some time ago Peter Ballantyne
and I are doing some research into what is happening with Local Content in
Eastern (and, to some extent Southern) Africa since we both worked in the
area with OKN, IICD and telecentre.org. We are planning a small workshop
later this year, probably in Brussels in October, to try and bring together
people working in the area, international NGOs and funders to discuss how to
promote and extend the work since it is still a crucial part of development.
I am contacting people who have replied to our first call about how we can
organise that workshop and who is interested in taking the work further. We
are sharing information using the low bandwidth blogging platform, Maneno -
http://communitycontent.maneno.org. It is about content that I have some
questions.

First, though, I hope the programme is a success. Any new investment in the
ICT4D in general and telecentres in particular has to be a good thing and
$1m isn't a small amount of money, even spread across the ECA, ECE, ECLAC,
and ESCAP region over three years. From the names that I recognise at the
Africa planning meeting I think there is as much wisdom within that group
about these issues as in any other group on the planet. Certainly there is
little I could add to that collection of brains and experience, a great
resource for the project managers. It's true that a lot of the language of
the project seems very familiar from similar projects over the years, but
then the world hasn't changed all that much either: people face the same
problems - in some cases worse - and although projects like telecentre.org
have done wonderful work there is no shortage of work that still needs to be
done. I've cooked lots of meals for my family but I still learn from new
recipes.

Personally, I found it hard to understand what the project document is
saying about content and knowledge management. 'Knowledge' is in headlines,
but how people in communities will get involved in learning new things, or
in sharing what they know isn't exactly clear. One of the core building
blocks in the problem tree says, "Low capabilities of disadvantaged
communities in accessing, adapting and utilizing knowledge". It doesn't
specify whose knowledge is being talked about but a lot of the language, as
Polly says, is about global knowledge networking which was *by far* the
least successful part of OKN. 

MOre promisingly the document says, " Knowledge hubs will act as
intermediary stations between the local communities and the global knowledge
networks. Knowledge hubs will be localizing knowledge gained from peer ICT
access points, including those in other regions fitting the specificity of
the localities they are serving, while they will also contribute to creating
knowledge by providing experiences gained from the local community to the
benefit of the global networks at large."

But then, " The project is mainly concerned with identifying and
implementing solutions that aggregate fragmented knowledge that is useful to
different disadvantaged  communities, and providing solutions that increase
utilization of this aggregated knowledge." As Polly says, we found that
external knowledge, especially from other parts of the globe, or even region
- doesn't translate easily - in terms of language, format, context and
relevance - to specific communities.  The document suggests there is a "a
common (global) pool of knowledge for each priority area" but our experience
was this may be true at a specialist level - doctors and nurses, academics
and agricultural specialist, physics teachers - but not at a village, or
community level. Is this a network to connect specialists, who can be
intermediaries? That would be useful, but it's not clear to me if that is
the target group since 'communities' are mentioned a lot.

A problem is for me that the process relating to knowledge, content and
learning is simply captured in an arrow called, "Transformation Process". A
possible source of the confusion is that the document sometimes treats
knowledge as if it is something that can be packaged and shared like
pictures or music. This was one of our *fundamental errrors* in OKN (by
'our' I mean the global team, not the people in African partner
organisations). In fact our experience reinforced what we should have
remembered, that learning is a social process. Making information accessible
is only the first step in that process. Further, in terms of knowledge
transfer - which to me means learning - from outside a community, a trusted
intermediary is vital. Our resources were spread too thin - we were also a
project that was sold as global - to focus enough on this area. 

It has been very interesting to talk again to Peter Balaba in Nakeseke and
Joseph Sekiku in FADECO about the way that they, like many others, use all
their media channels (radio, internet, print) to circulate local knowledge
through their community audiences. It is that process of engaging with
people, capturing what they know and do, sharing that with people who are
close enough to trust the sources - and sometimes passing on to the outside
especially useful ideas  - that I think is at the core of learning and
knowledge. But it is an expensive, long-term, people-based process so hard
to persuade funders to resource and even harder to finance through business
models built on providing information and entertainment services to paying
customers.

I think it's an ambitious project which raises some questions, especially
the AKN aim of "Transforming selected ICT access points into knowledge hubs
of the global knowledge platform, providing, developing, organizing, sharing
and disseminating knowledge pertinent to these communities". and especially
what will be measured in the indicator, "Number of transformed ICT access
points into knowledge hubs" at evaluation time. I'd love to learn more:

* 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 targetting?

I think the proposal confirms, if it still needed confirming, that shared
access to digital resources through telecentres of one kind or another is
seen as a key tool in development. I wish everyone in the project all the
luck in the world and look forward to learning from your experiences.

Best wishes

Pete


Pete Cranston
skype: petecranston
mobile: +44 (0)7917 390133 
 


Pete Cranston
skype: petecranston
mobile: +44 (0)7917 390133 


-----Original Message-----
From: ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org
[mailto:ugabytes-bounces at lists.ugabytes.org] On Behalf Of NKURUNZIZA Jean
Paul
Sent: 10 July 2009 11:26
To: ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
Subject: Re: [UgaBYTES] AFRICA KOWLEDGE NETWORK launched in Dar es salaam
|Strategy

Hello all !
The discussions going on about the AKN is really interesting !
My suggestion is that online discussion throught a mailing list is conducted
before physical meetings for next events related to AKN.

I just want to emphasize on one aspect of the project strategy  :"
Avoiding overlap and duplication". I can read this statement on the point
6 entitled :" Implementing the Regional Knowledge Network", in the second
subpoint entitled : "6.2. Partnerships". This is found in the draft of the
regional strategy document.

So yes, this  project from UNECA will learn from other simular projects, and
will partner with other organizations involved in the same area.
I even remember that one participant raised the OKN experience to be taken
into consideration in addition to others like telecentre.org.

I hope final documents will be shared soon by the UNECA team .
Meanwhile, there I can see there is an interesting document about the
projecton this link :
http://knowledgenets.net/images/Documents/project%20document.pdf

Sincerely

> Hi Sulah,
> Just a mixer of Rosaline SATNET Zimbabwe. It should read SATNET, Zambia.
> Rosaline comes from SAFIRE, Zimbabwe,
>  
> Thanks
>
>
> Dean Mulozi,
> ZAA-ICT/SATNET Regional Facilitator,
> Private Bag 195x Ridgeway,
> Lusaka,
> Zambia.
>
> Mobile:                  260 978 034196
>
>
> --- On Thu, 7/9/09, Polly Gaster <polly.gaster at uem.mz> wrote:
>
>
> From: Polly Gaster <polly.gaster at uem.mz>
> Subject: Re: [UgaBYTES] AFRICA KOWLEDGE NETWORK launched in Dar es 
> salaam
> |Strategy
> To: ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
> Date: Thursday, July 9, 2009, 4:58 AM
>
>
> Dear Paul
>
> Thanks for the info. And Sulah also helped to clarify some questions.
>
> Just one clarification from my point of view - my initial fear was 
> that in the first place this new project would NOT reap important 
> lessons from previous experiences such as OKN, which is already closed 
> down as an international project but left some seeds behind, as 
> Gladman knows. And not a fear of "competition" as such but yes, a 
> concern about possible failure to benefit from and collaborate with 
> and strengthen what little already exists on the ground. I have seen 
> this very often, as Kiringai mentioned - too often institutions want 
> their own "branding" and visibility in preference to synergies, and 
> doing things in parallel (duplicating) means higher costs, and creates 
> confusion at local level, where (in Mozambique at least) the human 
> resources are not so many and it tends to be the same people doing 
> everything anyway. Hence my initial short question, which has provoked 
> such an interesting exchange of views.
>
> But in general, of course, the more things that are happening the 
> better, and any organisation should feel free to work directly with 
> any community initiative on the ground so long as it is bringing 
> strength in some way and not exploiting. I don't think anyone who has 
> commented so far has been worried about duplicating networks as such, 
> which will live or die according to how useful they are, it's the 
> local impact that matters.
>
> I guess the general concern emerging from the list is precisely 
> wanting to be sure that the AKN has been thought through and has 
> learned from so much that has already been done or attempted in this 
> area. I find that institutions, even governments, when something isn't 
> working often just abandon it and set up something else, without ever 
> sitting down and learning the hard lessons.
>
>>From our own small OKN experience I wd point out 3 things:
> a) we used existing telecentres/CMCs/community radios as a base for 
> OKN activities rather than setting up something separate, hoping that 
> this strategy wd be mutually beneficial and good for the community, 
> which I think it was. And also gave a better chance of sustainability, 
> and continuation "post-project".
> b) the language issue drastically reduced the possibilities of sharing 
> locally produced content - in our case not only the fact of having 
> many national languages, but even our official language of Portuguese 
> doesn't exactly help!
> c) we found on a study visit to India, as well as experiences with 
> Latin America, that it's impossible to generalise strategies from 
> continent to continent, as the contexts are so very different.
>
> Hope this is a helpful contribution. But I would still like the AKN 
> strategy to be shared more widely, to see if there is anything that we 
> can learn or benefit from. I am always curious!
>
> Polly
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
>
> Polly Gaster
> TICs para Desenvolvimento/ICT4D
> Centro de Informatica da Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (CIUEM) Campus 
> Universitario, Maputo, Mozambique
> e-mail: polly.gaster at uem.mz
> cel:
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ugabytes mailing list
> ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
> http://lists.ugabytes.org/mailman/listinfo/ugabytes_lists.ugabytes.org
>


--
NKURUNZIZA Jean Paul
Président du Réseau des Télécentres Communautaires  du Burundi Secrétaire
Général de BYTC B.P 7031 BUJUMBURA BURUNDI
Tél: 00257 22 21 96 45
Tél Mob : 00257 76 60 49 46/00257 79 981 459 Fax : 00257 212485 ou 00257
222147 E.Mail : nkurunziza at bytc.bi ou
         jnkurunz at hotmail.com
Site web : http://www.bytc.bi


_______________________________________________
ugabytes mailing list
ugabytes at lists.ugabytes.org
http://lists.ugabytes.org/mailman/listinfo/ugabytes_lists.ugabytes.org