Information & Knowledge – the key to development

UNAM’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, in partnership with the Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the Knowledge Management Emergent Research Programme (IKM Emergent), will host a conference on Knowledge for Development in November 2009.
According to Prof Kingo Mchombu, Dean of the Faculty, this week long conference could not have come at a better time because of a number of reasons, explained below:
Information and knowledge are crucial to both social and economic development. In many developing countries, this strategic importance of knowledge is not yet fully appreciated and development organisations and others are struggling with the practical challenges of organizing and using information and knowledge. This is evidenced by the very little information sharing and dissemination within organisations at the planning level which makes it difficult for institutions to monitor and evaluate and learn lessons for the future. In the area of knowledge and knowledge management, initiatives remain widely unseen and fragmented, and the potential benefits largely unrecognized. Hand-in-hand with this is also a lack of recognition of Africa’s own diverse knowledge and home-grown approaches to knowledge management.
South East Asian countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia which were at the same level of development as African countries in the 1960s, now have six to ten times higher levels of economic development. Their success may have been due to their ability to harness knowledge as a driver of their development.
To stem marginalisation within the continent, Africa needs to consider seriously how it can use its knowledge for development, and not only for key economic development. The InK4Dev week is opportune, as it will offer a platform for policy- and decision-makers alongside researchers, development practitioners and change agents to raise the profile of information and knowledge and discuss issues openly with a view to developing appropriate strategies and build frameworks to enhance the role information and knowledge to promote Africa’s development. Leadership in this area will need to come from many of the participants in this week.
This week is taking place in Namibia in recognition of Nambia’s ambitious national long term vision relating to making the country a knowledge based society by 2030. The week is co-sponsored by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the Knowledge Management Emergent Research Programme (IKM Emergent), under a programme of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) Community of Practice, and the University of Namibia.
Three workshops are organized concurrently during this week:
1. Information and Communication Management (ICM) Policy and Strategy in Southern Africa: From Plan to Action
2. Training on use of Smart Toolkit for Monitoring and Evaluation
3. Knowledge for Development in Africa; Challenges and Opportunities.
Participants for all events will be drawn primarily from southern Africa and Europe. Attendance is by invitation only
For further information please contact :
1) Prof Kingo Mchombu, Dean: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNAM kmchombu@unam.na
2) Dr Ibrahim Khadar, Manager, Planning and Strategic Services Department, CTA khadar@cta.int
3) Sarah Cummings: IKM Emergent Research Programme Sarah@ikmemergent.net

Media enquiries: Elsabe Horn, horn@mweb.com.na