December 3, 2007

Twenty participants, comprising managers of community access points, telecentre network leaders, project coordinators and managers of ICT initiatives from eight countries are attending a two-day “Regional Stakeholders Workshop on Knowledge Network Strategies, Mechanisms & Tools” at the Holiday Express Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. The participants are from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The workshop is the third activity in a seven activity joint United Nations ESCWA led Regional Commissions’ initiative whose outcome is that of empowering poor and disadvantaged communities through the transformation of selected ICT access points into knowledge hubs of global knowledge networks. The initiative is in line with the realisation that community access points can be the most effective tools in the realization of many socio-economic development goals and as such, need to be re-designed differently to be able to disseminate knowledge in key areas of sustainable development i.e. employment, education, gender and health. The transformation into service and community development hubs as well as centres for exchanging business information and providing sustainable sources of revenue would therefore extend the access centre model beyond the original model that only focuses on access to ICT’s.

In his welcoming remarks, on behalf of the Director for the ICT, Science and Technology Division (ISTD), Mr. Sizo D. Mhlanga, Regional Adviser ICT Policies, noted that, access to ICT applications and services and systematic knowledge sharing in disadvantaged communities was still either non-existent or very difficult and that, “individual and household access to ICT’s remained out of reach for disadvantaged communities and in particular, to women.” He advised that this project was therefore important to all regions in as much as it addressed community development, knowledge management and the utilization of knowledge for development purposes. Mr. Mhlanga stressed that the project was not about technology, but about sharing knowledge and engaging the community in its own development processes.

By way of conclusion, he hoped that knowledge management strategies, coordination mechanisms and tools, in line with the global framework of the project, would form the concrete outcomes of this workshop. This would culminate in pilot business plans for the implementation of the knowledge hubs and networks.