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14-16 December 2009
Nairobi, Kenya
Twenty five participants, comprising managers of community access points, telecentre network leaders, project coordinators and managers of ICT initiatives from eight countries attended from 14 to 16 December a training on “Knowledge Sharing and Networking” at the Six Eighty Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya. The participants were from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The workshop was the fourth major 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. A number of activities had taken place prior to this including the launch of the Africa Knowledge Network in July 2009 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The aim of the workshop was to enhance the skills of telecentre managers and network leaders on local content development, knowledge management and sharing including networking through a regional online knowledge sharing platform. Participants were also introduced to the structure and content of the Africa knowledge network portal and useful feedback and inputs were given apart from the identification of roles on each of the parts of the portal for continuous updating and the sharing of content relevant to their communities.
In her opening remarks, Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, Director of ICT, Science and Technology Division advised participants that this ground breaking initiative provided community telecentres with an interesting challenge of providing their communities with the knowledge and skills to solve their problems. Ms Opoku advised participants that members’ commitment and active participation in the last one year was evident from the successful exchanges using the ECA’s dgroup and the launch of an online newsletter. She congratulated participants for their commitment to the realisation of the goals of this initiative.
In his official opening remark, Dr Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communication of the Republic of Kenya said on his part that ICTs have revolutionised the way people communicate and share information in Africa, the continent that its communities have over centuries passed on vital information from generation to generation by word of mouth. He underlined that due to the emerging technologies, particularly ICTs, our communities are enabled to store and share information in their original form. Recognising the significant role that ICTs can play in this process, Dr Ndemo advised participants that his government has made it a priority and has been investing in building the necessary ICT infrastructure.
Launching the e-mpower-africa Newsletter together with Ms Aida Opoku-Mensah, Dr Ndemo congratulated network members for their initiative in recording and sharing local content relevant to address local problems.
The workshop was an interactive session in that participants shared their experiences including those from recent study tours, best practices and the use of various technologies in developing and sharing information. Among others, participants also shared how they used mobile phones in disseminating information to their respective communities. The training on local content facilitated by Mr Peter Cranston also enabled participants to focus their role in local content development and the flow process of local content from local to region/global networks and vice versa.
Following the three days training, the steering committee held its second meeting on 17 December to review the action plans and develop a roadmap of the network beyond the project cycle of this initiative. The meeting also involved partners such as CABI, Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, which created opportunity for collaboration in content development and sharing relevant content to the Africa Knowledge Network beneficiaries.
Some of the video clips taken during the workshop on local content are available on the youtube, e.g. at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djpxoNPDclI&feature=related and search for ’uneca telecenter’ on the youtube to find all of the video clips. A daily reflections from participants has also been recorded on the Kenya Telecentre Network blog site at http://www.kenyatelecentres.org/
Sizo. D. Mhlanga/Abebe Chekol
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