The Centro de Informatica at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique has been working with telecentres and community development for many years. Polly Gaster, the programme leader reports here about community content in their work.
Local content as an issue is definitely still important for us at CIUEM but sometimes it's hard to find a lot of evidence on the ground. Our main vehicle the last couple of years has been the Community Information and Communication Support Centre (CAICC) CAICC supports all community ICT initiatives, which primarily means telecentres, community radios and CMCs.
In terms of LOCAL content the main activity has been to encourage network members to use their community radios to disseminate local information, not just news items, etc. It's hard to know how successful that is - attempts to get it circulating through the network haven't been very successful so far. CAICC has made a big effort to improve news programming and access to National and International information through circulating material on its e-mail list and through the website.
CIUEM and CAICC's main products continue to be materials on CD-Rom, to take into account lack of connectivity. We plan to produce the website offline and distribute it if possible quarterly, through the channels of the Community Radio Forum (FORCOM). The materials produced locally are generally not stored for very long because of poor storage conditions, limited computer space or spare tapes. CAICC is looking at collecting radio programmes online via MP3 but that will be difficult since even for short programmes the files are too big for convenient downloading.
The main lessons are fairly obvious ones: the communities are interested in receiving locally produced information in their own languages; there is an enormous human resources deficit, due to a combination of poor education system that doesn't encourage people to go outside the curriculum; bright young people having to leave the district if they want to continue their education; inevitable high volunteer turnover; and the simple fact that collecting and processing local INFORMATION in terms of KNOWLEDGE takes time and money (travel, etc), and it's easier to collect NEWS.
Therefore the key (I think) remains continuous training for human resources, plus if possible a minimum of material resources. Although all CAICC training courses include sessions on use of ICT communication tools such as e-mail, blogging, Skype, Internet searching, etc., use is still quite limited, mainly due to lack of connectivity and/or high cost and poor quality. This panorama is expected to change over the next couple of years with the new undersea cables, government emphasis on rural areas, etc.
The Ministry of Science and Technology hopes to set up a knowledge management platform. We are interested in continuing/re-starting work in this area. Our next challenge will be a project for using CAICC and its networks to promote civil society issues and governance, which will mean both generating a lot of content and promoting local generation.
Measuring success is unfortunately almost impossible, other than quantitative measures such as number of news items or whatever, and qualitative in small surveys. But our ambition is to be able to feel that we have made a contribution to local communities' capacity to produce information and debate issues and be in touch with other communities, and achieve more democratic processes in their own organisations and in governance in general. Also, in practical terms, to have brought new skills into the communities that become lifelong skills for the activists and volunteers involved, but also become part of the daily fabric of information and communications and are demystified and passed from hand to hand and generation to generation.
The Local Content workshop in Brussels is planned for 8th and 9th October 2009. Our overall aim is identify and publicise Local Content work that is going on, to raise awareness about its importance and to try and re-energise the interest of the mainstream development community, including the larger international NGOs and donors. At the workshop:
We are linking the Local Content workshop with the larger workshop happening also in Brussels from the 6th – 8th October organised by the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community. KM4Dev is a community of international development practitioners who are interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing issues and approaches. The main communication channel is the KM4dev email Dgroup, which has over 850 registered members. The community began in 2000 and since then has developed together a wealth of good practice and experience, a lot of which is stored in the KM4Dev wiki. Its richest resource, though, is the people in the community, many of whom have worked together and built relationships in that time. The quality of the discussion in the group is always high, people offer advice and discuss new ideas and there is an enormous store of experience and connections to draw on for people working in the field.
We chose to link the Local Content workshop to the KM4Dev conference because we believe that people who are working with communities in Africa in local Knowledge Sharing using Local Content can contribute a lot to the discussions at the KM4Dev event. We also believe that participants from the Local Content group would learn a lot also from the people and discussions. As we gather stories on this blog about the work in Africa we are also talking to contributors about their interest in the workshops.
I have started collecting data from local farmers (LFs), agricultural extension agents (AEAs) and agricultural researchers (ARs) from the southern sector of Ghana for about 5 weeks now and wanted to wet your appetite for the rich store of local innovations among these farmers. This is not about documenting farmers local knowledge but gathering information on farmers local innovations in order to go back and document them mainly for research and also for dissemination among other farmers.
It is obvious with less than 30% of the overall data gathered that local farmers in this part of the country have a wide range of innovations as a result of constraints to resources for their farming.
A// Beginning from today, I just return from three villages in the Central Region of Ghana. From five focus group discussions in these 3 villages, farmers have described and explained a number of activities that they do engage in that are not things learnt from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) Staffs (or AEAs). Among them are;
a) Using clouds to determine whether it was going to rain or not
b) The appearance of certain insects, mites as indication for the beginning of the planting season
c) The announcing of the beginning maize planting by a certain bird through its morning songs (or whatever you will refer to a sound made by bird)
d) Use of local scarecrows to ward away rodents and birds from feeding on seeds planted and sometimes their produce
e) Using wood ash as a preservative
f) The use of neem extract for pest control
g) Use of ash and other leaves for storage of corn
h) The use of heat and smoke from their local kitchen to preserve barns of corn for lean season and also seeds for the next season planting
i) Planting mostly vegetables around anthills for better yields, among others
B// It is also obvious that, these farmers do talk to each other or share their problems and challenges with each other first before calling agric officer or complaining to government officials. At the beginning, they were not explicit about local attempts they were taking (probably thinking that we were NGOs coming to promise some support) but after we explained to them that we were there to learn and value their practices, they started sharing freely.
C// Right in one of the villages, they were beating gong-gong to organize themselves for communal labour (an effective means of communication among themselves - as indicated by discussants). Even though, about 60-70% of those who took part in the discussions had their own mobile phones, they could not clearly describe how they use this tool for their farming activities. They still use informal means to discuss their farming issues - on the way to farm, in the market, at the drinking bar, etc.
D// The farmers know very little about the AEAs responsible for their respective villages and what they do. The last time they saw one was about 2 years ago. In other words, the farmers go about their farming activities with little inputs from the scientists. The question is where do we put our focus now?
E// They expressed the need for timely and appropraite information for their farming activities. The main source of information for the inputs - seeds, fertilizer, chemicals, etc. is the agrochemical shops in Mankessim. Even though there is agricultural information center being managed by MOFA right in the heart of the market. On my way back to Cape Coast I stopped at the information center and interestingly the officer confirmed that she directs farmers to agrochemical shops whenever they are in need.
F// It is also obvious that the purported link between research and extension does not exist in this part of the country. The AEAs barely know of the ARs and the ARs know little about what the AEAs are doing.
I will be quick to state here that, my current site is for horticultural crops such as chili pepper, cabbage, etc. and suppose to be having limited extension services. More later as I move to Cocoa producing areas in the Ashanti Region and Cashew and Mangoes producing areas in Greater Accra
Will continue....................But the big question again is do we still need to be investing in tools, approaches, systems that facilitate vertical flow of information from research to farmers or we need to look for, and develop systems that facilitate horizontal communication among these farmers to be able to solve their problems? How much of our effort do we have to place on extension?
Thanks
Ben
Rural people in Africa have amazing knowledge and wisdom, often expressed through proverbs, idioms, song, pottery and poetry, among other methods. The title of this article is one of the intriguing proverbs from the Shona people of Zimbabwe. It means the power of a community is in its people.
My organization, Knowledge Transfer Africa (KTA),is collaborating with rural communities and other organizations to surface creativity, innovation and knowledge that resides in rural communities in Zimbabwe. KTA has set out to build Community Knowledge Centres in Gokwe North District, Hurungwe District and Guruve District among communal farmers whose main socio-economic activity revolves around agriculture. We have started documenting important information like; people, culture, natural resources, vegetation, rivers, population by sex and age, schools, hospitals, leadership, traditional medical practitioners, livestock, transport systems and many other details. Also documented is information on indigenous vegetables, orphan crops threatened by extinction as well as local breeds of chickens, goats, donkeys and livestock.
We are also tracking down NGOs and researchers who have worked in these rural communities and gathered information which they have never shared with the communities. This information is being gathered at Community Knowledge Centres such as local schools where farmers meet every Thursday to share knowledge. In Hurungwe and Guruve districts, agricultural demonstration sites have started fulfilling the role of Community Knowledge Centres. In Gokwe North district, this intervention has empowered farmers to the extent that they are now proactive in figuring out the amount of cotton bales harvested by all the farmers in their communities. It has dawned on them that information and knowledge can be absolute power which they can use to solve their problems and lift themselves out of poverty.
The idea of Community Knowledge Centres has ushered locally owned capacity building processes - strengthening people’s ability to understand their situation and improve it. Some of the key benefits include; teamwork, motivation, participation,trust building and sharing knowledge. Participatory research has become an integral community empowerment engagement . Local youths (young men and women) are carrying out research about their communities and documenting local knowledge and experiences.
The communities have started sharing so much indigenous knowledge related to Climate Change. They can determine soil fertility and type of crops to grow in a particular type of soil. They can also use trees as indicators of water table and seasonal changes. Some forest birds are known by local farmers to behave in ways which explain or signal certain climatic events.
However, this knowledge has previously not been documented and deployed in mainstream climate change policy making. To address this issue, we have started properly documenting existing stocks of indigenous climate knowledge in these communities to bring out more information on the substantive content of indigenous climate knowledge. Some of the questions we are trying to get answered include: How do the farmers know? How is the knowledge passed on? How can this knowledge be lost? How does such knowledge become necessary? How can local knowledge be blended with other external knowledges?
Ultimately, such knowledge will stored and evaluated at Community Knowledge Centres with the full participation of local farmers in whom such knowledge reside. This will enable the integration of Conservation Agriculture with vast quantities of knowledge that exist in rural areas, locked away in the collective memory of the farmers as inherited knowledge and personal experience. The Community Knowledge Centres will also be the repositories of locally created knowledge. A lot of information is gathered in rural communities but few of the community members know about it. Information collected by extension workers, NGOs and visiting researchers is often sent to higher officials at Head Offices in urban areas. Much of the information does not come back to inform development dialogue among community members due to the absence of community structures to receive and store such knowledge. The Community Knowledge Centres will fulfil that need and raise awareness on climate change and other issues among rural communities.
In the process of working with communities, we are documenting local stories and proverbs which characterize the ethos of local people and can be harnessed to help them realize their dreams. All the communities have master story-tellers whose skills and knowledge is beginning to surface. Some of the interesting proverbs we have documented include the following:
• A borrowed flute cannot finish a tune.
• A person is a person because of other people.
• Respect others in order to get their respect.
• If you sing the song of misery you are finished.
• If you dream of lifting mountains tomorrow, you must begin by lifting small stones.
• An elephant should never feel the weight of its tusks (i.e children are the responsibility of parents).
• Pumpkins are harvested by those who don’t have clay pots ( Some leadership positions are taken up by irresponsible people).
• Be patient with your drum, the night is long.
• When the drumbeat changes, the dancers must adapt.
• A bird that is not flying cannot discover where there is a harvest
• The sweet potato, though hidden in the ground, is doing good.
By Charles Dhewa
About ALIN
The Arid Lands Information Network, (ALIN) is a network of community development workers established in the year 2000 by James Nguo a Development Communications Specialist to continue the activities of RITA-ALIN previously based in Dakar, Senegal. ALIN promotes knowledge exchange activities targeting over 2000 grassroots Community Development Workers (CDWs) drawn from non-governmental organizations, community- based organisations as well as government departments. These are the people who act as a source of information and knowledge for the rest of the community out of duty or social responsibility.
Information Support
For the past 20 years, ALIN has been publishing and disseminating information on a wide range of topics on livelihoods issues with concentration on agriculture production techniques, environment and market information. These products include journal regular journals such as Baobab, books, videos, CD-ROMs.
To facilitate better knowledge management, ALIN has integrated Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at the community level through the establishment of digital centres known as Maarifa Centres where community members are able to access modern ICT facilities and services such as real time market information, knowledge on agricultural practices, e-Government services, climate change adaptation messages and e-Education among others.
Capacity building
ALIN has invested in peoples’ skills through community-based trainings such as workshops, meetings and exchange visits. These have enabled community members to learn through exposure resulting in replication of ideas across regional and national borders.
To promote local level networking, we have clustered members in the same geographical regions into grassroots networking nodes known as ‘Focal Groups’. These groups form the entry points of ALIN into the community. The Network works through several Focal Groups across the eastern Africa region.
Youth in Development
Since the year 2006, ALIN has been running a Graduate Volunteer Program with the purpose of giving young graduates a chance to gain experience required by the job market while serving the community. The graduates are initially trained and deployed at the Maarifa centres to support information and knowledge exchange activities.
I will add more on how ALIN is using i-Pods for information dissemination at the local level
James Nguo
Cleopa Timon Otieno, whom I wrote about in this blog previously has opened a blog on Maneno. It's called Local Content and you can access it here. He has updated my story about the Kenyan ICT Board, describing how last year the Board invited local developers to create new content applications with the support of a 312 million Kenyan shilling (US$4.1 million) grant. The full article is here
At a conference yesterday called Reboot Britain it was striking how the language, themes and issues raised are similar to those we have been talking about in conversations and conferences about Local Content in other parts of the world. Local Content seems to be one of those issues that keeps surfacing, which makes this research more timely.
First, though, I always find it interesting to be reminded how large are the digital divides in 'developed' countries. Approximately 25% of British adults never go online and the data shows, as might be expected, that the poor people, with low education levels are the least active - and therefore connected to online Government services. Older people are also much less active, though that is changing quite rapidly.
ReBoot Britain focused around themes including improving eGovernance (empowering citizens and democratising services); social entrepreneurship; eHealth, especially at a local level; and the role of ICT in local action or campaigns. This last issue is where people are talking about HyperLocal content and activity.
There are a number of projects around the UK where people have developed, often voluntarily, complete web resources for their local communities. In some cases, where the organisers are politically engaged, these web platforms are being used to gather support for local actions, to publicise inefficient or corrupt local government, polluting local industry and citizen action to improve the conditions of the places where people live.
One of the best examples is to do with one of the poorest areas of London, Kings Cross. Talk About Local is a project that has grown out of the King's Cross site, and has a growing list of similar sites across the UK.
These sites provide all the information you could need about living in a locality, but are alos popular where they help counter the fragmentation of traditional community structures as people move around a lot but also because of the distance between local government, traditional media and ordinary people who can't find ways to pressure for changes they want. Exactly the case that Cleopa Otieno put to the Kenyan Permanent Secretary of ICT.
Many of these sites started as blogs, an immediate cross over with active African blog communities. Kenya Blogs webring has 687 links and members of sites like Afrigator and Afriblog continue to grow.
Are there examples of similar local information sites in East or Southern Africa, which aren't newspaper of radio offshoots?
Interesting Internet Market study from the Communications Commission of Kenya. The quote above comes from the section listing key factors in growth of Internet services. The example they give is when the Ministry of Education released the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education results via the web in March 2007 the Internet traffic increased drastically as shown in below.
The full report is here
The importance of promoting local content is recognised by Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communication. Cleopa Timon Otieno is the Director of RuralNet Communications, a youth owned social enterprise that operates in West Kenya. He has been talking to the Permanent Secretary about setting up a web service that will provide information about Kenya's towns and villages.
