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Local Content, Social Media, Research Communication and Agricultural/Rural Knowledge Sharing
Africa learning and exchange workshops
Nairobi, Kenya, 5-9 July 2010
In October 2010, ILRI, FAO, CGIAR, IFAD, IKM Emergent, and other partners will hold a ‘Knowledge Share Fair on Agricultural and Rural Development in Africa.’ To be held in Addis Ababa, this event aims to bring together people and organizations innovating in making Africa’s rural knowledge accessible to Africa … and the world.
In October 2009, IKM Emergent sponsored a workshop in Brussels as part of a project to assess current and past work on ‘local content’, particularly in Eastern and Southern Africa (see http://communitycontent.maneno.org/).
In June 2009, IKM Emergent sponsored an ‘IKM interactive’ workshop in Senegal with information managers from Francophone Africa. It focused on the use of new opportunities provided by the Internet and Web2.0 as well as obstacles to publishing, promoting, aggregating and finding African research outputs.
From 5th – 9th July 2010 we aim to organize a series of activities in Nairobi that would follow up or help prepare these events. This will be a series of social media and local content workshop sessions with information and communication specialists in East and Southern Africa. These will be organized at the ILRI campus in Nairobi, with the participants hosted off-campus. The major focus is on the agriculture/rural sectors as these provide scope to link discussions with the planned Addis ShareFair in October.
1. Phase 1 Research communication workshop (2.5 days)
• Targeting the research and social science communities as well as, scientific information managers and specialists
• Focusing on how to recover and disseminate research; how to identify and counter bias in search tools; how to use social media/web 2.0 tools and skills and approaches, with particular emphasis on strategies to promote create and take up of ‘local content’.
• Approx 15 participants.
2. Phase 2 Local Content & AgKnowledge (2.5 days)
• Targeting practitioners in information and knowledge mediation, including both individuals and organizations
• Main focus on local content experiences and approaches, how this African knowledge can feed into ‘mainstream’ development debates and processes; using social media/web 2.0 tools and skills and approaches to promote participatory local content-focused approaches and link those working in this area.
• Secondary focus on discussing and preparing for the Addis AgKnowledge Fair
• Approx 20 participants.
3. Cross-over day
There is a natural overlap between the two communities of practitioners, researchers, managers and communicators who will be invited to the meetings. As well as common geographical and development sector interests amongst the participants the focus on the use of Social Media will locate their content and communication in linked or common online spaces. There is therefore an opportunity on Wednesday 7th for exchange and cross-fertilisation between the participants of the two programmes.
4. Reporting
The events were organised and reported using social media tools. Material was gathered together on the Euforic Services wiki.
File:AgKnowledge Africa sharefair proposal.pdf is a concept note that sets the context for the work of the IKMe Local Content strand at this event.