On some days, goals you have set for yourself, match perfectly yet mysteriously with those others have set for themselves. There is no better feeding ground for cooperation. Today is a day where the circle is completed, or is a higher power at work?

With the office of Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) in Bamako, I have agreed to explore possible synergies between our activities and those of SNV-Mali. In previous years I have subconsciously avoided Dutch development organizations in Mali. I expect the reason for this was twofold. On the one hand because I wanted our programme to develop and find it’s own way, and on the other because for us at IICD, our local partners are our main focus. I felt it more important, on my trips to Mali, to spend time with local partners. However, now that our programme has matured, I see a growing need to create strategic alliances with development partners who have a higher level of sectoral expertise than we do. In that regard, the longstanding track record of SNV in Mali, and the fact that their methodology lies in line with ours, offers many opportunities.

But the turning point for following up talk with action, is a recently published article in Capacity.org by Elsbeth Lodenstein and others about a health project by SNV and KIT in Mali. Through an action research project in the region of Koulikoro they have developed a methodology which helps the communication between local policy makers and basic health services to improve in previous years. One of the keys for improving communication and understanding turned out to be to make data more transparent and accessible. This allowed policy makers to feed their decision making processes with simple indicators. IICD partners are currently formulating a project proposal for “informatiseren van de data collectie” in the same region. Therefore it is self evident that it would be beneficial to bring the two teams together. With SNV staff I agreed to convene a meeting in six weeks time, during which both trajectories will be presented and discussed by the parties involved. Our partners can probably reap lessons learned from the experiences of SNV staff, and in turn, SNV staff can gain greater insight into the advantages of ICT in a similar process. In this way, both our partners and SNV have a concrete issue around which a first cooperation and collaboration can be formalized. Small scale and concrete, just the way I like it.

In the evening I visited Hugo Verkuijl, an old associate of mine who worked at KIT for many years and who just like me married a Malian. In cooperation with KIT he is now setting up the first biodiesel company in Mali. A very nice project making use of the seed of the Jatropha plant. In this project not only the environmental benefits are gained but also income generated for farmers by selling biodiesel and carbon credits. When we sit down for a drink on the beautiful terrace of hotel Mandé which spans over the Niger river, who do we bump into but a KIT-colleague of Hugo’s. He tells us that he has worked with SNV on a very nice programme in the health sector in the Koulikoro region. And we could read all about it in an article published recently with Elsbeth Lodenstein on Capacity.org….

Below: François Laureys(left) with Mr Joachim Tanoano, Minister for Post and ICT, and Mr Michèl Pepin, Programme Manager for ADEN in Burkina Faso

It’s quite exciting to be part of a process that is causing a buzz in the ICT4Development circles. When I came on board more actively as part of the IICD team working on the upcoming Web2forDev conference (www.web2fordev.net), I was keen and curious to see what the conference would bring. But now, with still more than a month to go before the conference, I am already very excited – by the discussions going on online among participants and interested parties, by the diverse use of web 2.0 tools for exchanging and collaborating, by the stats!

Launched in March of this year by the collective of organisations working to harness the potential of Web 2.0 (or Social Networking) tools to support networking, collaborating and exchanging knowledge in agriculture, rural development and natural resources management, the acronym ‘Web2forDev’ has taken on a life of its own.  If you searched for the term Web2forDev in Google 5 months ago, it returned a few relevant pages and information. Three months later when I searched again, it returned 39,000 results of pages that referred to the conference or the concept, people that were discussing the conference on their blogs, people that were critically assessing the potential and limitations of Web 2.0 tools for development, people that were passing information about the conference on to other networks and so on. Googling the term today returned 102,000 results!

Working with the collaborating partners and IICD-associated participants is equally as exciting. Representative members from the National ICT4D Networks IICD-supported countries are excited and gearing up to go. Bringing the stories, experiences and information needs from the members of their respective networks to the conference, and bringing the newly generated and collected knowledge and experiences back to their networks, they have a big job ahead of them! With 250 participants projected to attend the conference, and topics for discussion as varied as virtual spaces, (remote) collaboration, knowledge sharing, online publishing, and information retrieval and access, the potential for new knowledge creation is enormous. Already we as organisers have been using a vast array of tools to make possible the coordination of this event, including discussion groups, skype, wiki’s, Sharepoint, and more. Organisers and participants have been sharing their thoughts, suggestions and critiques using Dgroups, have been adding stories and experiences to the conference blogs, have been using a common tag to share relevant readings and resources and participants (social bookmarking), and have been disseminating information using RSS feeds. Relatively new online social networking sites are being used to network participants and get a sense for Who is Who before we all meet in person at the conference itself.

As one of the IICD staff working on the conference and coordination, I increasingly feel that we are part of a larger movement. A movement that combines concern for and belief in development, passion for the potential of technology, and wisdom gained from practical application and experience.  And that I find exciting!

It is not easy to give a training on Web 2.0 tools for development, when the internet connection is slower than Sylvestre’s 2CV and power cuts paralyse the whole network. It is a daily reality in Ouagadougou nowadays. Whereas the internet connection in most countries is getting faster, the connection in Burkina is getting even slower.

Still, Mohamed Ag Acharom of Afriklinks managed to inspire more than thirty members of Burkina NTIC, the IICD supported national ICT4D network in Burkina Faso. He was invited by IICD to follow a web 2.0 course at the international conference Web2forDev in Rome in September. Since the national ICT4D networks in Mali and Burkina Faso had Web 2.0 training high on their priority list, IICD asked Mohamed to train both networks in Bamako and Ouagadougou.

Burkina NTIC made a film on Burkina blogs, which served as a perfect kick-off for the training. Participant Ibaranté Momo, manager of the Telecentre ADEN in Gaoua, commented: ‘I have always wanted to publish on the web, but I did not know how. Now I have seen the film on Burkina blogs, I want to know how to start my own blog.’

Apart from creating a blog, participants discovered how to use free, online tools to share bookmarks, documents, photos and videos, and to make free, online phone calls. Mohamed: ‘This is how you can create a wiki, for example titled ‘The Slow Connection’.’

Blogs captured the attention of the participants. Burkinabe bloggers in the film receive up to 2000 visitors per month. The blog provides ‘an exit door’ according to one blogger. They get reactions from all over the world, especially from the Burkinabe Diaspora. For them, blogs are a way to stay up to date and get unorthodox views on the developments in their home country. If the internet connection allows for it, the blogosphere will soon be besieged by Burkinabe blogs.

Some Burkinabe blogs:
Journalisme engagé
L’heure du Temps
Quophy Bloguer
Zwan & Vous

Participant Herman Ouedraogo, here with his grandmother in front of her house.
He now knows how to share this picture with the world using flickr.