Sharing and Learning on Rural Content for Rural Lives

The power of knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing adds great value to the abilities of local partners working with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) within their organisation. They are able to share their experiences and lessons learned from using a wide variety of ICT applications, particularly what works and what does not. Most of the knowledge sharing is done at the local and national level, but given the importance of sharing beyond your own borders, IICD organises theme-based Cross-Country Learning Events (CCLE) every year.

Each year, IICD’s project partners from several countries come together at the CCLE to exchange experiences on using ICT applications in their daily work in a specific area (livelihoods, health, education, governance). By learning across borders, valuable lessons are shared on a much wider scale and complex approaches to successfully implementing ICT applications become easier to explain and understand. On this occasion, however, it was the first time that so many project partners from so many (8) different countries working in one specific sector – livelihoods - were brought together. It was also the first time that such an event took place in a francophone country. The participants spoke in English, French and Spanish.

The reason this CCLE was so large had to do with the size of the livelihoods sector: in terms of project numbers, it is IICD’s largest sector as all IICD’s Country Programmes have projects in livelihoods. Twenty-four of them sent a representative to the CCLE that took take place from 5-8 November 2008 in Sikasso, Mali. 

Selecting the topic

Prior to the CCLE, a survey was held among IICD’s project partners to find out what specific topics they would like to talk about up during the CCLE. High on the list was the wish to exchange experiences about creating rural content; how farmers in the most disadvantaged areas can work with ICT to create and disseminate local content in ways that are meaningful for them. Other topics that scored high on the list were ‘the sustainability of projects’ and ‘how to create and manage networks’.

Learning is best done from practice

During the four days that the people came together, time was not only spent sharing experiences with each other indoors, but also outdoors. Sikasso, a farming region in southern Mali, was the location that was finally selected as it provided an excellent base to learn first-hand and visit project sites. Visits were paid to Sene Kunafoni Bulon (which focuses on improving access to information about market prices and new markets for members of a farmers’ organisation, IER), Jekafo Guélekan (which strives to improve the flow of information among members of a farmers’ organisation, as well as between policymakers and the farmers’ organisation, to influence policymaking) and Coprokazan (which aims to improve market access for members of a famers’ organisation for women). Not only did the visits make the project owners proud, they also encouraged representatives from other projects to ask questions and actively participate in the learning process. It proved once more that learning is best done from practice.

For the participants from outside Mali, especially those coming from Latin America for whom it was the first time ever to visit the African continent, the visits were also very informative. They showed them how ICT solutions are being implemented under different circumstances and helped them to identify common challenges that all of them, in Latin America as well as in Africa, are facing.

Different knowledge-sharing methodologies

Besides visiting projects, the workshop included group sessions using knowledge sharing methodologies such as story-telling, market place (presentation of all projects), Open Space (people suggesting issues to discuss and then splitting up into smaller groups to discuss them) and the highly valued peer assist methodology. Peer assist means that someone presents a specific problem - something that his or her organisation is struggling with - and consults his or her peers to help solve the problem.

Three organisations had prepared a case:

• CAMARI in Ecuador wanted to know how they could best organise a telecentre network and how they could get political influence through this network;
• FEPASSI in Burkina Faso wanted advice on how they could move away from subsistence farming to become a market player. One of the problems they encountered was that some markets require information about the origin of the produce and a database is therefore needed to register all information about how their produce is processed;
• The Uganda Commodity Exchange (UCE) in Uganda therefore wanted to know how a new type of cooperative initiated by the government could work more effectively. How could they make sure that members at the bottom could make themselves heard by those at the top? How could they improve the information flow within this new organisation?

All of the participants were divided over three groups (one per language) and the problem owners received three different rounds of advice.

The next step

Within the space of just four days, a lot was discussed and shared. When asked whether and how the CCLE was useful, all of the participants stated that it added great value to their work. They had learned from other people’s experiences, and had been able to consult their peers on how best to proceed with using ICTs to strengthen their projects. Some felt supported upon hearing that others faced similar difficulties in the course of their work. As one of the participants expressed it on his evaluation form:

‘I have gained knowledge of how other projects are finding solutions to challenges. It was good to know that problems are really similar among most projects.’

Not surprisingly, many people felt that this gathering of peers was only the start of something that should take place more frequently. The majority expressed the wish to stay in touch with each other and to continue with peer consultation. IICD is taking this request into serious consideration and is working on ways to facilitate this beyond the face-to-face exchanges. The new I-connect platform, an online platform for on-the-ground knowledge sharing, might be the first step towards this.