KM for Conflict & Change Management

Teaching Model: Nonviolent transformation of conflict

KMAadmin — Tue, 25 May 2010 03:08:16 -0600

This framework teaching model evolved from the curriculum development workshop ‘Developing Teaching Resources on the Nonviolent Transformation of Conflict’, held in response to requests from academicians and leaders of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) after visits by faculty and staff of the University for Peace (UPEACE) Africa Programme in 2002. The University of Natal’s Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies Programme hosted the workshop in Durban, South Africa, 27–31 October 2003. Its sponsors included the University for Peace, affiliated with the UN, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). It was the first of a series of activities aimed at developing materials and an institutional network for peace and conflict studies programmes throughout Africa. The forty-three conference participants included scholars and
administrators from various disciplines representing seventeen African universities and relevant NGOs.

The primary goal of this framework teaching model is to increase the teaching of peace and conflict studies across the African continent, in particular teaching the nonviolent transformation of conflict. This model can be used as the basis of a course within an existing peace studies programme, as the nucleus of a new peace programme, as a supplement to an existing course in history or political science, or as an independent subject. The topics discussed lend themselves to the development of additional courses. The readings and photographs presented here are copyrighted, but all other material may be freely reproduced.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Will Knowledge ‘R’ us (not “Knowlege 'R' ours”) shape the future of knowledge and KM?

Md Santo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:04:48 -0600

Will Knowledge ‘R’ us (not “Knowlege 'R' ours”) shape the future of knowledge and KM?

By : Dr Md Santo – http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com

The nature of Homo Sapiens comprising three knowing tools components. The first is Peripheral Nerve System or Human Senses including our Autonomic Nerve System representing Human Knowledge with Lower Consciousness (KLC). The second is Central Nerve System or Mind Brain representing Human Knowledge with Medium Consciousness (KMC). The third is Human Consciousness DNA representing Human Knowledge with Higher Consciousness (KHC). If it is postulated that nature of Knowledge Management (KM) derived from the nature of Human or we could say Human System Biology (HSB)-based KM, then we will observe that KM Tools mainly generated from KLC, KM Process Framework generated from KMC as well as KM Standards (culture and value management) generated from KHC respectively ( http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/brief-description-of-our )
Consequently Knowledge which is located at the domain of DIKW continuum model as commonly believed has a narrow meaning. Hence, I suggested to separate DI with KW considering each is an entity into DI – KW model to give emphasize the paradigm I’ve just mentioned above (http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/blooms-taxonomy-knowledge-an... )
Therefore, Knowledge Management (KM) essentially is not management technique but behaving more as an access mechanisms that can be used across any management tool type such as Total Quality Management, Learning Organization, Benchmarking, Process Classification Framework, Business Process Reengineering, Balanced Scorecard, Business Intelligence including Social Media platforms etc. wherein each with their specific functions to be orchestrated under KM’s consciousness. So, here we put KM in incredibly broad meaning as subject with higher level than any other management tool type which is treated only as object ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/28696847/How-to-re-postulating-the-paradigm-of... ) From eastern concept, Knowledge with broad meaning also known as Noor or “Light”
I use the phrase “KNOWLEDGE ‘R’ US”, not “KNOWLEDGE ‘R’ OURS” as the expression of the paradigm of K as well as KM just mentioned above wherein human knowledge from beginning of our life represent human consciousness as well as our personality functioning to lead us in our journey through the path of Physical Realities – Data – Information – Knowledge (narrow meaning) – Wisdom and above . In eastern people beyond Wisdom frequently called as “Ma’rifat”
The overall description in schematic as well as in presentation forms could be accessed through the list of the links below. To get explanation more in details you could visit our gateway links by choosing relevant article(s) or topic(s) at http://delicious.com/mobeeknowledge and/or http://delicious.com/tags/mobeeknowledge?view=all& . And last but not least, just to emphasize from my point of view I’ve recognized at least 10 “symptoms and signs” toward the future of next gen KM – visit http://www.scribd.com/doc/27484344/Ten-Landmarks-Toward-Next-Generation-Knowledge-Management

List of the “KNOWLEDGE ‘R’ US” related links are as follow : (Source Link : http://www.scribd.com/doc/29259487/KNOWLEDGE-R-US )

Human Body Knowing Tools as Human Consciousness Related to Knowledge Management - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28959294/Human-Body-Knowing-Tools-as-Human-Con...
How to re-postulating the paradigm of Knowledge and Knowledge Management - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28696847/How-to-re-postulating-the-paradigm-of...
Road to Next Gen Knowledge Management : “Mobee Knowledge Top Four Articles of the Month” - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28435600/Road-to-Next-Gen-Knowledge-Management-“Mobee-Knowledge-Top-Four-Articles-of-the-Month”
Bloom's Taxonomy (Learning Domains)* related with Knowledge and Knowledge Management (KM)** - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28370204/Bloom-s-Taxonomy-Learning-Domains-rel...
How to convert Knowledge Into Knowledge Management - http://www.scribd.com/doc/28177748/How-to-convert-Knowledge-Into-Knowled...
Ten Landmarks Toward Next Generation Knowledge Management - http://www.scribd.com/doc/27484344/Ten-Landmarks-Toward-Next-Generation-...
The Origin of Knowledge and Knowledge Management derived from DI-KW separated entities model - http://www.scribd.com/doc/26869572/The-Origin-of-Knowledge-and-Knowledge...
Towards Human System Biology-based Next Gen KM - http://www.scribd.com/doc/25765257/Towards-Human-System-Biology-based-Ne...
Knowledge Management System Development Derived From Human System Biology - http://www.scribd.com/doc/25613526/Knowledge-Management-System-Developme...
Explaining Step by Step the Process of Knowledge Management 2.0 Map - http://www.scribd.com/doc/25036410/Explaining-Step-by-Step-the-Process-o...
KM Metrics to Locate Your Achievements in the Universe - http://www.scribd.com/doc/24808191/KM-Metrics-to-Locate-Your-Achievement...
You Are the Knowledge - Hybrid Definition of Knowledge - http://www.scribd.com/doc/24439826/You-Are-the-Knowledge-Hybrid-Definiti...
The Physics of Knowledge - http://www.scribd.com/doc/24339159/The-Physics-of-Knowledge
WEB-BASED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 2.0 MAP - http://www.scribd.com/doc/24331515/WEB-BASED-KNOWLEDGE-MANAGEMENT-2-0-MAP

@2010 Md Santo

KM & Communications

Reconstructing public administration in post-conflict situations

KMAadmin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:49:17 -0600

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs highlights the issue of how to reconstruct public administration in post-conflict situations so as to enable it to promote peace and development in countries that have been affected by civil war and destruction.

Countries emerging from conflict situations are almost always plagued by social upheaval, damaged infrastructure, reduced productive capacity, severe revenue shortfalls, seriously weakened human resources and greatly diminished security.

The challenges are daunting as post-conflict governments strive to ensure peace and security, foster social reconciliation and promote development. Yet recovery is possible if the public administration can earn the trust of the people, effectively provide services to all and operate in an efficient, effective, transparent and accountable way. In fact, whereas the root causes of intrastate conflict are usually assumed to be poverty and economic inequality or clashes among different ethnic or religious groups, the central cause of violent conflict is ineffective leadership, weak governance institutions, inappropriate human resources, lack of mechanisms to engage citizens in public policy-making decisions and lack of or ineffective delivery of public services.

The report emphasizes that because post-conflict situations are heterogeneous, there are no “one size fits all” solutions to governance challenges. In each country, public administration reforms should be tailored to local needs. The report also
highlights that contrary to commonly held belief, post-conflict situations not only present challenges, but also offer numerous opportunities to leapfrog stages of development by adopting innovative practices in public administration, particularly the application of ICTs in government and service delivery in the information age we all live in.

A United Nations Publication
Publication No.: ST/ESA/PAD/SER.E/135
March 2010
Copyright © United Nations, 2010
All rights reserved

KM & Governance

Using the African Dilemma Tale in facilitation

storytelling — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:39:14 -0700

The following story was developed for an Africa healthcare organisation in order to give people a picture of “where we are” following interviews conducted in the discovery phase of a change project. The story is designed as a point of feedback and reflection and is deliberately left as a cliff-hanger in the African storytelling tradition; what happens next is dependent on the listeners who are challenged to tell the rest of the story. In old Africa, these stories are called African Dilemma Tales. Such stories may be allegorical – many of the things described may not actually have happened and the characters might not be real. The story is designed to create a shared understanding that we are all involved in a process and that our values, attitudes and beliefs create the experience of the complex system we call an organisation. The story also allows us to talk about complex realities in a new way. The story below was read out and circulated by the organisation’s leadership figure in a formal ceremony.

Once upon a time in a small, beautiful kingdom in Africa, a group of leaders saw that their people were facing terrible suffering. They wanted to help and between them had many skills, but they were faced with many obstacles – hands that should have been extending help were bound. Webs of confusion slowed them in their place of work. There was dissent between them and splinter groups formed. Much of their supporters were scattered. Some of the leaders had forgotten their Great Work. Worst of all, the fire around which they gathered to talk, had gone out. And even though there was help available from allies, they were so burdened and constrained that it was difficult to make use of the help offered to them.

Every time news came in from the mountain, they felt worse. The suffering was increasing. Parents were dying. Children were dying. Young people, who should have been strong and energetic looked lost and without hope for the future.

“This can’t continue”, someone said and several others heard, repeating the phrase. Though tired and lacking motivation, the wisdom of their ancestors whispered in their dreams.fireside

“Build a fire,” the whispers said. “Gather round and talk this thing through until you find solutions”.

Someone found a few twigs and put a match to them. Someone else came with more twigs and a few of the leaders started talking about their difficulties and found that all their problems were similar. Soon others arrived, bearing more firewood. As they talked and the flames leaped up, more arrived, until a great fire could be seen from afar. The leaders talked and talked until they all understood what the difficulties were and then began to plan how each would be overcome. Their supporters drew closer to the fire, heard the discussion and were glad, so glad, that some started to dance and sing. The people of the kingdom could see the fire and hear the singing from afar and their spirits rose. Something was happening at last…TO BE CONTINUED….

The style of the African Dilemma Tale is an interesting approximation of 'real life' because. if you think about it, what happens next is always up to you. In the dilemma tale above, listeners were asked to respond to the question 'So what happens next in this story?'

From “Art & Science of Change – A Resource for Management and Leadership” – (ISBN-978-0-9802550-3-4) available – Available from Ubuhibi Media – http://www.ubuhibi.com/art.and.science.of.change

KM & Communications

KMAfrica.com KnowledgeHub Greetings

KMAadmin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:16:07 -0700

Zulu culture, language & traditions

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS 2012

Md Santo — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:40:15 -0700

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS 2012 or “CONTINUUM OF PHYSICAL REALITY WITH KNOWLEDGE AND BEYOND : GREAT TURNING FROM MIND BRAIN TO CONSCIOUSNESS DNA” (see the Attachment) showing global trends towards 2012 in which the domain of Knowledge evolved in continuum universe as emergent behavior within human body as complex (adpative) system, having consciousness and free will (mind and value) as well as behaving dynamically as subject

A brief description about the sentence ..."After Singularity between Human Mind and Technology reaching its peak (in 2012 ?)"... :
"Singularity" here means the phenomenon of the race between smartness of Human and Technology (Machine) which is at present occured exponentially and exponentially at very tremendous speed and will reaching its peak around the year 2012. To cope this situation, Human as Complex Adaptive System will migrate or making "great turning" from Brain as "center of play making in science or scientific knowledge" (locus of Mind) to the DNA as "new center" (locus of Consciousness). This migration or "great turning" will give impressive impact on how Human manage the Science and Technology. In this circumstances, it will appropriate if we put or coin a new term called as "Knowledgeable Science" which is entirely different with Scientific Knowledge as commonly used. (Consciousness) DNA as new vital locus will certainly has a higher level than the (Mind) Brain as former human vital locus.

To get more comprehensive insight, should you visit also :

http://isivivane.com/kmafrica/forum.hybrid.definition.of.knowledge - "We are the knowledge: a hybrid definition of knowledge"
http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/next-generation-of-knowledge - "NEXT GENERATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM)"
http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/five-basic-implications-of-n... - "FIVE BASIC IMPLICATIONS OF NEW PARADIGM OF KNOWLEDGE"
http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/knowledge-towards-2012-great - "KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS 2012 : GREAT TURNING FROM MIND BRAIN TO CONSCIOUSNESS DNA"

Tourism Knowledge SIG

Using questions in knowledge work

storytelling — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:32:03 -0600

KM professionals and facilitators need to understand and appreciate the role and power of questions in knowledge work. Further, we need to be able to apply questions in order to create and discover knowledge. There are some compelling reasons for this including:

Questions are strong attractors in the chaos of ideas, they gather, focus, attract and energize the conversation.
Only? questions have the power to beak our current midsets, they set in motion the deep relection needed to alter our beliefs.
It is the place and the space 'between not knowing and our desire to know' where we are most attentive, self-aware and alive. Questions hold the key to this special area.
Compelling and quality questions drive knowledge creation and expansion in a fundamental way. Knowledge emerges around good questions.
Questions energize and glue our conversation, draw people into the circle to participate and gather diverse opinions.
Questions keep the conversation moving forward, awaken dormant discourse and may be used to guide the subject back on course.

(from Verna Allee)

Questions of clarification

After some material exists in a conversation or dialogue, a questioner may seek to understand the others "frame of reference." Further (according to Hayakawa), the questioner "seeks to avoid. All implications of skepticism or challenge or hostility." The questioner often restates in his or her words what they think they heard and ask the original speaker to confirm that account. There are other more specific question of clarification that may lead from an agreement that the two now have a shared frame of reference.

Purpose questions

Why do we do this? Why did you say that? The motivation or cause is sought.

Prompting questions

"Prompt the interviewee and keep the conversation on track with such questions as, `What do you do first?' `Then what?' and so on, until you come to, "What do you do last?'

Attitude questions

How do you feel about what happened? What way do you see the world? Does that look good to you? What are your preferences in this matter?

Commitment questions

Who's with me on this? Can I count on you? The questions of accountability and responsibility are here. Will you be accountable? Will you share responsibility?

Affirming questions

Was that as good for you as it was for me? Wasn't that fun? Isn't this very good?

Questions of uniqueness or Example questions

Can you give me an illustration of that? Some more concrete way of describing it? Instances, cases, and models are sought here. Hayakawa cites Irving Lee for this category in which you might find questions such as, "Exactly what kind of synthetic plastic did you use in making that product?" Hayakawa says that such questions "are designed to prevent the functional deafness which we induce in ourselves by reacting to speakers and speeches in terms of the generalizations that we apply to them." They ask for the "particular characteristics"

Disagreeing Questions or Questions of Protest

The listener or reader sees the situation another way and asks a question to discern whether the other is aware of another viewpoint. They are often phrased with a negative, "Are there not other ways of looking at this problem?" "Have you dismissed the framework suggested by the previous speaker?" the person seeks clarification but also wishes to announce at the least their disagreement and in some cases the gist of their p.o.v.

Rhetorical questions

Rhetorical questions are meant not to be answered, but to provoke thought. They are as the Latin author Quintillian categorized them:

interrogatio - the question which requires no answer because it expresses a truth which cannot be denied
rogatio - the question to which we immediately supply our own answer
quaestitio - "a string of questions uttered in rapid succession for emotional emphasis"
percontatio - "an enquiry addressed to another in a tone of amazement in which it is hard for the other person to figure out how to reply"

Hypothetical

"The use of `would' in a question makes it hypothetical, a possibility for the audience to consider. Here are some examples of hypothetical questions: "What would you do if we had an earthquake right now?" and "How would you handle it if you discovered one of your employees abusing drugs?" Such questions lead the trainer into explaining how the forthcoming training session will provide answers."

Polling

"Polling questions often begin, `How many of you...?' Some examples: `How many of you give good instructions?' and `How many of you have performed CPR?' "

Review questions

These are questions that challenge others to tell what their intake was after some session, class, conversation, or instruction. For example, what do you/we now mean by a CoP?

Summarizing questions

Is there anything that we didn't get to? What did you like best? What is your opinion of this subject now?

Questions, the route to inquiry?

Think of some sets of questions that explore: 1) What you would like to know? 2) Something you would like to say? 3) Can you be of assistance? 4) Going on a journey of discovery? 5) Imagine the possibilities?

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Gendered ICT and Peacebuilding in Africa: A case of Missed Opportunities

storytelling — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:20:33 -0600

Author : Shastry Njeru, Midlands State University, P. Bag 9055, Gweru, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Inter-operability and use of ICT in crisis situations is not only about saving life, but a new life. The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has cathartic effects on divided societies. In violent conflicts that have taken place in modern times women have suffered much more than their male counterparts because of their ‘biological fate’ or what others have called ‘anatomy of destiny’. In most of Africa, women constitute the majority in the population. Yet they remain marginalized in knowledge, networks, and economic and political matters. As a result a lot of energy is left out in the process of national healing and peacebuilding. The recognition of women can provide ‘a new set of opportunities’ for nurturing a fragile peacebuilding process. The peacebuilding processes could be strengthened if organizations, people and regions connect ‘in effective multi-sectoral and peace building networks and provided with active and open knowledge banks. ICT can provide such connections, case studies and can bridge communication gaps between peace process stakeholders. The women can participate in the process from the grassroots upwards. This paper posits that marginalizing women can be retrogressive in the peacebuilding process and ICT can be used to mitigate against this problem in Africa.

Introduction

The United Nations Resolution 1325 of 2000 dealing with “Women, Peace and Security’1 was ground breaking for women’s peace activism in the sense that it provided a coherent policy framework for promoting women’s involvement in the wide array of issues related to peace and security (Crisis Group 2006). However, the progress along this resolution has been more limited in countries where leaderships remain hostile to a greater role for women in peacemaking and peacebuilding. What can be done to dismantle the barriers that prevent women from greater participation in conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict governance? Yet, women peacebuilders, often without formal support, are trying to bring security to their communities, countries and regions. What can be done to recognise and support the role and capacities of women in preventing and mitigating conflict so that it does not remain an afterthought? Against a backdrop of persistent violence, exclusion and decaying social services, many see improving the status of women as an issue to be addressed further down the road, in a time of peace. Consensus is not strong around the view that women in Africa need to be empowered through gendered ICT to enable them to be involved confidently in their nations’ peacebuilding programmes.

In majority of cases women have been left out as a result of their gender rather than supposed incompatibility with ICT. Just like many institutions in Africa, the ICT has not effectively escaped the problems of gender discrimination. The belief that technology knows no gender is openly challenged in Africa where technology is not only framed in a masculine way but is refusing to change. Even in economies like South Africa, only ‘17% of women have access to ICT related services’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) . Women have watched the benefits of technology accruing to men for a long time from a distance and bridges to this divide have been constantly destroyed with every step. There is a group of critics who argue persuasively that in Africa women need clean water, adequate food, health rather than worry about ICT. They do not see the connection between these necessities with ICT.

On daily basis in a normal peaceful African state, structural conditions are pitted against empowering of women. During times of war women suffer all kinds of violations and in peace times the cultural stakes are far against them. Some women are married off early in their lives to cover family debts, they forced out of school to give way to sons, and they are enslaved and kept illiterate because they are women. Recognizing the gravity of violations against women during war times and in the spirit of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000, the encouragement of the eventual use of the ICT in peacebuilding can have that cathartic effect on the women.

In violent conflicts that have taken place in modern times in Africa, women have suffered much more than their male counterparts because of their ‘biological fate’ or what is called ‘anatomy of destiny’ despite their numeral superiority. Example is Zimbabwe where women constitute 52% of the population (CSO 2006). They have suffered the discomfiture of poverty, drought, hunger, imprisonment and degradation. Yet in Africa, women constitute the majority in the population, yet still minority in decision-making. The inclusion of women in the ICT spheres is necessary for national growth and prosperity (Chamberlain 2002). Yet again they remain marginalized in knowledge, networks, and economic and political matters. Closing and making inaccessible the information management and frameworks to key all stakeholders, particularly women, undermines the ability of ICT to save lives in a crisis situation. Women need to know where they can get information, food, medicines, protection, and networks. ICT can help in this. By inter-operability of information, accessing to it will be made possible to all as digital barriers are pulled down by availability of information. The guarantees that systems, tools and mechanisms can exchange information seamlessly, securely and sustainably, need to be put in place.

Those in power must have the political will to achieve peace and to share the information that can be used in peacebuilding and in meeting everyday life challenges. The politicians in Uganda have recognized the importance of ICT in curbing the rural-urban migration and gave it the attention it deserves. They believed that ICT will not only provide rural employment but will stem the urge to migrate into major towns by the youths. The Ugandan government has been very instrumental in setting up telecentres in rural areas under the Rural Communications Development Fund (RCDF). However, despite this effort, the rural communities are yet to benefit from this movement. There isn’t any Internet or call centres in the rural areas because of lack of electricity (Nabwowe 2008). This is a universal challenge in most of Africa and it is women who have suffered the worst ultimately because should technology reaches near them, it will be grabbed by their male counterparts who have craft competences and literacy to use the technology. Women have little exposure to education to find this technology of any use to them.

Supporting ICT in peacebuilding and conflict transformation is premised on its ability to facilitate ‘virtual collaboration’ (Hattotuwa, ud) or alternative public space for women. Women can meet and discuss issues and solutions collaboratively on the World Wide Web. ICT can augment this socio-political process that explore options for the interest based options despite the fact that virtualisation of peacebuilding is not the final panacea. Peacebuilding still exists within the emotions and problems of the real world, but problems discussed are problems half solved. Women are naturally disposed to discussing intimate issues with their confidantes. ICT can provide this option. Further, ICT for peacebuilding can address gaps in communication within and between multiple tiers of the fabric of society and polity that are party to the peacebuilding process (ibid.). To succeed, ICT should connect progressive elements of the socio-political fabric that under-gird sustainable peacebuilding including, but not limited to women, children, youth, grass-root communities and rural peace activists, at the same time marginalizing extremist and corrosive elements that are detrimental to peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

However, ICTs can only help in crisis management and peacebuilding if they are based on open standards and are interoperable, facilitating use even in difficult conditions and engendering staff by-ins (ICT4Peace Foundation 2008). The peacebuilding processes could be strengthened if organizations, people and regions connect ‘in effective multi-sectoral and peace building networks and provided with active and open knowledge banks – with instant access to effective peace building approaches and case studies’ (Hattotuwa, 2004). The public can participate in the process from the grassroots upwards. Women may be involved.

However, ICT revolution has left out many in Africa given the absence of basic infrastructure, high costs of ICT deployment, unfamiliarity with ICTs, dominance of the English language in Internet content and indeed – lack of demonstrated benefit from ICTs to address ground-level development challenges. Where ICT is provided it is heavily barricaded by masculinity in ways that I now seek to explain. These barriers pose even greater problems for women, who are more likely to: be illiterate; not know English; and lack opportunities for training in computer skills (Gurumurthy 2004). Masculinity is writ large when parents have to choose male children over females to send to school when resources are limited. Domestic responsibilities, cultural restrictions on mobility, lesser economic power as well as lack of relevance of content to their lives, further marginalise them from the information sector.

This paper argues that sharing information provides women with a platform to engender a culture of open information sharing, where the approach to conflict transformation is one that is holistic, inclusive and participatory. By supporting the creation of "shared spaces" the gendered ICT initiative will help the process of conflict transformation.

It’s Gender stupid!

Technology is something people can use, but not the same thing that can be used to influence society. As inanimate, technology has been viewed as gender and value neutral (Gurumurthy 2004) and having the ability to traverse human cultural barriers. Yet this is not always the case. Technology cannot be neutral at all. Skimming through feminist literature reflects that women have been ‘excluded from science, creation, design and use of technology’ (ibid: 4). Women are socialized toward non-technical careers (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Along with that view it will be patently dangerous to accept that technology works everywhere and provides solutions to development challenges. Effectiveness of technology is dependent on culture under whose frames it was negotiated and can be transformed.

Women are cultural as well and have multiple identities that interact with gender to define their access to technology. To undo unequal gender relations depends largely on understanding the complex gender interactions and the will to transform them for the better. It is easy for a well to do sophisticated woman to have easy access to the Internet, but unthinkable for the feudal rural woman to have that access to the public telephone, yet they are all women who are driven by different socio-historical circumstances that dictate their daily factors of existence. Such realities are the heart of the gender and technology discourse. Gurumurthy (2004) reminds us that men and women from the same social context may not have equal access to technology. For instance, if household assets may have unequal ownership, what guarantees that ICTs can stand unaffected by gender? Simple technology like a radio may be fully masculine. I remember my father had a tiny radio in the 1970s that my mother had no leisure to listen or allowed to join to sit around as men did outside the house. When he left for the city he took it with him or it was safely tucked somewhere waiting for his eventual return. He joined the guerrilla movement for a long time and his radio waited for his long return. By hindsight, it made me think that radios, TVs and computers are male assets and microwaves and cookers are feminine. Yet technology must ease everyone’s life.

Technology has remained historically a male preserve suggesting that the appropriation of the technology by women is a political project that they must fight for with their blood and sweat. Over the decades it has been shown that without explicit attention to gender in policy, gender issues are not considered in implementation (Hafkin 2002:3). Governments argue that they already have gender policies in place and this should obviate the explicit mentioning of gender in every project. To the contrary, evidence shows that in the technological fields ‘policy making ignores the needs, requirements and aspirations of women and girls unless gender requirements are included’ (Marcelle 2002: 39). Without specific attention and action, women and girls are always left out (Hafkin, op cit).

The presence of gender issues rarely extends to information and communication technologies. Unlike fields such as health and education and in economic fields such as agriculture and rural development, where it is rare to find projects that fail to take into account gender issues, ICT sector is one of the last areas to open to a gender perspective. A recent study of hundreds of development projects, either ICT as the major sector or with substantial ICT components, showed that more than one-third of all projects had a high degree of awareness of gender issues, but that the gender-sensitivity carried over to the ICT components is only 10 percent of the projects (Ibid: 4).

Persistent gender specific structural inequalities constitute barriers to women’s access to technology. Such barriers are imbedded in education, tradition, economic inequalities, etc (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). In fact, ICTs are designed and created within the male dominated environments and therefore do not necessarily correspond to specific needs of women (ibid.). This is the “gender digital divide”.

Technological Barricades

ICT has become a potent force in transforming social, political and economic life globally. It is viewed as an ‘intrinsic part of nation building’ (Hattotuwa 2003). It has the potential to carry ‘the new global knowledge based economy’ (Huyer and Sikoska, op cit). ICTs ‘may reshape, reorganize, and restructure working methods’. It has ‘generic advantages of efficiency, information sharing, storage, faster knowledge accumulation, dissemination and can permit new and collaborative work methods’. Further ICT can improve ‘the quality of human life’ and can afford ‘new types of education modalities such as distance learning and online training’ (ibid.). ICT is a tool for transformatory empowerment of women.

Development strategists are encouraging the developing countries to embrace ICTs to avoid social and economic marginalisation (Ahmed et al, ud.). The uneven distribution of the use of information technologies across the societies is called the ‘digital divide’. It reflects a division between the information "haves" and "have-nots" structured along lines of race, ethnic group, class, age, region, and gender; between countries; and globally, between those who have access to abundant information resources and those who do not have this access.

Women within developing countries are in the deepest part of the divide. They are further removed from the information age than are the men whose poverty they share. The gender gap in the digital divide is of increasing concern; if access to and use of these technologies is directly linked to social and economic development, then it is imperative to ensure that women in developing countries understand the significance of these technologies and use them (ibid.). The lack of access to information and communication technologies becomes a significant factor in the further marginalization of women from the economic, social, and political mainstream of their countries and of the world. Without full participation in the use of information technology, women are left without the key to participation in the global world of the twenty-first century (ibid.). Due to these problems it is important to challenge the apparent lack of visibility of women on the ICT, industry and as users of ICT. The starting point is to pull down perceptions that ‘women are less suited to or interested in working with technology’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). The truth is that women’s lack of engagement is due to gender inequality than ‘women’s lack of compatibility with technology’.

Women in Africa are generally barricaded out technologically as already intimated. Bisnath (2005) attributes the barriers in the path of women to gender inequality and technological. These are resource endowments, infrastructure, telecommunication policies, skills and educational levels, socio-cultural norms, positions of men and women in production and reproduction, and digital preparedness of the country in question. Huyer and Sikoska (2003) reiterate the same problems always stand in the way of women’s progress: unequal educational access, glass ceilings in industry and research, lack of financial resources resulting from the women themselves or choices made by their families. Unless these barriers are pulled down ostensibly through the struggles of the women themselves, women will remain outside as technological second citizens.

ICT and Peacebuilding in divided societies

Countries coming out of a violent conflict, dilapidated institutions and systems do not have the capacity to manage the complex and disparate interests of multiple stakeholders and tiers. This is more difficult where politics is zero-sum and parochial. Social disconnect occurs due to fears and distrust in what the peace process may mean affecting the building of peace. Peacebuilding is a process beyond conflict viewed by Boutros-Ghali (1995) as ‘comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well being among people’. It is hard work demanding everyone’s contribution in disarming, repatriating refugees, restoring institutions, retraining security personnel, monitoring elections, reengineering political institutions for democratic governance, and protecting civil liberties and human rights. This does require more than men’s contribution. Women need to take part because they were involved actively in the conflict as combatants, victims or supporters. Leaving them out is an opportunity cost. Yet the structural stakes are too much against them in Africa, from the physical to social.

Peacebuilding must go beyond sorting ‘political and institutional deficits’ (Llamazares 2005) to healing lives made meaningless by protracted conflicts. Women and youth had their sense of self-respect and esteem violated by the conflict and left scattered across the rural areas as Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and in refugee camps. Cognizant of the geo-location of most women in Africa in rural settings, the use of ICT will enable them to be reached and participate in the peacebuilding without having to relocate them to urban areas. Women in post-conflict societies share common issues that they can creatively transform through ICT platforms. If ICT does not connect them, women remain separated by language, stereotypes, distance and mistrust even when they still share fears and hopes for peaceful futures. If ICT is neutral as suggested by some, then it can catalyse intra- and inter- communal dialogues, create powerful communal people-led foundations that can act as a bulwark against regression. Yet this is not the case when it comes to involving women in real issues of peace and nation building. ICT is an edge of a bayonet set against women where forces of gender are structured against the progress of women.

Peacebuilding has become profoundly multidimensional taking in humanitarian workers, Non Governmental Organisations, United Nations, governments, global financial institutions and from the bottom up, peace activists, women and children. This requires ‘multilevel approaches’ to increase inter-connectedness (Lederach 1997). It cannot assume this comprehensiveness without taking serious account of women. Pulling down of ancient structural forces working against women would make multidimensional peacebuilding possible. ICT can be used to reach out to all forces in peacebuilding including women. ICT can be embraced for its potential in advocacy and dissemination of information and policy alternatives. However, this potential in women can be seriously hampered by the usual litany of ‘lack of funding to purchase equipment or services, lack of skilled staff, little time and interest’ (Hattotuwa 2003:3). But despite the challenges, In Zambia, mobile phone networks are used to advocate women’s rights and in Douala the Internet is available to women entrepreneurs in textile industries. In Uganda ICT and mobile phone business are used as instruments of change by rural women, even professional women in Kenya are fast reaping the ICT benefits.

In some cases the websites available are carelessly designed to be of little use to the rural women. Some lack the content that can capture the attention of these women and in most of the cases they are written in a language that is difficult to understand. A good site is the Centre for Women Research (CENWOR) of Sri Lanka www.cenwor.lk that serves as an information source for the Sri Lankan women. The site is interactive and provides critical information facing women, and action taken by the government and other agencies. It also provides a communication platform transcending all types of boundaries for women and women’s organizations striving to realize women’s rights (ibid.). This platform is effectively eroding the gender barriers pitted against women in the country.

The corpus of conflict resolution literature proffers that it is possible to transcend conflict if parties can be helped to analyse, explore, questions and then reframe their interests and positions (Hottotuwa 2004). ICT can energise the creative dynamics of societies to fully engage with paradigm shifts necessary for visioning a state without protracted conflicts. ICT fertilizes the process of peacebuilding itself (ibid.) by engendering subtle changes in the socio-political relations through interacting protagonists who may not be able to meet face to face in real world through the virtual spaces. INSTRAW virtual seminars demonstrate the potential of ICT in engaging women (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) in e-democracy.

Good ICT for peacebuilding should form the repository for documents, press releases and other information related to the peace process. Hattotuwa (2006) suggests ICT instruments that can be used to embrace all. He identifies community podcasting and Internet radios, Skypecasts, micro-grants for blogging, cheap digital cameras, oral histories, and establishing women, children and youth media houses as instruments that can be profitably used by rural women in Africa for peacebuilding. Community podcasting and internet radios are often required in conflict to capture the voices and hope of people in support of peace. Through ‘new media such as digital audio / video / mobile video / MMS, it is possible to link community driven production of media that addresses local issues. Community radio stations often find that they are prey to legislation that often restricts their freedom to broadcast issues seen as too sensitive by the incumbent government. Internet radio and websites by-pass these restrictions’ (ibid).

Internet radio for grassroots involves those who cannot read or write. Literacy is not a requirement for digital media production that seeks to capture the views of those who may not be able to read and write, but through their life experiences may have valuable insights into the transformation of the conflict and into issues such as reconciliation, transformative justice and co-existence. This technology is sustainable as long as the technology already in the hands of the people (mobile phones) is thoroughly exploited than creating a whole new technology for reaching out to the marginalised women and communities. The ICTs can help to revitalise stagnant dialogues and sustain difficult processes of peacebuilding by providing spaces for sustained dialogue even when Track One processses have run aground (Hattotuwa 2006). Through the internet and radio broadcasts, efforts of peacebuilders are augumented by enhanced channels, avenues and possibilities for communication, information and knowledge sharing, collaboration, empowerement and discussion in virtual spaces, even when physical, realworld meetings are impossible on account of geographical distance or political sensitivities.

The skypecasts allow a large audience to participate, using Skype as well as PSTN phones, in discussions that can be on any topic. The Skype is free, Skype to Skype calls are free and for Skype to work, all that is required is a decent ISDN connection. The rural women may only need to purchase the ISDN connection and the equipment for them to broadcast. Donors need to be motivated to support women’s projects that can enable their voices to be heard. In areas which are not on national electricity grid, solar energy driven with rechargable batteries need to be made available for easy access for women.

Women can exploit their access to these technologies to ‘create Skypecasts on peace from the grassroots itself’ – say a village meeting with a global audience including members from the diaspora chipping in. Such a series of recorded Skypecasts can be a useful way to capture community driven ideas for peace with international and regional voices in support of such ideas. Shared and borderless sources of ideas will not only improve the quantity and quality of information the women may have, but even their self-esteem. The moment women know that someone is listening to their arguments across the globe would empower and engender a new spirit in them.

There is need to provide women micro-credit for blogging. Blogging is an urban phenomenon and there is need to take to the rural areas where majority of women live. If blogging engenders democratic dialogue, it needs to go into places outside of the cities. Blogs that are based in the grassroots itself, and can promote voices of the community, can be a useful way of capturing voices in support of peace. The emphasis here should be on blogs that promote a multiplicity of voices, particularly that which ensures diversity and gender participation.

Women need to be also provided with digital cameras to capture the world around them as they see it along with their thoughts on the challenges of peacebuilding. CD-ROMs based on the lives of an activist in conflict zones, an activist in an urban centre, a web based activist and an activist in the diaspora may be produced as reference material for the people in bureaucratic decision levels to fall back on when crafting nation and peacebuilding policies. The Ugandan CD-ROM project based on the Nakaseke and Buwama telecentres explained by Mijumbi (2002) provides a good starting point for African women. The women who used the CD-ROM have become more confident, knowledgable, prepared to experiment with new approaches and more willing to compare situations for joint solutions (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Further, women emerged not only with greater knowledge but also with enriched self-esteem.

Oral histories need to be recorded from the people who participated in making that history. However, conflicts often erase voices. Peace needs to preserve voices. However, when voices are captured, only voices of those with power are captured. Poor women’s voices, those who suffered the tragedies of the conflict are left out. Digital media offers unique ways through which voices that are important and most vulnerable, can be captured and promoted, so as to protect valuable ideas for social change even if their authors are killed. Simple recording devices can be given to communities (keeping in mind gender, age, ethnic, economic, class, caste, religious diversity) and capture their voices that support peace.

Women, youth and children need to be supported in setting up their own small media production houses. National regulations may need to be relaxed particularly in Africa where alternative sources of information are viewed by the governments with scepticism. With the help of donor financial support, acquisition of new technology would make setting up the houses pretty inexpensive. Women and youth media bring very different perspective to peace and conflict reporting as well as general programming. Children and youth have much more access to political leaders than do adults and can get away with asking some seemingly simple but precise questions that go to the heart of peacebuilding.

Innovative websites need to be created in vernacular languages to reach women who are often not educated in foreign languages like English and French. Since most women are impeded by lack of education to engage effectively with ICTs, there is need to ensure ‘soft access’ to less literate and educated by developing appropriate software applications and content. For example, Web 2.0 mash-ups that tell the narratives of those involved in peacebuilding through the use of Flick photos, audio / podcasts, GIS (Google Maps), blogs, mobile video, MMS or SMS (like myspace.com, but geared for peacebuilding) can be used. Projects such as www.witness.org use digital media to record human rights violations. When all these are made accessible to women great strides may be made in solid peacebuilding in Africa. There is no need to continually blame the victims by feeling ‘that women are reluctant to invest either their time in learning how to use the technology or financial resources needed for access’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003). Women have been severely battered by the weight of masculinity to take further blame for their problems. They have been frequently diasdvantaged by culture and concomitantly by inequitable access to all kinds of resources.

There are challenges for ICT in peacebuilding in spite of its phenomenal potential to augment the interventions of individual women in many areas of peacebuilding process like rebuilding trust between communities, creating dialogues within and between ethnic groups, giving voice to the marginalized women and youth, and enabling grassroot participation in the dialogues related to peacebuilding. What discourages wide and regular use of ICT are the high capital and recurrent costs which most of the women and their organizations cannot meet. This dovetails into the problem of access. By elbowing women out of ICT through bad policies, this dis-empowers them from having a voice in the peacebuilding processes when in fact, ICT must be able to facilitate the building of social capital that can empower women and ‘local communities to grapple with conflicts in a non-violent way’ (Hattotuwa 2004).

The other challenge is the trust that people can conduct critical discussion in virtual spaces while being assured of confidentiality of shared content. This is important in countries where terror and violence is heavily embedded and people cannot afford to trust the next person. How would it be possible to trust a worldly technology that one does not control? Next is sustainability of the ICT in a world where equipment can be novel today and obsolete the next day. The question of compatibility is important as well. There are the issues of breakdowns and back up the problems? of viral invasions and proper software to clean may be discouraging challenges for women who are financially weak due to structural gender imperatives. Further challenges like vernacular content/interface/questions of accessibility, connectivity/infrastructure/ bandwidth, lack of IT knowledge and lack of finance to buy the hardware and software remain prominent. While some of the challenges may be addressed by donor funds, the question of sustainability needs more than donor support but the strengthened arm of the beneficiary.

Finally, the lack of technological ownership by women is a huge challenge to be overcome if women are going to mean much in peacebuilding. A sense of ownership is an important precondition for overcoming the barriers to women’s access to and use of ICTs. To achieve this fullness of ownership, ‘it is important that ICT tools are tailored to the specific needs of women’ (Huyer and Sikoska 2003) and this feat is overcome by serious advocacy by the women themselves for other women. Women need to curve inroads into the realm of policy making to influence the ICT policy making for a gender perspective.

References

Ahmed A, Islam D, Hasan A. R and Rahman JR (undated) Measuring The Impact Of ICT On Women In Bangladesh, unpublished.
Boutros-Ghali B (1995) Supplement to the Agenda for Peace: Position Paper to the Secretary General on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations; New York, United Nations
Central Statistical Office (2006) Census Report, Government Printers, Harare
Chamberlain L (2002) Considerations for Gender Advocacy vis-à-vis ICT Policy and Strategy, United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting on “Information and Communication Technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women” Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November 2002
Gurumurthy A (2004) Gender and ICT: Overview Report for Institute for Development Studies, September 2004
Hafkin N (2002) Gender Issues in ICT Policies in Developing Countries: An Overview United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting on “Information and Communication Technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women” Seoul, Republic of Korea, 11-14 November 2002
Hattotuwa S (ud) CSCW in the North-Eastern Province in Sri Lanka, University of Queensland
http://www.worldbank.org/gender/digitaldivide/worldbankpresentation.ppt
_________ (2004) ‘Untying the Gordon Knot: ICT for Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding’, Info-Share, Sri Lanka
__________ (2006) Building peace through ICT - Ideas for practical ICT4Peace projects loctaed at
__________ (2003) Online Advocacy Principles and Case Studies Within the Context of ICT and Conflict Transformation Discussion Paper Written for One-World South Asia Partners Meeting, 3-4 February 2003, New Delhi
Huyer S and Sikoska T (2003) ‘Overcoming the Gender Digital Divide: Understanding the ICTs and their potential for the Empowerment of Women , Instraw Research Paper Series No. 1, located on www.un-instraw.org/en/research/gender_and_ict/virtual_seminars.html
ICT4Peace Foundation (2008) ‘Roundtable ICTs for Peacebuilding and Crisis Management’, Responsibility to the Future Conference, Mumbai, 26-28 June 2008
Lederach J.P (1997) Building Peace. Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, Washington: US Institute of Peace Press.
Llamazares M (2005) Post-War Peacebuilding Reviewed: A Critical Exploration of Generic Approaches to Post-War Reconstruction, Centre for Conflict Resolution , Department of Peace Studies, Working Paper 14, February 2005
Marcelle, G (2002a). “Gender Equality & ICT Policy,” Presentation at World Bank Digital Divide Seminar Series, Washington, D.C, located at Nabwowe A (2008) MP roots for extension of ICT services to rural areas located http://www.ictfocus.info/2008/20080815HANA-MpsrootsUganda.html
_________ (2002b) “Information and communication technologies (ICT) and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women: Report from the online conference conducted by the Division for the Advancement of Women” located at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/ict2002/reports/Report-online.PDF.
__________(2000) “Getting Gender into African ICT Policy: A Strategic View.” In Eva M. Rathgeber and Edith Ofwona Adera, Gender and the Information Revolution in Africa. Ottawa:IDRC located at http://www.idrc.ca/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DID=6&User_ID=468876&st=3548&st2=-2....
__________(1998) ‘Strategies for including a Gender Perspective in African Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs)’, Paper presented to ECA 40th Anniversary conference on Women and Development located at
http://www.devmedia.org/documents/Marcelle.htm.

KM & Governance

The management of knowledge: best practices learned from the people of the Great Lakes region of Africa

DriesVelt — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:13:55 -0600

Author: Dr Andreas Gerhardus (Dries) Velthuizen

Organizational Affiliation: Centre for African Renaissance Studies, University of South Africa (Academic Associate)

Contact Details: dries@africanwisdom.info - Mobile: +27834736478

ABSTRACT

The paper deals with the management of knowledge for conflict resolution and the innovation of Africa. After a brief discussion of the research methodology followed, feedback is provide on field studies conducted in from 2006 to 2008 in Northern Uganda, Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania and in the DRC. As a result of the field study certain principles and practices were identified by which the challenges of Africa could be engaged. The author found five “realms” in which KM can take place and that traditional knowledge practices if merged with more modern KM practices provides a valuable framework for KM for conflict resolution and the innovation of Africa. Best practices that were identified include an intra-connected and collective knowledge production system and the production of tacit knowledge especially among the new generation or “youth”. Furthermore, the importance of intellectual capital in the form of value-driven leadership, competent managers, and expert knowledge workers and the activation of intervention into the continuous spiral of violent conflict, ultimately leading to the innovative transformation of African society, is discussed. Finally, some recommendations are offered as possible solutions for conflict resolution and the innovation of Africa.

INTRODUCTION

Today there is a need in Africa for knowledge for decision-making purposes. Information from official structures such as the African Union (AU), the structures of its member countries, trans-national organisations, business structures, civil society, and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) should become usable knowledge. Furthermore, it is necessary for African structures to accommodate the perspectives of local communities, the content of IKS, and intellectual capital of society ('higher minds') to ensure understanding of the challenges, prompting active intervention to find solutions.

The question remains: How should African knowledge and knowledge in Africa be managed to resolve conflict and to ensure the innovation of the continent?

The specific aim of the paper therefore is to propose a solution for the management of knowledge, including indigenous knowledge, to achieve desired outcomes for Africa while promoting the “African Renaissance”. The crux of the paper is to present a knowledge management (KM) solution on how to accommodate the wisdom embedded in the indigenous knowledge systems, communities and 'higher minds' of Africa in decision-making and actions together with knowledge brought by the trans-national organisations in a collective middle ground to create a new holistic knowledge.

The paper is the outcome of an extensive literature study and research conducted in the Great lakes of Africa from 2006-2008. After a brief discussion of the research methodology that was followed in Northern Uganda, Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania some good practices were identified for the innovation of Africa through the management of knowledge.

THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research was done by following a multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary systems approach, using a qualitative research methodology on trans-national level.

A review of literature on the philosophy of knowledge, the theory of knowledge management, knowledge in Africa and African knowledge alerted the researcher of a few important themes:

The production of tangible collective knowledge of indigenous society by means of an intra-connected knowledge system.
The creation of tacit understanding by establishing a culture of learning towards a synthesis of knowledge and a holistic understanding for a new generation to develop and to find solutions for the innovation of Africa.
Intellectual capital in the form of value-driven leaders, capable managers and facilitators as well as expert knowledge workers.
The activation of intervention by means of knowledge-driven policy frameworks, strategies, and action plans to stop the cycle of violence that prevents the revival of Africa.
The knowledge-driven innovative transformation of the normative foundation of African society.

The Great Lakes region of Africa (with specific reference to the DRC, Uganda, and Rwanda), was chosen as the general universum of the study because of the number of unresolved or managed conflicts in the area, and intense knowledge management activities related to conflict resolution.

A pilot study was conducted by means of content analysis of empirical literature related to KM for conflict resolution in the Great lakes region as well as preliminary exploration by means of travelling in the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda to make observations and to identify key informers and focus groups for the study.

Consequently, samples within the following units of analysis were selected that meets the criteria for selection

The Traditional Acholi Conflict Resolution System in Uganda
The Gacaca Court System in Rwanda
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha

The main investigation was conducted in these “samples” through:

Content analysis of literature available in East Africa and published by East Africans on indigenous conflict prevention methods.
Interpretative interaction with people involved in the selected cases during fieldwork in Kampala, Gulu, Kigali and the ICTR.
Qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews with selected key informers (specialists, professionals, and members of the communities and organisations) focussing on KM activities related to the specific conflict management cases.

The result of this research is some important concepts that can be serve as best practices for the management of knowledge for the innovation of African society.

THE INTRA-CONNECTED AND COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION SYSTEM

Research revealed a 'trans-dimensional KM paradigm’ that involves collective knowledge including knowledge claims from the African village (the traditional knowledge realm), the religions of the community (a religious knowledge realm), official structures (formal knowledge realm), judicial structures (judicial knowledge realm) and trans-national organisations involved in the community (global knowledge realm). Collectively these knowledge claims forms the indigenous knowledge of African society, when collective middle ground is found in the context of social capital of the community involved.

According to Dia (1996, 241), the first requirement for knowledge production is the need for a new participatory process that focuses on building convergences between formal and informal institutions, empowering beneficiaries and local communities. Reconciliation between indigenous groups and formal institutions brings together dominant societal values of indigenous cultures as well as technical and organisational ideologies supporting modern institutions. Convergence begins when both formal and indigenous recognise the need for sustained interaction. Renewing, informal institutions need to create relationships with adaptive formal ones, revolving around programmes and projects, releasing synergy between the interacting institutions and achieving institutional convergence.

Nabudere (2006a) concludes that nowadays business, communities and several non-academic settings, where groups of people from different disciplines and institutions come together, are centres of learning. Boundaries that used to exist between academic and non-academic learning is becoming blurred, as the ‘excluded middle’ is increasingly included. Policies must work towards a new convergence, which recognises that knowledge is necessary for production, and that other communities seek interlocking networks of economic and social relationships globally as Africa moves into a 'learning economy'.

The pilot study in the Great Lakes region disclosed the following knowledge management “realms” related to a collective and intra-connected knowledge production system.

The African Traditional Knowledge Realm. On this level the traditional knowledge of Africa, including the knowledge embedded in collective memory and articulated in African language narrative is accessed in a spirit of Ubuntu2 to gather data on how to prevent or resolve violent conflict.
The Indigenous Knowledge Realm. In this realm, the unique tacit or explicit normative knowledge and scientific/empirical knowledge claims embedded in the political, religious and traditional African society, including the universal knowledge claims that originate from outside Africa and that became indigenised in African society, is gathered and processed in a central point with new knowledge for decisions and actions as an output.
The Collective Knowledge Realm. This realm involves the finding of collective middle ground where the indigenous knowledge claims of Africa and the knowledge claims of entities outside Africa (sometimes represented by trans-national organisations such as multi-national corporations and the UN) complement each other equally in a formal and informal way, through the implementation of good KM practices.
The Social Capital Realm. In this realm social capital in the form of intricate trans-national and intra-societal networks of individuals and knowledge centres intra-act in a supportive dynamic trans-realm where knowledge is shared and renewed in a horizontal relationship, continuously seeking new synthesis and holistic perspective of the causes, development and consequences of conflict and opportunities to prevent or resolve it.

The new paradigm emerged that can be illustrated as follows:

The manifestation of the paradigm was found during field research in Gulu, Northern Uganda. It was found that the traditional system of the Acholi people enjoys an intra-connected relationship with broader society during which new knowledge is created. It was found that traditional knowledge is used extensively by organisations in Gulu to manage the consequences of internal conflict (with specific reference to the activities of the Lords Resistance Army during three decades of internal war). In contrast, it was found that an organisation such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not succeed in contributing to KM for conflict resolution in a similar way or with similar impact and the challenge remains in finding common ground between the indigenous society and the trans-national institution.

The observation in Uganda was confirmed during field research in Rwanda. It was found that the Gacaca court system3 allows for a structured way of maintaining an intra-connected relationship with broader society during which new knowledge is created. It also appeared sufficient common ground exist between the practices of Gacaca and the modern KM practices represented by the ICTR in Arusha4. However, it was found that traditional and indigenous knowledge inputs are only used by both systems as evidence, and do not result in production of sufficient knowledge for decision-making in contributing to KM for conflict resolution to such and extent that it would assist in the eradication of conflict.

Furthermore, it was found that the social networks and intellectual capital of Rwanda, together with a system based on traditional Gacaca practices, provides sufficient opportunity for peace and restorative justice. The challenge is in finding common ground not only between Gacaca and the ICTR, but also with actors in the global community in an equal and complementary fashion.

THE CREATION OF A NEW HOLISTIC UNDERSTANDING BY A NEW GENERATION

The research found that both tacit knowledge and tangible knowledge products, produced in knowledge centres created for that purpose as part of an indigenous knowledge system, could contribute to better understanding in the form of knowledge synthesis and holistic perspective, especially among the youth and an emerging new generation of leaders. In these centres knowledge production takes place through the processing of information (including indigenous knowledge) into tangible innovative knowledge products that provides early warning of conflict, lessons learned from conflict resolution initiatives and recommends specific solutions, as well as the creation of tacit understanding by means of skills development, formal courses, mentoring programs, coaching, counselling, and distance learning, including the use of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms to collaborate through the communication, storage and display of knowledge.

Nonaka (1998, 21) discussed the 'knowledge creating company' and proposed that the creation of new knowledge depends on tapping the subjective insights, intuitions and ideals of workers. He uses the example of 'holistic knowledge creation' as a tool for innovation in Japanese society. Garvin (1998) described the 'learning organisation' by saying that before people and companies can improve, they must first learn. People must be skilled at systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, learning from experience and best practices, accompanied by quick and efficient transfer of knowledge through the whole organisation. Pelissier (2001) found that if the organisation is knowledge-based, it means that knowledge and business intelligence are competitive weapons in a borderless environment.

Gutto (2006, 306-320) argues that 'the primary purpose of education, formal or non-formal, is the development of interrelated and interdependent sets of human capacity to think, to know and to act by honing social consciousness or awareness, values and skills. This requires understanding of the interrelatedness and interdependence of knowledge systems, creative utilization of ICT, enhanced networking and distance learning.

According to Nabudere (2002b), African epistemology starts with the recognition that all knowledge is valid within its own cultural environment. Conditions must be created for communication and recognition of the contribution of each entity. This hermeneutic approach requires an African contribution that concurs with the needs of self-emancipation, while drawing on cultural heritage, taking into account new developments. Therefore tools must be developed to draw on the deeply embedded indigenous knowledge systems of Africa, including its practical knowledge, and build on it technical knowledge that can be of value in a global world.

These findings were reinforced by solutions proposed by ESCOM during a workshop on 17 and 18 February 2009 in Midrand, South Africa. Organisational learning should take place through mentoring programs, capturing of “lessons learned” and staff collaboration in communities of practice. Learning can be facilitated by “Grey Beard Mentors” (experienced people who already left the organisation) or by employees that will soon leave the organisation. Tools can be used to transfer best practices such as the design and development of courses, the use of case-study templates and collaborative technological platforms to do e-learning. The output should be to create understanding of the system by people on “grass-roots” or “coal-face” level.

During the pilot study in the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda the good practice of production of knowledge in knowledge centres in the form of early warning and foresight of the probability of incidents that might occur in the short term (such as genocide), or in the long-term, the probability of conflict in and among societies. Furthermore, it could deliver a more tacit knowledge product in the form of a person with a new vision of the future, learning new values, understanding of the causes and consequences of conflict and changed behavior, including managerial excellence and vocational skills.

During field studies, specific examples of these practices were found. Several centres of knowledge production and learning initiatives were found in the small town of Gulu. The traditional structures and culture of learning of the Acholi manifest in extensive social capital in local, regional and international context, nurtured by supportive organisations and individuals throughout the years of conflict. Coupled with the capacity to use modern ICT to disseminate knowledge to and receive knowledge from other centres, the social capital of the Acholi yields suitable conditions for knowledge production.

Observation and interviews on the Gacaca Court System in Rwanda revealed that epistemologically the procedures on village level are of value to create an understanding of the forces at play before and during the genocide. Especially when the intellectual capital of a jury as a form of community of practices is applied, an accurate view of actual events may emerge. Although not directly and immediately useful to eradicate ideologies such as racism and genocide, it may lead to a complete understanding of the underlying causes and consequences, an understanding that will be useful for actions to prevent similar events from recurring.

During the main study at the ICTR in Arusha it was found that involvement in the trans-national organisation means entering a culture of learning. The opportunity presents itself to African society to enhance professional and managerial competence, become multi-skilled and adaptable, and to learn from a culture that promotes managerial excellence, performance value-based learning, and the maintenance of standards required for service to others.

In 2007 and 2008, after ten-month long training projects under the auspices of the security sector reform initiative in the DRC it was concluded that value-based transfer of knowledge, following a trans-disciplinary (as opposed to specialisation) and multi-platform approach (training specialists but as part of a system) in a practical environment ensure lasting skills and capacity. The tacit outcomes of the training is a new generation of middle-level managers and specialists who understand the values of peace (as opposed to violence), self-emancipation (as opposed to domination), professional conduct (as opposed to corruption), justice (as opposed to impunity), national pride, trust, respect and the importance of becoming part of peaceful solutions in the region.

THE INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL OF AFRICA: VALUE-DRIVEN LEADERSHIP; COMPETENT MANAGERS AND EXPERT KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

During research in the Great Lakes region, it was found that intellectual capital in the form of value-driven leaders, competent managers and facilitators, expert knowledge workers (including ICT experts) work together in multi-cultural working groups or communities of practice to share worldviews and learn from each other. Together they form an intellectual capital pool of people with trans-disciplinary insight, holistic knowledge, cultural awareness and innovative thinking. The opportunities exist for the empowerment of Africans to participate equally as value-driven leaders in the production of new knowledge.

A recent study by the Department of Industrial Psychology, University of Stellenbosch (Du Toit, Engelbrecht and Pooven 2006) revealed that traditional African values, although in congruence with many universal ethical values, place more emphasis upon collectivism, collaboration, caring, dignity and respect. It is argued that these values should underlie a value-based leadership style to enhance team performance in modern organisations through better integration and understanding of a multi-cultural workforce and the management of diversity with a focus on teams.

In the ICTR it was found that value-driven leaders, competent managers and facilitators, expert knowledge workers representative of society (not only governments) are involved in joint working groups where they can participate in an equal relationship. Leadership is strongly value driven, especially concerning the universal values of justice, peace, respect and dignity. This environment creates an opportunity for Africans to participate and leadership role in modern trans-national institutions for not only the immediate purpose of seeking justice done and preventing further conflict, but also to exert positive African values such as self-emancipation and competitiveness toward a convergent relationship with the rest of the global community.

A further good practice that was found at the ICTR is the concept of an 'inter-disciplinary and representative knowledge pool' of intellectual capital consisting of productive leaders, managers and experts from within African society. Because KM supports the 'common cause', the identification of capable people from a knowledge pool is the ideal situation. The criteria for belonging to the pool include diversity in terms of geographical origin and the advancement of women. Specific expert skills like those of translators, security staff,' and base administrators' with multiple skills and inter-disciplinary ability, are needed. Leaders with an understanding of the system who are adaptable to a trans-national environment and innovative thinking must be in key positions. The ideal person should be an innovator with a will to meet targets.

It became evident that value-driven leadership, supported by a pool of capable managers and experts, is vital to activate innovative solutions to complex challenges facing Africa.

THE ACTIVATION OF INTERVENTION TO RESOLVE CONFLICT

One of the main conclusions of the research indicated that to activate intervention in conflict, knowledge-driven adjustment of policies, strategy and contingency planning are necessary to resolve conflict and to maintain peace. To this end collectiveness and the finding of common ground among conflicting parties as a first step towards peace and growth are vital.

One of the first steps towards the achievement of this objective was the 2004 AU Summit, which adopted a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on KM responsibilities. According to the MoU, RECs should maintain a database and transmit quarterly reports to the PSC of the AU. Regular networking must be ensured, including visits by officials charged with implementation and REC representatives must attend AU meetings. Focal points must be created for liaison between regional mechanisms and the mechanisms within the AU. A guideline that was given is that conflict situations on the continent should be monitored by gathering information based on specific indicators.
Perhaps the most important integrated project for creating a peaceful and secure environment for African development is the establishment of a Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) of the AU. According to the Protocol of the Peace and Security Council (PSC), timely information collected through a CEWS will be used by the Peace and Security Council on potential conflicts and threats to peace and security in Africa. The CEWS is linked to regional situation rooms. Decisions on the best course of action will be based on this intelligence, and should preventive diplomacy fail, peacekeepers may be deployed to prevent violence. (AU 2005).

Neuland & Venter (2005, 25) assert that policy measures of governments and governmental institutions to deal with conflict resolution in the NEPAD context should be complemented by a public peace process and a convergence of the roles of citizens, public organisations and NGOs with the role of government during conflict resolution. The causes of many conflicts are outside the reach of government-based diplomacy and the role of citizens and public organisations is crucial in building positive political relationships between people in conjunction with official peace processes, focussing on systematic dialogue among individuals, transformation to end violence and to build peace.

During field research in Gulu, it was found that the traditional justice system of the Acholi provides a valuable framework of KM practices that can be used for conflict resolution. The traditional initiative proved to be a knowledge driven process providing for the gathering of empirical data from the memory and narrative of the exact original observer or participant, and for context unique to the specific culture. It was found that traditional practices are reconcilable with modern KM practices, even to the point where the keepers of traditional knowledge can participate in modern collective knowledge activities where tangible knowledge is produced, lending a particular indigenous character to the knowledge product. Furthermore, it was found that traditional and indigenous knowledge inputs are used extensively by organisations in Gulu to produce a synthetic renewable knowledge because of intra-connectedness and convergence in a collective middle ground with the traditional community as part of broader Acholi society. It is especially in Gulu where the trend towards equal complementary nature of IKS and modern knowledge systems were discovered. The intra-action between the church leaders and traditional leaders can be considered as a good example of a traditional system that allows for extending traditional structures towards an intra-connected relationship with broader society during which new knowledge is created.

On the contrary, it was found that institutions such as the ICC and ICTR do not succeed in contributing to KM for conflict resolution to such and extent that it would assist in the eradication of conflict. The gathering of evidence to prosecute within a modern legal framework, serve mainly the prosecution strategies and corporate interests of the organisation and produces very little current knowledge that could be used for early-warning and planning purposes.

KNOWLEDGE-DRIVEN INNOVATION OF AFRICAN SOCIETY

During the field studies in the Great Lakes of Africa, it was found that it is in the realm of the African Renaissance where the totality of a holistic knowledge foundation serves to eradicate the causes and consequences of conflict. It was found that productive growth, competitiveness, self-emancipation, empowerment of the marginalised and restoring of equilibrium between African society and the global economy can only be attained through the innovative transformation of thinking away from negative values that drives conflict, to be replaced by a new thinking driven by values such as peace, freedom, and the spirit of Ubuntu.

The African Renaissance philosophy, which is about developing Africans and Africa, is a call for the rebirth, renewal, reinvention and repositioning of Africans and Africa in a globalizing world. The African Renaissance is seen as the rebirth of the continent after centuries of suppression, correcting negative images. Rebirth must be through rediscovery of Africa's past, reversing the downfall into chaos. It is about planning for the future based on a new knowledge framework accommodating the ideas and philosophies that created the great empires of Ghana, Monomotapa, Songhai and Mali. (Gutto 2006).

According to Nabudere (2002b, 13) the African renaissance has to be a globally humanizing experience involving whole masses of people under the enlightenment of 'global Ubuntu', which enables people to struggle for humanism and emancipation alongside oppressed humanity. Ubuntu does not seek to dominate and exploit; it can only seeks to liberate the African as a means of humanizing the world. The objective is to bring about social transformation in African societies. Research in Africa must seek to liberate and empower the marginalised to fight for their rights for self-transformation.

During field research, it was found that the immediate expectation of the people of the Great Lakes are that the continuous spiral of violent conflict must change into peace and reconciliation, before an African renaissance or any development initiatives can be possible. A first step after peace appears to be a need for justice, taking into account the need to restore normality where dysfunctions in society persist, and to reconnect people where connections were destroyed by conflict. The expectation is that this will lead to psychological healing, replacing the psychological causes of the conflict with the principles of Ubuntu, characterised by interconnectedness, togetherness, humaneness, respect and dignity. Only after restoration, reconnection and healing can the expectations of lasting human security, freedom to exercise human rights, production to relieve poverty and improved quality of life be fulfilled. The ultimate expected outcomes are self-emancipation from domination, transformative socio-economic growth, innovation in all aspects of life, towards a situation where African countries can project competitiveness in a global context in order to restore the historic disequilibrium and reach a new convergence with the rest of the world.

CONCLUSIONS

The first realm of knowledge management in Africa, as learned from field studies in the Great Lakes of Africa, involves collection of information based on confessions and investigation on village level, both in the cases of Gacaca and the traditional practices of conflict resolution of the Acholi. What is distinct here is the public nature of hearings as effective checks to determine the truth. The practices of traditional justice embedded in society and combined with modern practices, were observed. What is especially significant is that a new awareness has to be created of traditional practices to resolve Cold War- related conflicts and impunity.

The second realm of indigenous knowledge involves the broader context of society, visible in both Acholiland and Rwanda. Conventional modern justice systems are already formally integrated with the traditional system, political system and religions as part of one process. An advanced synergy has already been reached involving most actors with knowledge claims originating from traditional culture, religion, politics and modern justice. Traditional knowledge and the norms of Ubuntu complement knowledge brought by the pillars of modern society.

The third realm of collective knowledge management in a middle ground, reflecting the importance of intra-action and interaction among centres, was identified. The role of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the government of Rwanda and relations between the traditional leaders of Acholi and the rest of Ugandan society are examples of these. Since the inception of Gacaca and the revival of the traditional system of Gacaca, the importance of intra-active communication has been realised. Communication between Arusha and Kigali and between Gulu and the ICC appeared to be problematic for various reasons. It is in these challenges that the need for principles and practices on how to develop as complementary epistemological relationship, formal or informal, in a common ground between entities to resolve conflict, were identified.

The fourth realm of social capital manifested itself as a complicated network of 'stake-holders' who are involved in the quest for justice and reconciliation (e.g. the ICC and the ICTR). It is concerning the use of social capital for conflict resolution that the need for good practices for intra-active relationship among global, regional and local entities was detected.

A fifth realm of innovative transformation of post-conflict societies through the fusion of knowledge was identified. The expectation of lasting peace in both Uganda and Rwanda and the resulting transformative growth and reconciliation, calls for effective intervention to prevent continued conflict. Apart from the current temporary solution of military intervention, learning interventions and the development of intellectual capital by institutions outside the conflict, targeting the next generation of leaders, promises to have a more lasting effect on the peaceful transformation of the Great Lakes society.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the conclusions, the following practical solutions are recommended:

Government and organisations should refine processes involving gathering of data from the realm of the ‘lawn’ or village, the processing of information in community-based information centres, synthesis of interpretation in a an intra-connected and collective community of practice where vital decisions are made that would activate intervention and innovation.

The leaders of African society must continue to build trust, respect and cohesion between African Society and its partners that are involved in or support reconciliation efforts in order to plug into the wealth of knowledge offered by the global community.
The leaders of African society should involve the whole society, on not only organisational level but also accommodating the right of every citizen to contribute to the creation of knowledge. The managers of modern knowledge systems must adopt good practices from the traditional culture of Africa to solve modern problems in contemporary situations.

Service providers in education, training and development should develop a culture of learning among the new generation with the focus on creating a holistic understanding of the causes and consequences of conflict and measures to prevent the cycle of violence to continue. Moreover, it would require knowledge-driven transformation of society by means of learning interventions and value-driven development of intellectual capital to eradicate the thinking of class-consciousness, racism and impunity replacing it with universally accepted positive values.

African communities and organisations involved in Africa should establish inter-disciplinary and “Representative Knowledge Pools” of intellectual capital consisting of value-driven leaders, capable managers and expert knowledge workers as drivers of knowledge management in Africa.

Instruments such as the Gacaca court system and the international criminal justice system promised to be suitable instruments to ensure lasting peace. Whatever instrument is chosen would require the eradication of boundaries with local communities allowing for the management of knowledge in the specific episteme according to best practices, focussing on the use of social capital, transcending artificial boundaries between people towards sufficient common ground for lasting peace, productivity, socio-economic growth and competitiveness in the international arena.

REFERENCES

African Union. 2003. Report of workshop on the establishment of the AU Continental Early Warning System (CEWS). Unpublished official document. Addis Ababa: AU Headquarters.
African Union. 2005. Communiqué of the second periodic meeting of the African Union (AU) and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on peace and security. Unpublished document. Addis Ababa: AU Headquarters.
Dia, M. 1996. Africa’s management in the 1990s and beyond. Reconciling indigenous and transplanted institutions. Washington: World Bank.
Du Toit, M.K., A.S. Engelbrecht and N.Poovan. 2006. The effect of the social values of Ubuntu on team effectiveness. South African Journal of Business Management, Vol.37, no. 3, September 2006.
Garvin, D.A. 1998. Building a learning organisation. In Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management, ed. P. Drucker, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Gutto, S. 2006. Towards a new paradigm for Pan-African knowledge production and application in the context of the African Renaissance. International Journal for African Renaissance Studies. Vol.1, No. 2. Centre for African Renaissance Studies, Pretoria:.UNISA.
Nabudere, D.W. 2002a. NEPAD: Historical background and its prospects. Paper presentation at the African forum for envisioning Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, 26 – 29 April 2002. www.hollerafrica.com/pdf/vol1AfricanRenSep_Oct_2004.pdf, retrieved March 2007.
Nabudere, D.W. 2002b. The epistemological and methodological foundations for an all- inclusive research paradigm for “field building” and inter-subjective accommodation. Mbale: Africa Study Centre.
Nabudere, D.W. 2006. The developmental state, democracy and the global society in Africa Paper for DBSA/HSRC/Wits NEPAD Conference 'Investment Choices for Education In Africa', 19-21 September 2006, Johannesburg.
Neuland, E and D.J.Venter. 2005. Conflict and governance: Nepad, South Africa and Africa. University of Pretoria: Institute for Business Innovation.
Nonaka, I. 1998. The knowledge creating company. In Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management ed. P. Drucker. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Pellissier, R. 2001. Searching for the quantum organization. Midrand: IPG.

KM & Governance

Climate change, population pressure and conflict in South Africa

carol — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:27:23 -0600

Climate change presents humanity with its largest challenge in recorded history. Its predicted eff ects over the coming decades include extreme weather events, droughts, fl ooding, rising sea levels that could affect countries such as Nigeria and Mozambique, retreating glaciers (although not in Africa, but with global impact), changes in habitats and increased spread of life-threatening diseases such as malaria.

Little concrete analysis has been published on the relationship between climate change and conflict, however, and even less on the potential role that population growth plays in intensifying that pressure.

Today Africa is home to the most rapid levels of population growth and of urbanisation in the world and will shortly have more people than China. Already it is inhabited by 14 per cent of the world’s human population – a proportion that will rise to 25 per cent by 2050. Africa will inevitably face greater challenges owing to climate change than any other region."

Climate change, population pressure and conflict in South Africa

Author: Cilliers, Jakkie
Institute for Security Studies (South Africa)
Pretoria: ISS 2009

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Social and Behaviour Change Communication Capacity Assessment Tool

carol — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:49:10 -0600

The Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Capacity Assessment Tool was developed for use in workshop and meeting venues in which an organization and a facilitiator work to determine an organization's competencies to carry out
SBCC programming in three areas:

Planning and design,
Program implementation, and
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and research

A facilitator administers the tool to members of an organization and provides the scoring along with feedback, which serves as a baseline and identifies the gaps in the organization that require strengthening. The same tool can be administered at a later point to provide data that shows improvements in specific competencies and where additional work still remains.

This flexible tool can be adapted for use across a wide variety of health areas, including HIV and AIDS, malaria, family planning and maternal, and sexual and reproductive health. Users are encouraged to adapt sections of the tool or use the particular components that best address their needs in assessing capacities of organizations implementing SBCC programs. Comments are welcome; send an email to cchange@aed.org with subject line: SBCC Capacity Assessment Tool

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Knowledge Management in Fractured Societies: Women’s Initiatives

KMAadmin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:14:23 -0600

Author : Dr Michele Ruiters (DBSA, Research Unit)

Abstract

Post-conflict societies experience a breakdown in institutions and relations between citizens. Most conflicts in Africa have occurred due to identity politics or politicized ethnicities; resource conflicts; and struggles for political power and representation in formal institutions. Whatever the reason for the outbreak of the conflict, social and political conflicts disadvantage women and children the most. Institutions fail, social networks are torn and governments struggle to disseminate information about services and programmes aimed at repairing the society and the relationships therein. All communication and management of information becomes problematic. In periods characterized as post-conflict, a number of women’s groups have taken the initiative to address issues of knowledge management to ensure that women receive the necessary information they require to conduct their everyday lives, especially in relation to their interaction with the government and social welfare services. Women’s organizations have employed a range of methods to inform women of services and to empower women to work within their communities in effective ways that support social, political and economic initiatives. This paper will firstly provide a theoretical foundation on the politics of knowledge production and management. It also conducts internet research on three women’s organizations in three post-conflict countries that are at various stages of reconstruction, namely, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Liberia. The paper finally will evaluate the ICT structures and networks that these women’s organizations have created, evaluate their levels of success and determine whether there is a distinct model that could be generalized across the region.

We the representatives of the world, assembled in Geneva from 10-12 December 2003 for the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, declare our common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1

Introduction

The dictum ‘knowledge is power’ proves to be very apt when knowledge and gender intersect. In reference to this paper, access to and interaction with knowledge creates power. Despite international instruments that protect women’s access to the formal economy, political sphere and other public spaces, often the majority of women find themselves excluded from knowledge production processes because they either work from home; are employed in the informal market as self-employed traders; or are employed in low level jobs in the formal economy. Also, women are being left behind in the race for digital information. The gendered digital divide shows that more women than men have little or no access to information on the internet, world-wide web or through other electronic means. As globalisation connects everyone, women especially are being left behind as the digital divide increases between countries and people who have access to new media and technologies. Consequently, access to knowledge and information becomes a political issue especially since it involves exclusion from the public sphere.
This paper examines the concept of knowledge management through a gendered lens and traces the processes of creating and managing knowledge for women’s empowerment across three case studies from Zimbabwe, Uganda and Liberia respectively and assesses knowledge management tools in relation to their broad objective of empowering women. Most women’s organisations in Africa work on empowering women in their societies to become more engaged in development, political decision-making processes and to become economically self-sufficient. Their mandate is to communicate information that would contribute towards changes in women’s lived experiences and in so doing, change social practices to allow women to participate as equals. Information management and dissemination are therefore key strategies employed by these organisations in their attempts to inform their constituencies and to improve women’s socio-economic status. In post-conflict situations the social fabric of the country has been torn and networks destroyed. Women’s organisations in these fragile contexts then have to fight against hyper-sexism resulting in increased political, economic and physical insecurity for women. Women are empowered through receiving information that informs their decisions and involvement with larger social, political and economic processes.

Knowledge and Power

For decades, feminisms have argued for a particular standpoint grounded in women’s experiences; gender-defined roles cause women and men to view and experience the world differently. The concept ‘gender’ refers to both men and women, but for this discussion, this paper specifically looks at women’s experiences in relation to knowledge production and management. Knowledge production is affected by the concepts of race, class and nation; therefore, a woman’s position in terms of her race, her economic status and geographical location determines whether she has the ability to act as a political, social and economic being. Feminisms practiced by women of colour went further to argue that not all women are equal because of the racialised nature of society and the world economy2 and discourses that spoke about ‘Third World Women’ without their participation also maintain a power hierarchy through which those women are denied agency and re-colonised through knowledge production.3 It is therefore necessary to create spaces in which women can communicate their experiences and generate knowledge, manage that knowledge and pass it on as information to other communities generally and women specifically.

Public spaces are dominated by men and masculine voices who determine action and outcomes. The public space itself is complicated by the urban/rural divide that has a high incidence of poverty and a lack of resources. Historically women comprise the majority of the rural population because men migrated to cities for work, a trend that is evolving as an increasing number of women leave rural areas for potentially better lives in urban areas. However, their access to information and knowledge has not increased even if their location has changed. Political, social and economic marginalisation and the feminisation of poverty and labour maintain women in positions where they do not have the power to speak out, contribute to knowledge production or access information. The advent of new media has heeded the demand for an ‘[i]ncrease [in] the participation and access of women to expression and decision-making in and through the media and new technologies of communication’.4 Representatives at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) affirmed their commitment to mainstreaming a gender equality perspective by means of ICTs.5 These initiatives acknowledge that women are not part of mainstream developments in the ICT field and focus on targeting women and other marginal groups for inclusion and development.

Location

Location is important in many ways. The representer’s political location in relation to the subjects she studies is imbued with the politics of representation. The insider/outsider dichotomy presents a myriad of complications as knowledge producers grapple with how they represent their subjects and whether they can speak for the ‘other’. Gayatri Spivak asks ‘Can the subaltern speak’ and answers no because often they speak through others through what Leela Fernandes refers to as a ‘colonial process of “information gathering” from “informants”’.6 The strategies of representation and knowledge production of ‘the other’ are vitally important as it bounds information within particular discourses of subject/object, informer/informant and reproduces relations found within larger systems of power.

For feminists, knowledge production involves new discourses that ‘sensitize us to the interconnections between knowledge claims ... and power’.7 Knowledge is thus integrally connected to power. In a critique against postmodern feminisms, Philomina E. Okeke argues that ‘intent on defending subjugated voices, dominant voices do not seem conscious of the relations of power that position them as “gatekeepers”, defining the insider and outsider even as postmodernism appropriates the voices of the latter’.8 This raises the question about who can speak for whom and how because ‘how what is said gets heard depends on who says it, and who says it in turn affects the style and language in which it is stated, and will in turn affect its perceived significance’.9 In this regard, postmodern feminists argue that women should speak for themselves and that each woman’s experience can be aggregated into a shared experience that is used for advocacy and rights-based action. Consequently, knowledge about African women should therefore be produced by African women in collaboration with each other and in the interests of a movement that could bring about social change. However, feminist knowledge is also embedded in class debates about what constitutes knowledge and where and how that knowledge is disseminated. Okeke argues for feminist scholarship that ‘affirms, even as it contests, particular knowledge claims’.10 If this does not happen, women’s voices are then sublimated in a discourse about what is allowed into feminist scholarship rather than creating the space in which women can speak freely about their daily lives.11

International Instruments and Knowledge Production

It is generally assumed that if an individual has access to information, she is empowered to make informed decisions about her life. Political scientists refer to this as making a ‘rational choice’. However, women were not deemed ‘rational’ or ‘objective’ because due to them being ‘irrational’ and ‘emotional’ were not capable of making informed decisions. Women were thus kept out of the deliberations about society, the polity and the public sphere. Voice and representation continue to be mainly limited to men in power, be it in the family, society or government. Social norms and values maintain women as the ‘silent majority’ on whom laws and policies are enacted. Despite many international instruments that promote gender equality and access to the public sphere, to mention a few, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides international benchmarks for gender equality12; the Millennium Development Goals advocate for an intensified focus on increasing education levels of women and girls by 2015; and, the UN Resolution 1325 that has resulted in the inclusion of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives in conflict-torn areas, women are still excluded.

On the continent, when the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (also known as the African Union’s Women’s Protocol) was ratified in November 2005, it committed signatories to protect and promote the rights of women in Africa. Each region on the continent has specific gender protocols, for example, the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development13 and the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance14. These provisions allow for programmes that target women’s development and also ensure that women are party to decision-making processes that influence the way they live their lives. In reality, despite all the instruments, women still continue to be excluded and, as a result, do not know about these milestone decisions that are taken at national and international levels because they do not have access to information or are not adequately informed.

Education has been targeted as an entry point for women’s development programmes because more women than men are un(der)educated. As Charlotte Bunch explains, reading and writing skills are vital to effect social and individual change:
First, [writing and reading] provide a means of conveying ideas and information that may not be readily available in the popular media. ... Second, reading and writing help develop an individual’s imagination and ability to think. ...Third, an individual’s access, through reading a variety of interpretations of reality, increases that person’s capacity to think for herself, to go against the norms of the culture, and to conceive of alternatives for society – all of which are fundamental to acting politically. Fourth, reading and writing aid each woman’s individual survival and success in the world, by increasing her ability to function in her chosen endeavours. And finally, the written world is still the cheapest and most accessible form of mass communication.15
Formal education is intricately linked with women’s empowerment as so many women are excluded from formal education programmes. In sub-Saharan Africa, the girl child and women are three-times more likely to be infected with HIV and AIDS than their male peers due to cultural and religious systems that prevent them from negotiating safer sex. Education and information have reduced the risk of infection by informing girls of their choices in intimate relationships; but, girls are still less likely than boys to finish formal schooling.16 Enrolment rates have increased since the adoption of the MDGs and National Action Plans that emphasise education as a tool for development, but in many cases, girls lag behind boys and, by implication, girls are most likely to be unemployed, silent and powerless in social and economic spheres.

It is widely assumed that knowledge gleaned through formal education would correlate with increased levels of agency among women. The 1988/9 World Bank Development Report regards knowledge as a necessary requirement for development to occur.17 As more women than men live in absolute poverty, especially in sub-Sahara Africa, more women need information and knowledge to be able to improve their socio-economic status in the region. By transferring information to women and closing the gendered knowledge gap, agencies and governments can involve more women in development work and in the public sphere and thereby contribute to more inclusive development outcomes. Organisations, movements and countries have to grapple with the ‘twin challenges of knowledge for development’, namely knowledge gaps and information problems.18 The WDR also talks about ‘beneficiary participation’ in the design and implementation of projects that would inform future World Bank operations.19 However, the concept of knowledge in the report engages with the production of indigenous knowledge through experience, but it does so inadequately without taking into account the power structures that are inherent in knowledge production: who produces knowledge; who has access; and how is it distributed.

Women and ICTs

For the reasons discussed above and the growth of new media, women’s movements around the world began to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that they could access to create, manage and distribute knowledge. New ‘knowledge practices’20 began to evolve that were more representative of women’s lives. Janeway refers to the evolution of a new power as ‘the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful’ while bell hooks later entreats women to ‘exercise the power of disbelief’ to create new realities.21 As mentioned above, knowledge production has occurred in places many women do not occupy: the academe, policy think-tanks and other public sphere organisations. In post-conflict states the public sphere is starkly devoid of women despite United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. Those who produce knowledge in universities, colleges and other formal institutions often raise their theoretical endeavours above those whose work is practical. The theory/practice dichotomy stems from a false distinction between intellectual and non-intellectual work that has plagued feminist scholarship for decades. What constitutes knowledge is determined by mainstream debates on what qualifies as knowledge; exclusive attributes that are defined by those who are involved in fields of knowledge production. Women engaging in ‘non-intellectual’ work therefore have to become the producers of knowledge that is defined in more inclusive ways.

In this regard, women in non-governmental organisations that target women’s empowerment have the opportunity to engage with issues and to produce knowledge for their members and themselves. The practice of knowledge production therefore changes as the nature of the re-presenter22, the mode of representation and the audience change. New media has provided women with new modes of representation and often without a mediator as one sees in the case studies below. Criticism could be meted against new media for being exclusive as many rural women do not have access to or time for the internet, television or other electronic forms of communication. A counter argument to that criticism is that knowledge dissemination comes in many forms and ICTs are only one mode that on-line organisations are using. Women’s movements have to ensure that knowledge practices encompass all forms of knowledge production, management and dissemination to reach all their constituencies. What is important is that women receive the information, through dialogues, pamphlets, ICTs and so forth, that will lead to their full participation in the production of knowledge and decision-making processes, especially in post-conflict contexts.

ICTs are only ‘one tool among many required to support efforts towards women’s equality’ but regard it as a ‘critical site of intervention’.23 Other tools include infrastructure development; the provision of social services; access to the formal economy; gender equality, and so forth. ICTs have to complement other integrated development approaches. Often development is piecemeal and women’s needs are considered as an addendum. If development is meant to be successful, gender needs are to be considered in all stages of programmes and projects; thus, ICTs should be integrated as a means to convey information and to build community voices around important issues in communities.

Women around the world ‘face serious challenges – economic, social and cultural – that limit or prevent their access to, use of and benefits from ICTs.24 New technologies such as computers, the internet and established technologies like radio and television have a significant effect on who has access to information in a 21st century state. Cellular phones are yet to be used as mobilising tools in Africa but are very successfully used in global social movements. An international initiative known as the Know How community has assisted women leaders ‘to close the gendered digital gap, design social politics and produce information that can be transformed into knowledge by the appropriation of the ICTs’.25 ICTs work particularly well in post-conflict societies because they reach a greater mass of people than the conventional media, despite limited resources.
By and large, women are not involved in the decision-making processes of governments, companies and organisations. One notable exception, other than a marginal increase in the numbers of women in decision-making posts in these spheres, is in organisations that target women’s issues. These non-governmental organisations are run by women, led by women and for women, which makes them unique spaces in which women are fully engaged in all levels of decision-making. The apparent equality in women’s organisations does not remove the power dynamics that manifest in all organisations in general and women’s organisations specifically based on the position held, class, education levels, language, ethnic and other differences. Knowledge production and management therefore are affected by the culture and the philosophy of decision-making in the organisation.

Case Studies

Post-conflict countries provide a unique context in which gender relations are further skewed in favour of men. These three organisations are networks that have regional members or intra-country members that have experienced conflict in the last two decades. The three organisations each use ICTs to disseminate their information, but there are subtle differences that show a focus on regional versus national; rural versus urban; and sophisticated versus less sophisticated users. What follows is a brief synopsis of each organisation and final concluding remarks.

The Isis Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis WICCE) is now based in Uganda but was founded in 1974 in Geneva, Switzerland as an ‘action oriented women’s resource centre to meet the need for information by women from various regions of the world’.26 Its three programmes are in the areas of exchange, information and documentation and publications. Isis is the Egyptian goddess of knowledge. Isis WICCE moved to Kampala, Uganda in 1993 with the ‘objective of tapping African women’s ideas, views and problems and share the information with women at the international level’ and ‘contributes to the strengthening of Uganda and Africa’s women’s movement’ through the dissemination of information.27

Isis WICCE has various publications that cover an array of writing styles from reports, pictorial posters and flyers to audio visuals and on-line media. It also has an on-site Internet Café, a resource centre and hosts exhibitions. It provides access to information on many subjects that pertain to women’s empowerment in Africa and further afield. Their Exchange Programme Institute offers annual cross-cultural skills building programmes. The women who attend these courses come from all over the world and ‘use the space to learn from one another, share information, exchange ideas and acquire cross-cultural strategies and solidarity actions for addressing a diverse range of women’s issues, from the human rights perspective’.28 The Institute relies on a snowball effect of training a number of women in their programmes who then go out and train and inform others. Isis WICCE uses a range of tools that include dialogues, training programmes and ICTs.

The website has used sophisticated technology that limits access by those who are not ICT conversant. The information is viewed through hyperlinks on their Knowledge Exchange and Information Sharing website. The history of the organisation is also broken up into episodes of information that are opened by clicking on a ‘Prev’ or ‘Next’ button. Technology has been used optimally to display Isis-WICCE’s objectives, programmes and outcomes, but it is dominated by the assumption that its readers are ICT-literate and have access to the internet. Dralega critiques a project in Uganda that used ICTs and a CD-ROM to facilitate the learning and sharing of lessons of women in micro businesses for ‘derail[ing] from ascribed notions of African feminism; notably due to its top-down proponents’. 29 The risk is that nature of ICTs and their empowerment programmes could make women passive recipients of information rather than producers and managers of information.

The Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), founded in 2000 in the Mano River Basin, incorporates women’s organisations from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. MARWOPNET’s mission is to ensure the participation of women and youth in ‘the prevention, management and resolution of conflict in the Mano River sub-region, throughout Africa and the world, to serve as a catalyst through which sustainable peace, human security and justice can be attained by ensuring gender responsive policies and building women’s/girls’ capacity for socio-economic, political empowerment and human development for all’.30 MARWOPNET is a network involved in regional peace and development issues. It is concerned with awareness-raising through the media; ensuring women’s participation in decision-making fora; providing training programmes; and arranging meetings with development partners, youth and other social networks.

MARWOPNET was instrumental in creating dialogue between the three governments of the Mano River basin, a process that led to a Heads of State Summit in Rabat in 2002. The Network also signed the Liberian Peace Accords in Accra in 2003 and was given observer status at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in December 2001. This Network mainly operates through meetings and dialogues rather than as an information hub. It does, however, have an on-line journal entitled ‘Voices of Peace’ that aims to ‘give voice to a diverse range of voices, particularly those of women, on peace- and conflict-related issues’ and ‘welcomes feedback from members, partners or other interested parties who would like to share their opinions, stories, letters, photos, or other materials for publication in the newsletter’.31 The testimonies, poems and drawings are first-person accounts of the horrors of conflict in the region.

‘Voices of Peace’ is an example of knowledge production and dissemination through an ICT medium. The information found on this website is a re-packaging of information as the individual’s words are placed in relation to other testimonies and poems. Layout of information also draws the reader’s eyes to particular information and photographs and drawings often attract more attention than a paragraph of words. MARWOPNET has managed to operate at the state level in the region and at the level of ordinary Mano Basin residents, which makes it an accessible organisation to a wide range of people in the region. Knowledge production’s power relations are therefore relatively reduced as two very disparate communities are brought together through the work of a single organisation. It appears that MARWOPNET is defunct as the website is no longer being updated and emails to the last-listed chairperson have not been answered.

The Zimbabwean Women’s Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) is a Harare-based ‘women’s information organisation with a focus on collection, analysis, processing and dissemination of information on gender and development. The organisation’s strategic interventions aim to empower women, strengthen inter-organisational networking of gender and development agencies and promote the women’s movement in Zimbabwe’.32 The ZWRCN was founded in 1990 by a group of Zimbabwean women whose aim was to ‘empower women through the provision of information’ through key objectives to collect and disseminate information; repackage existing information ‘in forms appropriate to users’; and fill information gaps.33 ZWRCN has a Gender and Information Programme that provides information from its programmes and other sources to its members and on the internet to a wider audience. E-discussions and Gender and Development (GAD) talks are held at regular intervals to bring women together to discuss issues that are pertinent to their development and empowerment. The GAD talks are held in a ‘free space’ in a ‘Secret Garden’ which could be analysed as a women-friendly space in which women can air their thoughts about their location in Zimbabwean society, their politics in a fractured (but hopefully healing) state and their dreams for empowering themselves and their families within a broader global context.

One special programme that ZWRCN runs is the stories of women told in their own words. In email correspondence with me, the Executive Director said the following:

I would describe ZWRCN as a knowledge and information producer. We manage knowledge in the sense that we make decisions through input from women about the knowledge that they require and we disseminate it according to needs. I would describe our work as definitely empowerment focussed because our information is used for women to make better decisions about their political, social and economic aspects of their lives. Different information/knowledge products use women's input. The stories that we publish are called 'I' stories and they have up to now [been] generated from research (of the experiences of women in their communities) and converted into a publication.34

This provides ‘ordinary’ women with the tools to produce knowledge from their own experiences; to manage that knowledge in a story and disseminate that knowledge through a medium that re-packages it and sends it out as information. The re-packaging of knowledge also constitutes a form of knowledge production as in inserting an ethical ‘witness’ who is implicated in the telling and retelling of the story that ‘breaks through the traditional hierarchies and relationships of power that governs how we see’.35

Conclusion

These three post-conflict contexts, in which ZWRCN, MARWOPNET and Isis WICCE provide women with information and the spaces to create knowledge, are not unique. Their models of knowledge production, management and dissemination can be transposed onto other contexts provided they are inclusive at every stage of the knowledge practice. The organisations provide interconnections between women and women’s organisations to share information and practices that are achieved through different modes of transfer, for example, pamphlets; meetings; e-chats; organisational websites; conferences; radio and television; and programme-related documents. There are African success stories where ICTs have had a significant impact on women and their development and these organisations have shown that impact on their websites. This paper argues that it is necessary to change the power relationships within communities, organisations and between people to ensure that gender equality is achieved and the ways through which we do that would determine whether or not that happens. ICTs could contribute to women’s empowerment but should only be one tool in a toolbox of approaches that ensure a holistic and integrated development programme. ICTs have to power to include as well as exclude and care should be taken to avoid exclusion. Structural and cultural changes would ensure that women gain equal access to the public sphere where most ICTs are located in Africa as many women live in the rural areas and are homebound. Finally, as Elizabeth Kiondo argues, ‘there is a need to strategically work towards eliminating the barriers and obstacles while exploiting the opportunities to make ICTs effective tools for women empowerment and the promotion of gender equality’.36

Footnotes & Bibliography

World Summit on the Information Society, Geneva 2003 – Tunis 2005. ‘Declaration of Principles: Building the Information Society: A Global challenge in the new Millennium’, paragraph 1. http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03-WSIS-DOC-0004!!PDF-E.pdf
The racialised nature of the world economy has been termed ‘global apartheid’ in reference to the racial apartheid (segregation) that existed in South Africa prior to 1994. For more debate on global apartheid, see Charles Mutasa, 2004, ‘Global Apartheid Continues to Haunt Global Democracy’, Pambazuka News, September 9. http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/debt/2004/0909globalaparthei...
See Chandra Mohanty, 1991. ‘Under Western Eyes’ in Chandra Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp.51-80.
United Nations, 1995. United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women – Action for Equality, Development and Peace: the Beijing Platform for Action. Strategic Objective J.1. ‘Women and the Media Diagnosis’. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/media.htm
See World Summit on the Information Society Geneva 2003- Tunis 2005 for the ‘Declaration of Principles’ and the ‘Plan of Action’ http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03-WSIS-DOC-0004!!PDF-E.pdf and the ‘Tunis Commitment’ http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/7.pdf
Leela Fernandes, 2003. Transforming Feminist Practice, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, p.81.
Jane Flax, 1990. ‘Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory’, in Linda J. Nicholson, ed., Feminism/Postmodernism, New York: Routledge, p.48.
Philomina E. Okeke, 1996. ‘Postmodern Feminism and Knowledge Production: the African context’ in Africa Today, 1 July, p.2 of 7.
Linda Alcoff, 1994. ‘The Problem of Speaking for Others’, in Susan Ostrov Weissner and Jennifer Fleischner, eds. Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood’, New York: New York University Press, p. 292.
Okeke, 1996, p4 of 7.
One example that is not without controversy is the research work on a Mexican woman’s experience of her life as an informal trader by Ruth Behar (1993) in Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story, Boston: Beacon Press.
United Nations, The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm
United Nations, The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm
http://www.iss.co.za/af/regorg/unity_to_union/pdfs/ecowas/12ProtDemocGoo...
Charlotte Bunch, 1979. ‘Feminism and Education: Not by Degrees’, Quest, vol. V, No. 1 (Summer), pp.1-7.’ cited in bell hooks, 2000, pp.108-109.
A Factsheet from DfID on ‘Girls Education’ shows that ‘[o]ut of the 44 million girls out of school, at least 20 million live in sub-Saharan Africa’ p.1. January 2007. There are anomalies like in South Africa where girls’ primary and secondary enrollment in school is outflanking that of boys.
World Bank, 1998. ‘World Development Report 1998/9: Knowledge for Development ’, p.1. Washington DC. The summary document was used in this paper
WDR 1998/99, 1998, p. 6.
Ibid., p.13.
Fernandes, 2003, pg. 79
Elizabeth Janeway, 1981. Powers of the Weak, New York: Morrow Quill cited in bell hooks (2000), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (second edition), Cambridge, MA: South End Press, p. 92-93.
I consciously use this term to denote the difference between the subject (the presenter) and the person representing the subject (the re-presenter).
Janine Moolman, Natasha Primo and Sally-Jean Shackleton, 2007. ‘Taking a byte of technology: Women and ICTs’ in ICTs – Women Take a Byte – Agenda 71, pp.4-14.
Ibid., p5.
Know How, 2006. ‘The Mexico 2006 Know How Declaration – Weaving the Information Society; A Gender and Multicultural Perspective’, hosted by Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género (PUEG) and UNAM, in cooperation with the Know How Secretariat, August 23-25, p. 2. http://www.gert.ngo-bg.org/IMG/pdf/Mexico_Declaration.pdf
http://www.isis.or.ug/about-us/brief-history
http://www.isis.or.ug/about-us/brief-history
Ibid.
Carol Dralega, 2007. ‘Rural women’s ICT use in Uganda: Collective action for development’, Agenda 71, 2007, p.46.
http://www.marwopnet.org/vision_en.htm
http://www.marwopnet.org/voicesofpeace.htm
ZWRCN website, http://www.zwrcn.org.zw
Ibid., http://www.zwrcn.org.zw/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Ite...
Personal email correspondence, with Dorothy Adebanjo, 24 March 2009.
Fernandes, 2003, pp.83-84
Elizabeth Kiondo, 2007. ‘Millennium Development Goals: Challenges and opportunities for using ICTs to promote gender equality in Africa’, Agenda 71, p. 25.

KM & Social Challenges

Impact Planning, Assessment and Learning (IPAL) tools

carol — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:42:12 -0600

Keystone's tools for Impact Planning, Assessment and Learning (IPAL) help social purpose organizations to plan, monitor, evaluate and communicate their work in a way that is deeply sensitive to the complexity of social systems and change processes. IPAL focuses on the contribution organizations make to achieving sustainable developmental outcomes in complex systems. It fosters accountable learning relationships among key constituents of change processes (funders, implementers and those most affected) in which each learns to contribute optimally to incremental and sustainable impact over time.

Keystone offers these tools to help organizations clarify their theory of change, design outcome-based strategies and indicators of success, systematically collect evidence of success through quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback from constituents, and report meaningfully to constituents and other stakeholders about their learning and impacts.

The field of impact planning, assessment and learning is relatively new, and Keystone invites you to use and adapt any part of these tools in a way that works for you. The approach and the tools are constantly evolving and improving as they are being applied in the field, and we welcome any comments, criticisms and suggestions to make them better.

Impact Planning, Assessment and Learning - an overview and implementation guide
Developing a theory of change theory of change
Learning with constituents website
Re-imagining Reporting (under construction-to be published in mid 2009)
Capabilities profiler website

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Operational Guidance: Engagement of Indigenous Peoples and Other Forest Dependent Communities

carol — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:36:47 -0600

This Operational Guidance on the Engagement of Indigenous Peoples and Other Forest Dependent Communities is intended to inform the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN REDD Programme) activities at the global and national level.

The Guidance provides background and context on the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in UN programmes and activities, identifies the guiding principles in order to respect and support the rights of Indigenous Peoples and other forest dependent
communities, and outlines the operational guidelines for the design and implementation of UN REDD Programme activities at the global and national scale.

The Guidance also provides best practice advice on how to consult with Indigenous Peoples and other forest dependent communities and links to resources for further information. The Guidance is intended to be used by UN REDD Programme staff, UN Country Team staff, and national government and civil society counterparts who are involved in any UN REDD Programme activities that may impact upon the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples or other forest dependent communities.

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

IASC Gender Handbook Women, Girls Boys & Men Different Needs - Equal Opportunities

carol — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:54:48 -0600

This Handbook sets forth standards for the integration of gender issues from the outset of a new complex emergency or disaster, so that humanitarian services provided neither exacerbate nor inadvertently put people at risk; reach their target audience; and have maximum positive impact.

This Handbook aims to provide actors in the field with guidance on gender analysis, planning and actions to ensure that the needs, contributions and capacities of women, girls, boys and men are considered in all aspects of humanitarian response. It also offers checklists to assist in monitoring gender equality programming. The guidelines focus on major cross-cutting issues and areas of work in the early response phase of emergencies. The Handbook is also a useful tool to make sure gender issues are included in needs assessments, contingency planning and evaluations. It can be used as a tool to mainstreaming gender as a cross-cutting issue in the sectors/clusters. If used correctly, this Handbook will help promote the ultimate goal of protecting and promoting the human rights of women, girls, boys and men in humanitarian action and advancing the goal of gender equality.

Information Provided by Carol Lombard, Department of Social Development Population Website

KM & Social Challenges

Storytelling and non-violence

storytelling — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:40:24 -0600

Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, in a lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story:

I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference,and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced.

When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, "I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together."

After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.

He anxiously asked me, "Why were you late?"

I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, "The car wasn't ready, so I had to wait," not realising that he had already called the garage.

When he caught me in the lie, he said: "There's something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to walk home 18 miles and think about it."

So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads.

I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.

I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don't think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday.

That is the power of non-violence.

From www.storytelling.co.za Storytelling.co.za website (c) used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Key ideas for conflict and change management from dialogic

KMAadmin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:56:27 -0600

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975) was a Russian philosopher, critic and scholar who wrote many influential works of literary theory and criticism. His works, dealing with a variety of subjects, have inspired groups of thinkers who have incorporated Bakhtinian ideas into theories of their own. These thoughts on language use are particularly interesting in Change Management and Conflict Management and include:

Language is learned through contextualized social interaction. (from: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language). It lives "in a living impulse toward the object", in a specific located social interaction.
Consequently all language use is language use from a particular point of view, in a context, to an audience. There is no such thing as language use which is not dialogic (having and addressee, real or imagined), which is not contextual, and which is not therefore ideological.
Any language has certain centripetal forces which work to render it monoglossic, a "unitary language" – there are forces of regulation and discipline; this includes literary expression.
Any language, however, as it is lived, socially, over a variety of social, professional, class and so forth positions, is really an interacting and at times contesting amalgam of different language uses.
Each of these "languages" embodies a distinct view of the world, its own sense of meanings, relations, intentions
People of different generations, classes, places, professions, have their own dialects, or ideolects; there are differences among genres, among activities, even from day to day. Bakhtin suggests that at any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word (according to formal linguistic markers, especially phonetic), but are also into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups, "professional" and "generic" languages, languages of generations and so forth.
These dialects contain within them traces and implications of values, perspectives, and experiences; hence any contestation of dialects is in fact a contestation of these embedded aspects. Language carries as part of its nature the viewpoints, assumptions, experiences of its speakers, and it does this because it is personally and socially situated, not an abstract system.
Bakhtin sees the "language" or ideolect of a class or social position, etc., as a potentially a prison, constructing its own set of understandings beyond which the person imaginatively cannot go -- a dogma, he says, "a sealed-off and impermeable monoglossia." Bakhtin therefore believes that one can think only what one's language allows one to think.
Specialised dialects (which are also social and ideological sites) can be internal as well, that is, a person can speak from different social sites; in fact the psyche is a made up of different socio/cultural sites, is inherently dialogic in itself.
Consciousness is "inner speech", which, like outer speech, is a social formation.
People can occupy different ideolects without being conscious of the disparity between or among them. A function of literature is to force the reader to recognize disparate ideolects and their (at times) conflicting ideologies -- "the critical interanimation of languages" is a term he uses for this forced recognition
To Bakhtin, language is inherently ideological. It is material, historically located, performative. Ideas, expressed in language, are located as outcomes of social and historical processes. As an interactive part of ongoing historical processes, language, and hence ideology, is open to change; and it is open to it through dialogue and narrative, interaction, history, and the parodic.
Within the same community one will find approximately the same vocabulary and grammar, as well as people with differently oriented social interests and perspectives.
We can view reading itself as dialogic, a process of entering into exchange with a voice or voices. This would revolutionize our reading of texts with which we "disagree", for we could see them as a process of interaction with our own views, not as a simple embodiment of feelings or positions we find alienating. One could think of such reading as being four-pointed: ourselves, our cultural milieu and the questions we have to face, the text, the text's milieu and the questions it had to face.

From Art and Science of Change Ubuhibi Media used with permission

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Storytelling in conflict management and change management work

KMAadmin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:12:39 -0600

Stories are vitally important in times of change – they bring a sense of meaning and purpose to the human experience. Stories contain elements that enable us to 'travel forward in hope', even if we don't like our fellow travellers. Clearly managing the story of 'what is going on' is vitally important in situations of conflict and change. This is because people resort to violence and brutality when the story collapses. In change and transformation management, the work of the storyteller may include:

Accessing the conversations that are occurring in the situation. Experience has shown that this role is best accomplished by an ‘outsider’ who does not have a particular affiliation to any party to the conflict.
Helping to understanding the possible impact of these stories in the situation - especially if they evoke emotional responses or build 'vicious' or 'virtuous' cycles
Creating a story – either factual or allegorical. Allegorical refers to the representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters, figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form)
Asking key questions like 'how would you like it to be?'
Telling / reflecting a story and making adjustments as a result of listening to feedback
Identifying and reinforcing the useful stories that support a sense of mission, vision, values and purpose through conscious, on-going telling and mutation of the story.

Content provided by storytelling.co.za Storytelling Website

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Conflict and Passive Aggression

KMAadmin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:51:56 -0600

In terms of aggressive behaviours, one could imagine a continuum between Active Aggression (which includes violence & brutality) and Passive Aggression. Passive-aggressive behaviour refers to passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations. Sometimes a method of dealing with stress or frustration, it results in the person attacking other people in subtle, indirect, and seemingly passive ways. It can manifest itself as resentment, stubbornness, procrastination, sullenness, or intentional failure at doing requested tasks. For example, someone who is passive-aggressive might take so long to get ready for a party they do not wish to attend, that the party is nearly over by the time they arrive.

Someone who engages in passive-aggresive behavior typically won't confront others directly about problems, but instead will attempt to undermine their confidence or their success through comments and actions which, if challenged, can be explained away innocently so as not to place blame on the passive-aggressive person.

In some instances, the passive-aggressive may solicit the confidence of others as to their ability to perform duties, and then purposely sabotage those duties through procrastination or mishandling responsibility. Subsequent demands for performance are laid aside with claims of interference by the demanding parties or some other condition outside the control of the influence of the person who is engaging in passive-aggression, when in fact the delays and poor performance are due to the person's internal perception that to perform the task at another's demand is a demeaning insult to them. The omission of performance leaves the person in control of the situation, and allows that person to continue the aggressive behavior toward others. In cases where passive-aggression behaviors may indicate a personality disorder, these behaviours can persist even if it means personal loss to the passive-aggressive person, i.e. job loss or loss of esteem by others.

Some passive-aggressive behaviour may result from society's conditioning of individuals; direct confrontation can lead to harmful consequences. For example, confronting one's manager may lead to the loss of opportunities, such as being passed over for a promotion or even losing one's job. Not all passive-agressive behavior is problematic or a sign of a disorder.

Often passive-aggressive behavior manifests itself in individuals who view themselves as "peaceful." These individuals feel that expressing their anger through passive-aggressive behaviour is morally favorable to direct confrontation. Indeed, there are many cases where passive-agressive behavior may be more effective than direct confrontation, so many times individuals who are engaging in passive-aggresive behavior are acting rationally.

Passive-aggressive personality disorder is a controversial personality disorder proposal, said to be marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.

A passive-aggressive may not have all of these behaviours, and may have other non-passive-aggressive traits.

Ambiguity
Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness
Blaming others & not taking responsibility
Chronic lateness and forgetfulness
Complaining
Does not express hostility or anger openly
Fear of competition
Fear of dependency
Fear of intimacy
Fears authority
Fosters chaos
Intentional inefficiency
Making excuses and lying
Obstructionism
Not returning email or telephone messages
Avoiding eye contact
Using BCC: on email messages
Procrastination
Resentment
Resists suggestions from others
Sarcasm
Sullenness

"Merely being passive-aggressive isn't a disorder but a behaviour — sometimes a perfectly rational behavior, which lets you dodge unpleasant chores while avoiding confrontation. It's only pathological if it's a habitual, crippling response reflecting a pervasively pessimistic attitude". Cecil Adams

When the behavior is part of a disorder, the lack of repercussions resulting from passive-aggressive behaviour can lead to an unchecked continual attack, albeit passive, on one's acquaintances. The treatment of this disorder can be difficult, mostly because efforts to convince the person that they have this problem are met with resistance, and the passive-aggressive will frequently leave a treatment regimen claiming that it did no good. Since the effectiveness of various therapies have yet to be proven, these individuals may be correct.

In the psychoanalytic theory of transactional analysis, many types of passive-aggressive behavior are interpreted as "games" with a hidden psychological payoff, and are classified into stereotypical scenarios with names like "See What You Made Me Do" and "Look How Hard I've Tried".

Compiled using DSMIV and Wikipedia

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Feedback, learning and change

storytelling — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:02:49 -0600

When most of us were at school failure was seen as something that was negative, should be avoided and often worth punishment. And yet most learning theorists agree that it is only through failure that we really learn – as opposed to just memorising. Failure is useful when it helps us critically appraise our own performance. This is evaluation is an example of feedback. A simple way to think of feedback is experiencing the output of your own performance as a new input.

Students of psychology and education are becoming increasingly aware of the vital role that feedback plays in how we learn. All complex systems (like your body, your organisation, your family, your community) change their behaviour or learn through feedback - even if this means weaving in and out of the best path (like Wiener’s boat example) rather than sticking to the best path in any strict way.

The concept of feedback was developed by Norbert Wiener, who used the analogy of someone steering a boat: “When the boat deviates from the present course, say to the right, the steersman assesses the deviation and then countersteers by moving the rudder to the left. This decreases the boat's deviation, perhaps even to the point of moving through the correct position and then deviating to the left. At some time during this movement the steersman makes a new assessment of the boat's deviation, countersteers accordingly, assesses the deviation again, and so on. Thus he relies on continual feedback to keep the boat on course, its actual trajectory oscillating around the present direction. The skill of steering a boat consists in keeping these oscillations as smooth as possible.” (Capra 1996:57)

Even if you cannot predict the outcome, turning up the volume of feedback will always produce more sustainable results. As long as all the bits are talking to each other, something better will emerge. Feedback can be seen as a flow of information, in the in-between spaces, that constantly invites new responses from all the parts, improving the quality of all relationships within the system and allowing a system to learn how to do more for less effort. Sometimes something completely new and unexpected can arise out of the in-between spaces and take the whole system to another level.

Feedback allows you to make those corrections to your own behaviour that are necessary to lift your performance to another level. But how, and from where, can we get effective, reliable and performance enhancing feedback in the systems in which we live and the organisations in which we work?

Many people respond quite negatively to feedback, irrespective of how well intentioned it might be. Many people resist useful feedback because they fear failure and rejection. They therefore experience critical feedback as a personal attack. People who live in short timeframes experience critical feedback as something that defines them as a failure. By contrast, people who live in long timeframes experience critical feedback as data on how to succeed and grow on their own learning path.

Those who resist feedback are unlikely to change their behaviour when they receive it. This has important implications for the way your organisation deals with performance appraisals and the way it helps members design career paths. Opportunities for feedback are often misappropriated to make people feel worthless and incompetent. For feedback to be effective, organisations have to link feedback and learning and commit to both as core values in their corporate cultures.

One solution is to engage feedback as an ongoing conversation in your organisation, rather than a formal summary of someone’s performance, at a single and arbitrary point in time, with an abstract mark attached to it.

if you are not failing at something, you aren't learning anything new

People often fear their appraisals or assessments, whereas they could be looking forward to an opportunity to learn and to grow both themselves and the organisation. This is what Weiner called “reciprocal modification” – the change in me is a change in you. This ongoing “conversation” is what is often referred to as continuous assessment as opposed to summative assessment.

Effective feedback also has implications for top performers. In the old days people who were getting 80% were “better” than everyone else and did not have to try as hard. In the philosophy of Outcomes-Based Education, people should not be measured against each other. Individuals should be measured against their own potential and expectations. If they are getting high marks it does not mean they can rest in the knowledge of their superiority. It means it is time to find a new growing edge, a new challenge on their learning path. If you are not failing at something you are not learning anything new.

Members of your organisation need to be coached in the mechanisms and dynamics of effective feedback and how it relates to their own learning path. They need to begin to see feedback as an opportunity to improve and grow rather than as a personal attack or a defining statement of their identity. It should also help people to experience their lives in long timeframes in which criticism doesn’t define them but is experienced as useful information on a long and fruitful learning path. It should also encourage them to experiment with behavioural changes in a way that is slightly demanding, but is relatively safe, enjoyable, creative and rewarding.

Some questions about the feedback you're getting

How are you providing feedback?
Is it working?
How would you know that it is working?
How do you respond to feedback?
Are you growing?
What tells you that you are growing?
What are the current mechanisms of feedback in your organisation?
How could you evaluate and improve their function?
How does cooperation pay in your organisation?
Are you ready to experiment with new feedback processes?

From Art & Science of Change - A Resource for Management and Leadership - (ISBN-978-0-9802550-3-4) Ubuhibi Media used with permission

Fireside Chat

About Paradigms and Change

storytelling — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:54:21 -0600

A paradigm is a self-consistent set of ideas and beliefs which acts as a filter, influencing how we perceive and make sense of the world. The way in which we often structure our organisations is based on the model of a Egyptian pyramid and is an example of a paradigm. Other examples of paradigms include – how to make bread, what a bed looks like, the characteristics of a chair that lend the idea of “chairness”, the general features of a ship or an aircraft and so on. The term was first used by Thomas Kuhn in “the structure of scientific revolutions” (1962) to describe the the impact of change within the ruling theory of science when fundamental assumptions changed. Kuhn argued that the history of science is not a linear and continuous assimilation of facts but rather a number of revolutions in which new paradigms or new ways of seeing the world, entirely replace the old. Some of his conclusions include:

No matter how flawed, no paradigm can shift until there is a new paradigm to replace it.
Most paradigms shift when enough of the people who supported the old paradigm die.
Paradigms shift because their internal contradictions become unsustainable. This implies that one way to shift paradigms is to reinforce the internal contradictions. An important reason why Apartheid crumbled, for example, is that it became increasingly unprofitable.
Paradigms also shift as a result of the introduction of new metaphors. Kuhn suggested that the most consequential characteristic of a scientific revolution is “central change of model, metaphor, or analogy - a change in one’s sense of what is similar to what, and of what is different.” This usually occurs when different disciplines intersect and there is a “cross-pollination” of metaphor sets leading to a new way of “seeing” the world.
A paradigm is a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way a community organises itself. (Fritjof Capra 1997:6)
A paradigm at the heart of a culture can influence perception and meaning: if we believe that there is a culture of entitlement, we will hear and remember words that support that frame. In addition, the prevailing paradigm encourages certain types of behaviour. If everyone believes there is a blame culture, it is likely that people will behave in blaming ways. In this way, the paradigm becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, a sort of filter which helps make life manageable and gives us a sense of stability in a changing world.

However, it is not the existence of paradigms which can cause difficulties but their stability. Even when a paradigm is no longer useful it will tend to cling on, continuing to filter perceptions. Like culture, paradigms emerge from the interactions between the individuals within the community. They become apparent when they are named and characterised. And when enough people language their reality frequently, it has the quality of becoming “real”.

The term “paradigm shift” has found uses in a number of other contexts including a radical change in personal beliefs, a change in complex systems or organisations and replacing the former way of thinking with a radically different way of thinking.

Fireside Chat

How to decode your position of power

eugenie — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01:18 -0600

While we all know something about power, working in conflict or change management requires a clear understanding of power and how to decode and understand it. So what is power really and how is it constructed? Our world identifies certain individuals as 'having power' and then proceeds to make them more powerful by talking about them in the media. Politicians, high profile business leaders, characters from the entertainment industry and those frequently in the public eye are often said to examples of ‘powerful people’.

A useful way of decoding any phenomenon is to go beyond the 'what is it?' question and rather look at 'what does it do?'. In organisations, power can do many things. It can speed things up, slow things down, alter trajectory, transform our understanding of ‘what is going on’ and divert attention to something altogether different. We each have some measure of power and your position of power could be defined by:

Knowing what you want – having a clear vision of where you are going
The timeframes of your visions and strategies – how far into the future does your story go? (tip: a Long Timeframe contains a greater sense of power than than visions with short timeframes)
The way you talk and think about yourself and your frustrations
Your ability to learn & pay attention
Authority over the way others perceive you and what they say about you
Your choice of language and metaphors
Control over the money and the PIN numbers
Control over the story (are you in your own story or someone else’s story?)
Ability to mete out brutality and violence in all its forms (such as exclusion / ostracising, disapproval, withholding sex and intimacy, firing, physical punishment, active / passive aggression etc..)
Knowledge / Know-How
Freedom of choice
Your ability to sacrifice / let go / move on / forget the past
Access to powerful, interesting people in positions of power (who are as smart or smarter than you are)
Know-how to access to information that will help your get what you want
The ability to tell a good story that arouses emotion on others
Access to the internet and an interest in communication & networking technology
Access to software tools that enable you to stay current and in touch with thought leadership from diverse fields
Having a good story to tell
Having interesting stimulating people with budgets whom you tell your story to
Your preparedness to experiment and try new things
The ability to network powerfully with the people with whom you desire to network
The scary stories people tell about you, particularly tales of what you have done in the past / the mythologies of violence you have enacted
The ability to make people uneasy or frightened and your ability to be unpredictable & ruthless (you might be able to do this better than you think!)
Your ability to actively work and play with your own metaphors
Keeping up with new metaphors, jargon
The ability to say NO and to absolutely, positively mean it
The ability to say YES and to absolutely, positively mean it
Knowing about power and how it works

Steve Banhegyi steve@storytelling.co.za
used with permission from the Trans4mation Blog

Fireside Chat

A 'strange duck in the botanical pond'

soekershof — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:16:39 -0600

We can tell you a lot about our little enterprise and what we do. But rather google to Soekershof to find out via diverse angles or for a brief overview Soekershof Website

We are dealing with 2 issues:

1) Soekershof is located in the Klaas Voogds area in the Robertson Wine Valley; one of the main wine producing areas in South Africa. There are some high quality wines but also the FAS-percentage in the Robertson Wine Valley is high. (FAS = Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). An estimate of a representive of the local municipality is "around 70 percent"; equally divided between the different cultures. Although even some wine cellars are really doing their best to battle with this issue it's like fighting a landslide with your bare hands. Diverse initiatives are undertaken with more, less but mainly no success.
As employer we are continuously confronted with lies, half truths and silly excuses of FAS-effected staff. Last year this resulted in the dismissal of staff that had been working here several years and in whom we invested a lot of time and money in diverse (training) programs but seemingly without result. At this stage half of the staff is FAS-effected and to keep these employees a little bit under control we sometimes have to be very harsh to them and that is against our culture of open and flat communication regardless cultural backgrounds etc.

2) Soekershof will never be a mainstream attraction and we do not intend to grow into a tourist trap. On the other hand profits have to be generated in order to survive. Most South Africans know Robertson as a wine producing area and what more: "Free wine tasting". Of other activities in Robertson and surrounds most people have never heard. With other words; the region as a total all in tourist destination is very much undermarketed. The local tourism bureau is situated in the building of the Wine Trust, etc. It's with other words subsidised to promote wine cellars and their accommodating members. It's also the reason we are not a member (anymore); why putting annualy 800 Rand in an organisation that does not promote everything? As non-wine producing and not locally owned entity we are fully on our own in promoting ourselves and with us this beautiful valley as a destination with unexpected surprises. (google: Soekershof things to do in Robertson). But alone it's difficult. An initiative of the Boland Districts Council to promote 'other things to do' stranded because of non-co-operation ....

If there is anyone out there who can provide us with sound advice we'll be very gratefull!

Fireside Chat

UNDP KM Toolkit for the practice of Crisis Prevention and Recovery

KMAadmin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:09:15 -0600

This Knowledge Management Toolkit for the CPR Practice Area was prepared by UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in response to requests from members of the Crisis Prevention and Recovery Practice Network for guidance on knowledge management tools and techniques. This toolkit aims to explain the theory and outline the tools used in knowledge management for UNDP staff working in crisis and post-crisis situations. It is targeted at both BCPR staff and members of the wider Crisis Prevention and Recovery (CPR) Practice Area within UNDP. However, many of the suggestions given here are not strictly CPR-specific and can be applied to knowledge management in other UNDP Practice Areas.

This toolkit aims to provide ideas and entry points to a wide range of tools and methods that can help us to better share and apply the knowledge that exists within UNDP on crisis prevention and recovery. By working to simplify and standardize knowledge management products and methodologies, we can cut out the time-consuming process of ‘reinventing the wheel’ every time we embark on a knowledge management-related task. This toolkit is one step along the road to advocating for a simplified and standardized approach towards knowledge management in the CPR Practice Area.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

SOWETO analysis technique - SO WhEre TO now?

storytelling — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:36:28 -0600

SOWETO analysis adds two critical categories to the traditional SWOT analysis and helps ask a powerful guilding question; So Where To Now? SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in any other situation of an organization requiring a decision in pursuit of an objective. It involves monitoring the environment of the organization with the aim to identify the key internal and external factors that are important to achieving the objectives. It can be used to develop a plan that takes into considerations many different factors and maximizes the potential of the strengths and opportunities while minimizing the impact of the weaknesses and threats. The SOWETO analysis adds Outcomes and Environment to the matrix.

A SOWETO session also is a means of obtaining information from participants. It enables participants to take a breath, make a judgment and share their visions on the four pillars mentioned above in order to enrich the collective perception of the way the objectives are pursued.

Facilitating a SOWETO analysis

Ensure the objectives of the SOWETO analysis are clear to all participants and that there is a relaxed atmosphere. Mention that this is an extension of traditional SWOT and underline the idea that the model wants us to answer the SO WHERE TO NOW? question.
Build the SWOT grid and fill out
- Strengths
- Opportunities
- Weaknesses
- Environment (environmental considerations; the environments in which we operate eg. competitive, regulatory, social etc.)
- Threats
- Outcomes (desired outcomes provided by the participants - a story of where we want to be and what we want to happen.)
Ensure that all experiences are listened to and taken seriously
Ensure there is agreement from the group before anything is written onto the whiteboard
Have the individual actors comment on their contributions and clarify comprehension questions
Record common aspects first and discuss contradictory opinions later

Steve Banhegyi is a facilitator, media developer and consultant in KM & Change Trans4mation Blog (c) used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Open Space Technology approach to conflict management

KMAadmin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:06:59 -0600

Open Space Technology (sometimes called Open Space) is a self-organizing practice that allows diverse people in any kind of organization to create meetings and events with a difference. It is known to stimulate positive energies and achieve useful, well-documented results. Participants of an open space event create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. By inviting people to take ownership and responsibility for what they care about it stimulates the emergence of the inherent creativity and leadership in people, establishes an ideas marketplace of reflection and learning. The technique can be used to work with groups - some say between 5 to 800 people, for events of two hours to several days. It works best when work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and time is very limited.

The technique is useful in conflict management where more traditional meeting formats fail and may be one of the few approaches that could work in a complex situation where there is diversity of thought or people, and short decision-times.

Creating an Open Space event

OST meetings have a single facilitator who initiates and concludes the meeting and explains the general method. The facilitator has no other role in the meeting and does not control the actual gathering in any way.

Select a focusing statement/question that frames the higher purpose and widest context for discussion in a positive way (eg. what kind of organisation would we like to work in? What are the advantages (and disadvantages of our corporate culture?
Invite all stakeholders and/or who you feel should be part of it
Prepare the workplace with a free space and writing materials in the centre (noting down of ideas), a blank agenda wall (posting of issues and ideas for discussion or work) and a news wall (reporting back from sub-groups)
Explain theme and process of the event and invite people to write down what is of heart and meaning to them (form: topic, name, time and space for meeting)
Open the marketplace – “offers” are put on the agenda wall, let people sign up and have them work independently (incl. reporting back to news wall).
Make closing round to collect and share highlights.
Mail out report created (collection of reports of sub-groups) to all participants

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Using African knowledge to promote positive outcomes in conflict situations

DriesVelt — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:43:43 -0600

An overview of conflict using African conflict resolution initiatives as a case study of KM for conflict resolution, revealed that the methods used by African institutions are not adequate to manage knowledge to eradicate the causes of conflict, provide early warning of conflict, or produce a synthetic knowledge product for wise decisions and successful actions. However, the literature alerted the researcher to a few important themes related to the research problem that will serve as focus for field research to learn additional KM principles and practices that could be applied to conflict resolution. The following themes were identified to investigate how knowledge of Africa should be managed to promote positive outcomes for Africa:

Theme 1: The Use of African Knowledge Systems to Prevent Conflict. The indigenous knowledge systems of Africa present KM practices that could be used for conflict prevention and learning. Especially the value system of Ubuntu provides valuable principles to prevent and resolve conflict.
Theme 2: The Finding of Collective Middle Ground (CMG) through KM. In Africa, the collective middle ground between civil society, trans-national organisations and state structures implies the merging of global knowledge with indigenous knowledge in a horizontal power relationship of equal sharing and control, in the spirit of Ubuntu, to find solutions to and prevent conflicts in Africa. Especially the way in which African knowledge systems and knowledge systems from outside the continent develop an equal complementary relationship to resolve conflict, is of vital importance.
Theme 3: A Universal Network of Collective KM. The desired KM situation in Africa is a sphere of interactive networks, chains and formal centres of knowledge linking intellectual and social capital of global, continental structures, regional structures, state structures, civil society, traditional communities (with special emphasis on the empowerment of historically marginalised communities), community organisations and public citizens. The network is founded on the relationship of horizontal power equilibrium in the spirit of an "universal Ubuntu" The purpose is to blend knowledge, to learn from the new blend of indigenous knowledge as a method of self-empowerment to prevent conflict and overcome the other challenges of Africa. This includes equal participation in the dynamic trans-national environment to empower and restore the power equilibrium and convergence between the north and the historically marginalised Africa, maintaining the choice to collaborate or not, especially in ventures such as conflict prevention.
Theme 4: Constraints to Collective KM. In Africa, the constraints of collective KM that need to be removed are continued reluctance to share because of exclusive objectives, the notion to protect because of distrust, the persisting vertical power-relationship between major powers and Africa, lack of objectivity in the merging of insights, time management, limitations on enabling capacity and communication (including language differences). These challenges need to be addressed by the intervention of visionary leadership, capable managers and innovative experts, facilitating the timely blending of all resources (human and physical) to prevent conflict or to support longer-term peace plans.
Theme 5: Policy Frameworks, Strategy, Plans and KM. Policy frameworks, strategies, and action plans must be in place to enable KM in both society and business. KM is part of long-term visions such as Ubuntu, the African Renaissance philosophy, medium-term sector strategies of NEPAD and trans-national business, and the operational and business plans of all entities. The management of knowledge for specific programmes is monitored with suitable instruments to ensure timely and wise decisions for action. Consciousness of human rights and security, and conflict prevention, which is the podium for all other ventures that may lead to an African Renaissance, persists. These frameworks must provide for the protection of all knowledge including indigenous knowledge. Instruments must be developed to ensure a realistic trade-off between the responsibility for sharing and protection, ensuring tangible compensation or advantages for African society for participation in collective KM.
Theme 6: Knowledge Production. The ideal knowledge product contains a synthesis of indigenous African knowledge (including information that is the result of tacit knowledge in oral or symbolic format that was processed to be tangible) and tangible knowledge inputs from as many other participants in the network that reflect all possible worldviews. The new holistic product must be subjected to interpretation by a panel of wise people and disseminated to effect timely and defendable decisions and actions to change a situation, e.g. a conflict situation.
Theme 7: A Culture of Learning. In Africa, intellectual capital is developed through a culture of learning and reconstructing the approach to education, which develops wise leaders, capable managers, and facilitators as well as expert knowledge workers who understands the interrelatedness and interdependence of knowledge systems. Relevant learning empowers and enhances trans-disciplinary insight, cultural understanding, knowledge awareness and positive perceptions about others. Intellectual capital includes people who can work together in multi-disciplinary groups, COPs and knowledge centres and the creative utilization of ICT and traditional methods for effective communication to enhance networking, including communication with centres situated on the periphery of states and in historically marginalised communities. People must be able to gather data, process it into explicit information, analyse it and jointly interpret knowledge.
This work is (c)opyright to Dr Dries Velthuizen African Wisdom site and is used with permission.
- KM for Conflict & Change Management

Conflict prevention attitudes

eugenie — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:20:59 -0600

Based on the work of Abraham H.Maslow, here are some of the words and phrases that could be used by leadership and management in a conflict situation to suggest positive approaches to dealing with conflict:

We're all doing our best
We all need to be complimented for a job well done
We all want to be told how we can be better at what we do
We have similar goals - we all want to grow as individuals, get satisfaction from our work, become more confident and have high self-esteem
Nobody likes wasting time, effort and energy in conflict
Suggestions and feedback benefit us all
Sharing ideas stimulates new ways of achieving what we all want
We all want our work to be meaningful
We like feeling capable and competent
We all have the wisdom to make wise choices
We all need freedom to try out new ideas or plans. When they fail, we learn more than when they succeed
We all gain when we expect goodwill in others
We all want to be treated justly and fairly
We all have a need to be recognised and appreciated
We all want to know when we've made mistakes without losing face

Treasure each person's uniqueness. Trust that they are able to admire other's capabilities and skills as well as their own.

Adapted from the work of Abraham H. Maslow

KM for Conflict & Change Management

How to stay stressed

storytelling — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:20:58 -0600

Stress is unique to each one of us – it is an internally generated response to what we think is going on. Stress also often accompanies situations of conflict. If you feel stressed and worry about how you will manage to continue feeling stressed, try practising the following clinically proven methods:

Worry about things You can't control eg. about swine 'flu, the stock market, tsunamis, earthquakes, the ozone layer etc..
Never exercise - Exercise wastes a lot of time that could better be spent worrying. This will help you to stay at least 25% over your recommended weight. Junk foods, sweets, and coffee are particularly helpful here.
Eat anything you want – and remember to avoid fruit and vegetables.
Take plenty of stimulants - Caffeine, nicotine, sugar, sweeties and sugary soft drinks (especially colas) will help generate an adrenaline response in your body which will make you feel anxious and paranoid.
Don't relax - Forget evidence that suggests that meditation, yoga, deep breathing, and autogenic conditioning / mental imaging helps reduce stress. Stay stressed by reminding yourself to keep running.
Remove your support system – Tell the few friends you have that you don't have time for friendships and avoid people who try to be friendly with you.
Take it personally - Anyone who has something to say about work, family, house, or car is mounting a personal attack. Don't take time to listen, be offended, then return the attack!
Become a workaholic - Put work before everything else, and be sure to take work home evenings and weekends. Only sissies take holidays.
Forget time management skills - Schedule more activities than you can possibly get done. Remember to worry about it all whenever you get a chance.
Procrastinate - Putting it off to the last moment always reliably produces a great deal of stress.
Become a perfectionist - you are guaranteed to feel guilty, depressed, and inadequate when you don't meet the impossibly high standards you set yourself.
Remember that perfectionists never show weakness and never ask for help. So, if you want it done right, do it yourself!
Life is serious – forget your sense of Humour and remember that staying stressed is no laughing matter!

www.storytelling.co.za

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Strategic Directions of Conflict

storytelling — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:11:13 -0600

A clear understanding of the strategies and tactics available in conflict situations is vital for both facilitators and participants in conflict. The ability to engage conflict in a proactive, measured and rational way is vital in helping achieve your objectives, and so it is important to understand some of the available strategies and tactics beforehand:

Avoidance this is a classic passive aggressive strategy and includes postponement, control process, resorting to formal rules , equivocation , ignoring the conflict , 'fogging' or misunderstanding the position and the argument
Maintain quid-pro-quo or eye-for-an-eye conflict that brings up the injustices of the past and the associated emotions, agreeing on rules for maintenance going forward
Reduce inquire , fragment , compromise, write research & position papers, compromise, develop “strategic ambiguity”, create partnerships, highlight common interest
Escalate expanding the issue, blaming, labelling & naming, attacking personalities, threats, formation of coalitions, “winner takes” all approach
Initiate useful to destract / attract attention as a 'red herring'
Reframe involves renaming or re-labelling the core issue, problem or the 'enemy', it is also useful to reframe what you understand by the word 'conflict' and where this comes from
Resolution a conflict situation resolved to the benefit of all is traditionally the goal of conflict management interventions but in reality conflict is a normal aspect of organisational and interpersonal relationships

Conflict is a characteristic of all situations where there are unequal distributions of power. Rather than being seen in a completely negative light, it is important to understand that groups cannot function effectively without conflict, that not all conflicts can be resolved and that conflicts don’t necessarily occur because people don’t understand - they understand perfectly but don’t agree with the position.

Based on the Creative Conflict Management workshop Trans4mation Blog (c) used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Factors and behaviours that may cause and complicate conflict

storytelling — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:07:49 -0600

The following factors may be causes or complicating factors of conflict:

Time
Structural design
- task interdependence , power distributions , resource scarcity, goal incompatibility , uncertainty
Personal Differences
- Faith , Ego , Experience , Personality , Prejudice , Poor training , Oversensitivity , Values , Aims , Substance use (Caffeine & other stimulants / narcotics may amplify and distort the emotional impact of conflict situations)
Communication - miscommunication (semantics and cultural differences) & Signal to Noise (S/N ratio) of communications & poor listening skills

Behaviors that may cause/complicate conflict

Intellectual
Emotional
Interpersonal
Managerial / Leadership
Communication - miscommunication (semantics and cultural differences) & Signal to Noise (S/N ratio) of communications & poor listening & storytelling skills
Language use / misuse

Steve Banhegyi steve@storytelling.co.za

Based on the Creative Conflict Management Workshop by Steve Banhegyi & Associates (c) used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

The Continental Early Warning System

DriesVelt — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:23:06 -0600

The premise of conflict prevention is that conflict can be averted through the building of trust between role players, coalition formation and negotiated settlements. Conflict prevention mechanisms must be in place, supported by early warning and risk assessment systems. Perhaps the most important integrated project for creating a peaceful and secure environment for African development is the establishment of a CEWS of the AU. According to the Protocol of the Peace and Security Council (PSC), timely information collected through a CEWS will be used by the Peace and Security Council on potential conflicts and threats to peace and security in Africa. The CEWS will be linked to regional situation rooms. Decisions on the best course of action will be based on this intelligence, and should preventive diplomacy fail, peacekeepers may be deployed to prevent violence. At present, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) (the most developed system), have plans in place for sub-regional early warning systems, in different stages of development. The CEWS is specifically mandated to collaborate with the United Nations, its agencies, other relevant international organisations, research centres, academic institutions and NGOs. Although the Protocol requires that meetings of the PSC be to be closed, the PSC may consult with civil society organisations in relating to conflict situations. A 'Draft Roadmap' is developed to establish the CEWS. The analytical and mediating capacity of the CEWS is increasing to culminate with the establishment of the Panel of the Wise. (AU 2005).

During an AU workshop on the CEWS in 2003, some concerns were expressed. Because the analytical dichotomy between intra-state and inter-state conflict is not clear in Africa, early warning tends to focus on intra-state conflicts. Furthermore, the concern was expressed that time constraints associated with early warning have policy implications, delimit the extent of knowledge on conflict and determine prospects of whether intervention will be successful or not. Therefore, an early warning mechanism must focus on both long-term aspects of conflicts and their prevention. Moreover, the importance of group thinking was identified. The homogeneity of a group can drive the use of the information, especially the interpretation of and action on the information. (AU 2003).

According to Schneider (2004) the capacity to prevent forms the core of early warning. Governments and intergovernmental organisations need all the help they can get. As budgets tend to shrink, there seems to be less capacity than ever to track and monitor fragile situations and conflicts in the making. As a result, there is a larger role to be played by non-governmental role players including the media and NGOs. NGOs can produce ground-level information and analysis and communicate instantly through laptops, satellite linkages and the internet. That information can be used to build a prevention strategy.

Anderini and Nyheim (1998) argue that there is a co-ordination problem between information gatherers, analysts, decision-makers, and field workers. Among organisations, there is still some reluctance to share information or act on the information gathered by others. Organisations cannot automatically trust every source, so unless the information comes from their own workers, or from reliable sources, little action will be taken. Priorities also differ. While one is warning about an impending crisis in one region, another organisation is active in a different area, and will not or cannot respond immediately to the warning. Even when there is a response, there may be conflicts of interest and little co-operation. Decision-makers and information analysts aim to maintain objectivity and may not know what the most appropriate responses are. Their counterparts in the region and the local population are best placed to identify the necessary responses but their perspective may not be entirely objective or impartial. Consequently, the action taken is often inadequate, of no benefit, or in the worst cases, actually serves to heighten a crisis.

During a meeting of governmental Experts on Early Warning and Conflict Prevention (2006) it was found that a number of African Community Service Organisations (CSOs) are active in the areas of analysis, research, publication and advocacy, with a huge potential to contribute in the conceptualization and designing of a new security architecture for the continent. If their analyses of conflicts derive from indigenous sources, it would be valuable tools for in-depth analysis of conflicts and the development of appropriate response mechanisms. CSOs could also alert the regional body of conflicts, the factors that encourage escalation and the trigger mechanisms that cause violence. Active collaboration with such CSOs would also assist in profiling and database management. A number of indigenous 'think-tanks' have actually made positive and practical contributions to policy development at both the regional and sub-regional levels, through active collaboration with the AU (and OAU before it) and other sub-regional bodies. Currently several African CSOs are building considerable capacity in this area. Such 'think- tanks' can be mobilized to conduct research for, and on behalf of, the AU in current and potential conflict zones. Importantly also, they can help to disseminate the work of the AU among key constituencies through their publications and other outreach activities.

An evaluation of the CEWS confirmed that global and regional interaction, and even networking with civil society and non-governmental entities is important to enable data gathering, including data from IKS, and a constant flow of information that can be shared in a spirit of willing collaboration and inputs from all role-players. Furthermore, the variable of time constraints is identified in the processing of data and information and the creation of new knowledge. To produce holistic knowledge takes time, and flexible procedure has to be implemented to allow for early dissemination of knowledge that prevents conflict or that can initiate a specific conflict resolution or management action. However, the reluctance to share and the absence of objectivity among analysts are variables to be managed by managers, who are made responsible for facilitating synergy and convergence. Again, the roles of visionary leaders, who must apply their 'higher minds' to ensure that insights from all stakeholders, including indigenous knowledge, are merged and used in time to prevent conflict, are confirmed. Leaders and 'wise people' must ensure that a horizontal equilibrium is maintained during interaction, preventing that the views of one region or institution dominates the whole, while preventing central control, aspects that would prevent early warning and effective action to resolve conflict.

This work is (c)opyright to Dr Dries Velthuizen African Wisdom site and is used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

The vision of AU and NEPAD in Conflict Management

DriesVelt — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:07:29 -0600

The vision of the AU is based on a united and strong Africa and on the need to build a partnership between governments and all segments of civil society in order to strengthen solidarity and cohesion among the peoples of Africa. As a continental organisation, it focuses on the promotion of peace, security and stability on the continent as a prerequisite for the implementation of the development and integration agenda. African leaders should therefore be held accountable by the people of Africa to deal vigorously and effectively with conflict resolution and the implementation of good governance principles. (Venter 2005, 139).

The current priorities for NEPAD are to eradicate these causes through the prevention of conflict, resolving it where it occurs, managing it when it is still in a stage of being resolved and to reconstructing society once the conflict has been resolved, removing all obstacles towards the revival of Africa. Intrastate and interstate political violence continue to form a critical mass of conflict that affects the every day life of the peoples of Africa. Long-running African conflicts such as those in the Sudan and Somalia, as well as in Sierra Leone, the DRC and Burundi, remain deep-rooted. There is therefore little sign that AU and NEPAD policies on conflict resolution have beneficiated sub-Saharan Africa to date. The gap between political policy development and policy implementation remains substantial (Venter &
Rohan-Irwin, 2005).

Herbst and Mills (2005) posed the question whether regional integration through NEPAD and the AU and its sub-regional bodies is possible or desirable among diverse countries. Seeing the problem from the perspective of unstable states, they reply that before integration of African states with one another is attempted, some internally unstable countries need to pull themselves together. With this proposition, the scholars draw the attention to the question of peace and stability as a prerequisite for success. Several factors are inhibiting the efforts of the AU and NEPAD, especially conditions in post-colonial states. Afro-pessimists have published ample material on the causes of instability and conflict in Africa; extensive content analysis of reliable literature revealed that inadequate governance, scarcity of resources, human rights abuses and lack of skills to implement plans currently impede human security and development in Africa. The socio-economic decay in terms of health, education, and food production is also a matter of concern. Environmental realities such as floods and droughts contribute to these conditions.
Added to that is the mostly negative role of armed groups that act beyond the control of the state, with resultant threatening coups and the proliferation of small arms and land mines. Moreover, reaction to global influences is a matter of concern: some countries have become havens and targets for international terrorism, diamond smugglers, mercenaries, and international crime syndicates. (Velthuizen 2005, 7).

This work is (c)opyright to Dr Dries Velthuizen African Wisdom site and is used with permission.

KM for Conflict & Change Management

Ideas for designing community animation models

storytelling — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:28:17 -0600

This overview attempts to present useful key ideas necessary for the development of a community animation model in language that is clear and empowering in such a way that it emphases the application of Know-How. The structure as presented here draws together experiences from using the following models in an African context: Isivivane for Change and Transformation (Banhegyi 2001-2007) Isivivane . Additionally, the model draws inspiration from models developed by Walsh & Ungson (1991), Collison & Parcell (1998), Nonake & Takeuchi (1995) in that it emphasises the cultural context, group dynamics and linkages between participants. The approach stimulates a community into action and provides a basic know-how useful in the design and support of a sustainable system and guides a user through that which needs to be done in order to attain success. Essentially the model requires leadership in that someone needs to take the initiative, assume permission, ask the questions and implement the following steps.

Identify the Issues – What issues and problems does the community face? Have there been previous efforts to engage the issues? What have been the successes, failures?
Identify the Community – what are the characteristics of the community? What signs, symbols, metaphors, languageing, physical space, stories etc. can be said to bind the community together? Who are the formal and informal leaders and opinion makers in the community? Who are the stakeholders? Who is interested in seeing what is happening? It is important to remember that the community or audience is imagined but that this construct is vitally important in the way in which you interract with the community.
Research – Does this issue exist elsewhere? How has it been addressed elsewhere? With what success? What stories can be told – both literal and allegorical. What partnership possibilities exist here? If the project is in the area of development, you should consider creating a partnership with private business, government, civil society and academia where a wealth of experience and knowledge resides. Proper research ensures that the wheel is not re-invented in different places, but rather replicated.
Bring community together – Create an event, a point of contact that brings key role players together at the same time.
Build Vision – This involves a conversation around what people want to see being created. It is important that the conversation: a) Take place in the context of a safe (ritual) space (using principles of Lekgotla) b) Involve all key decision makers c) create outcomes that have the support and full commitment of leadership
Design sustainable system(s) – design development/business plan, rules, roles, organisation and responsibilities in such a way that they require relatively little management, maintenance and oversight but stimulates regular programmed action (work) by participants. The system design should engage concepts such as goals, outputs, responsibilities, structure, issues, measures and verifiable indicators of success. A useful paradigm for this kind of design can make use of Logical Framework Analysis (LFA)
Obtain buy-in / Perform the ritual – The concept of ritual is well understood in Africa but is more mysterious to Westerners. It is understood among facilitators that ritual performance – or edutainment which involves the community as participant/observers – is vital to getting buy-in to a process. Ritual has the quality of being able to create a strong shared memory of a decision and commitment to some outcome. Often it is the omission of ritual performance that is correlated with lack of buy-in and commitment.
Develop Organising Metaphors, Feedback Loops, Stories / On-going feedback around project status and success – Stakeholders and project participants need to receive regular feedback around project progress, direction and control. This effectively serves to motivate people and keep the project top-of-mind. Successful implementation reies on community participation, therefore sustained outreach and marketing to the community is imperative.

KM & Governance

4 steps to exploring social media

KMAadmin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:09:05 -0600

If you are new to social media and are still exploring the area, here are 4 steps to help you get the best out of it:

Step 1: Explore - search & browse for content that interests you. Find out where your friends, colleagues and peers spend their time on the web. Particularly look for notable commentators and figures in the area in which you are interested, subscribe to their personal blogs and follow the comments and conversations.
Step 2: Understand the space. The social media space has its own set of informal rules often termed 'netiquette' (the etiquette of the 'net). The fundamental idea is to treat others in the way that you would like to be treated - be polite, firm, honour your commitments and be consistent across all the networks that you choose to belong to. Also, commit to prompt feedback-there is nothing stranger in an electronic world than people who takes weeks to respond to an email. Also remind yourself anything you do on the 'net that can be directly traced back to you will speak volumes about 'who you are'; this image will either attract of repel potential contacts.
Step 3: Ask intelligent knowledge creation questions and give prompt feedback - you can do this by voting on content and by adding your own comments or even feeding back on other comments thus further stimulating a conversation. Also, while you can explore ideas, never attack (or 'flame' in internet language) people or groups.
Step 4: Contribute - start creating, editing and enhancing the KMAfrica.com knowledgebase. All our content is fed to a variety of knowledge-related sites and newsfeeds and so it creates awareness and interest. Use your personal blog and the SIGS to highlight your projects and interests and get feedback from other members. Find ways to tell your own story in creative ways using diverse media.

Fireside Chat

The Game of Knowledge Management

KMAadmin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:48:37 -0600

While there are a number of models available for practitioners of KM to help implement KM projects, few models have tried to deconstruct KM itself and how it works. Understanding a complex dynamic is often best done by adopting a metaphor; a good metaphor can go a long way and serve you well in understanding a complex system.

A reminder about metaphors

Metaphor is the use of one thing to represent something else because of some perceived common characteristic. For example: “the Boss has a razor tongue”. The metaphor allows for comparison of two things which are quite different in order to express an emotion, an idea, or a concept that cannot be described by literal language alone. In this comparison, the two ‘things’ compared exchange properties to create a whole new range of meaning. For example, in the phrase ‘he has a razor tongue’, words gain the sharpness, the danger, the precision of an instrument that can cause pain and even death – and all this from the conjunction of the two words. Metaphors lie to us. Tongues aren’t really razors. Therefore, well designed and delivered metaphors have the capacity to capture the imagination and are used to good effect in public speaking.

KM as a game?

A game is defined as “a socially constructed sequence of actions consisting of rituals, rules, roles, values and goals" We have extended the model to include and resources, language and Style (the unique way in which you are seen to play the game). Using this model, we can use it to understand and demystify any complex dyanamic in which human beings engage from parenting through business to psychiatry, war and even KM. The model described here has been used in a variety of environments ranging from KM through Change Management and even forecasting and simulation.

The model here uses the cardinal and ordinal points of the compass to highlight energies/archetypes that probably already exist in the system under examination. By identifying them, we turn up the volume on these key values, attitudes and behaviours. The way in which these key factors influence and inform each other creates the dynamic of the game or the living system.

Goals (East) – Every game has a goal, even if the goal is to simply continue playing the game in a sustainable manner or to win. While soccer, rugby and cricket matches come to an end with winners and losers, the game continues – season after season. Typical goals of business games might include sustainable profits, the creation of wealth and having rewarding interpersonal relationships. For organisations, goals are normally articulated in a Vision/Mission statements and in strategic plans. On a personal level, your narrative or 'story' articulates your goals as experienced through your identity. What are your personal goals? What are the goals of the games that you are playing? Do they contradict each other? Are the goals worth the effort? How have you reached clarity and agreement with your fellow players about what the goals and nature of the game are?
Language / Stories (South East) – each game has its own language which allows participants to talk about (and even create?) common experience. The game of Law, for example, requires that many years be spent at university and doing articles. During this period, the budding lawyer will come to know a language that not only allows the experience of law, but it also acts as an effective ‘barrier to entry’ to non-lawyers. But lawyers are not the only ones with a unique language – every field of human endeavour has its language, set of symbols, metaphors and figures of speech that are continuously repeated. What language do you engage in? Is it the language of creativity, opportunity, teamwork and success? Could you appropriate language from other areas to expand your experience and describe your world?
Resources (South) – it is likely that 'money' springs to mind when you hear this word but resources also means emotional support, know-how and process knowledge, equipment, networks, access to information, support systems and 'people you know'. The question of resources asks you to make clear what is it you actually need to make the game work. You may also wish to see a well designed vision or goal as a resource.
Style (South West) – Style is the way you play the game. Style embodies your behaviours, thoughts and words. Irrespective of what you are playing, you bring your unique personal style to the game. Style is learned and developed over time and is strongly influenced by role models, self perception and particularly by feedback. Much as sportsmen view videos of their performance in order to improve themselves, feedback allows you to see which behaviours provide the desirable outcomes. Where do you get your feedback from and is it helping you to achieve the desired results? Are you flexible enough to question your own style, open enough to ask for feedback and creative enough to experiment with new styles? Are you aware that much of your style is influenced by your early childhood experiences and from observing how others respond to situations?
Values (West) – Values are are standards or qualities considered worthwhile or desirable. They are abstract ideas about what an organisation/ society/ community believes to be good, right, and desirable. They represent your deeply held beliefs demonstrated through day-to-day behaviours and are the fundamental principles that guide community-driven processes. Values provide a basis for action and communicate expectations for participation and make a public pronouncement about how the organisation expects everyone to behave. Values should endure over the long-term and provide a constant source of strength for the individual or organisation that holds them.
It has been suggested by a number of writers that values create conditions that make certain beliefs and behaviours more likely. It is important to understand that whilst these values are influenced by the culture from which you come, you are ultimately responsible for constructing your personal values. So spending time on your values is an important exercise which becomes more useful as you read over and update them from time to time. What values do you need to support in order to play a particular game? Are these values reinforced and expressed in both your language and behaviour? Is there a discrepancy between expressed values and behaviour? How do you come to know what values are required to successfully play the games you are engaged in?
Rules (North West) – In order to play a game well, you need to be clear about what the rules are – both written and unwritten – and work with them stretching the boundaries where possible. Rules stipulate what can and cannot be done and not playing by the rules means you risk penalty or even exclusion from the game. Can the rules be bent or questioned? Are the rules applied consistently? Are the rules of the game stifling innovation and creativity? Is everyone clear about what the rules are?
Roles (North) – Every human being plays a number of different roles in day-to-day life. In addition to the kinship roles (you are someone’s child, lover, brother/sister, father/mother etc..) you probably play many different roles in the workplace as well. Think of the roles of friend, confidante, coach, mentor, boss, subordinate or even petty tyrant that you play within the context of your job title. Are the roles clear for you? Are there better ways to perform these roles? Are you expending the appropriate amount of energy in these roles? How would you know if you were performing your role exceptionally well or badly? Who gives you feedback? Some organisational theorists have suggested that organisational job titles are the same as roles performed by actors on the stage. The difference is that you interpret, direct, script and perform the role yourself. The challenge then is to perform the role as best as you can without attachment to it - be open to new experience by changing and evolving your performance.
Rituals (North East) – A ritual refers to Speech, action, singing, and other activities which often contain a symbolic meaning, performed in a specific order. In organisations, audits, year-end functions, teambuilding and weekly meetings are examples of typical rituals. A characteristic of ritual is that it has the quality of 'collapsing time' – a 5 minute presentation by the MD can encompass many years of the organisations' history. Another characteristics of ritual is that they can be performed so regularly that they start to lose their meaning and many people ‘go through the motions’ without quite understanding what they are really doing and why. Be clear about the rituals you engage in and their outcomes. Are they really necessary? Could they be changed, simplified or even removed? What relationships exist between rituals and outcomes?

Ideas & Experiments

Try and see KM as a game using this model.
How could the games you play become more interesting, rewarding and FUN?
Try to name the games around you – these could 'big games' like the economy, science, love, poverty, culture, politics, medicine, parenting and war.
Remember the root of the words Delusion (Deludo – Latin for 'Outside of the game') and Illusion (Inludo – Latin for 'In the game'). Are there some games you want to enter? Are there some you wish to leave? What do you have to sacrifice in order to play? Can you be flexible enough to play in different ways? Who is inviting you to play?
What are you perceiving? How do others see it? Remember that 'seeing' a particular game is a product of your perception and creative ability. Your leadership ability is about seeing a new, empowering game and somehow influencing others to see and experience it in the same way you do.
Try deconstructing your key relationships in terms of a game. What are the Rules, Roles, Resources, Goals, Rituals, Language, Values and Styles required to play the game really well? How confident are you about your gameplaying? How many games are you involved in right now?
Where do you get feedback from that tells you how well (or badly) you are perceived to be playing the game? How open are you to feedback – particularly negative feedback? What adjustments can you make to ensure that you become even more proficient?
Engage the language and metaphor of play and experimentation in whatever you do. Some languages engage this concept in interesting ways - in high forms of Japanese, for example, every verb is preceded by saying ‘played at’. For example, I play at being the MD, I play at being an artist, I play at being a coach and I play at being a father and even my father is playing at being dead. Somehow the word play is a reminder that you are still learning, experimenting and growing in a light-hearted, open way. Remember, it isn’t just life and death, it is a game. Enjoy it!
Be clear about what games you are engaged in, how much energy you expend in playing, what results you expect and why you are doing it.

Fireside Chat