Web 2.0

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

Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development

KMAadmin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:18:37 -0600

Web 2.0 tools and approaches are radically changing the ways we create, share, collaborate and publish digital information through the Internet. Participatory Web 2.0 for development – or Web2forDev for short – is a way of employing web services to intentionally improve information-sharing and online collaboration for development. Web 2.0 presents us with new opportunities for change – as well as challenges – that we need to better understand and grasp. This special issue shares learning and reflections from practice and considers the ways forward for using Web 2.0 for development.

PART I: OVERVIEW

Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development
The two hands of Web2forDev: a conference summary

PART II: STUDIES OF WEB 2.0 TOOLS

Exploring the potentials of blogging for development
Web 2.0 tools to promote social networking for the Forest Connect alliance
Promoting information-sharing in Ghana using video blogging
Mobile phones: the silver bullet to bridge the digital divide?

PART III: ISSUE-BASED STUDIES

Anti social-computing: indigenous language, digital video and intellectual property
Tools for enhancing knowledge-sharing in agriculture: improving rural livelihoods in Uganda
Ushahidi or ‘testimony’: Web 2.0 tools for crowdsourcing crisis information
Web 2.0 for Aboriginal cultural survival: a new Australian outback movement

PART IV: THEORY AND REFLECTION ON PRACTICE

Circling the point: from ICT4D to Web 2.0 and back again
Web 2.0 tools for development: simple tools for smart people
The Web2forDev story: towards a community of practice

PART V: TIPS FOR TRAINERS

Web 2.0 tools: a series of short introductions

Each introductory guide provides a brief description of the Web 2.0 tool and how it can be used for development purposes, along with links to further information and where applications can be downloaded online (more information also in e-participation):

Blogging
Micro-blogging and Twitter
Wikis
Online social networking
RSS feeds
Tagging
Social bookmarking
Glossary of Web 2.0 terms

This special issue is co-published with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

KM & Communications

A model for community participation in African libraries to preserve Indigenous Knowledge - Betsie Greyling

storytelling — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:03:22 -0600

A model for community participation in African libraries to preserve Indigenous Knowledge.

Author: Betsie Greyling, Senior Systems Librarian, eThekwini Municipal Library
PO Box 917, Durban, 4000, South Africa E-mail: greylingb@durban.gov.za

Abstract

Africa and African libraries and information centres are poorly equipped to make a meaningful contribution to the current global digital knowledge economy. The lack of management systems for indigenous knowledge perpetuates the low local content on the Web, retards buy-in from local communities into digital resources and inhibits digital skills development. Afro-centric Libraries and Information Services should include provision of indigenous knowledge resources. The paper discusses a model for community participation in establishing a digital library of indigenous knowledge. It focuses on public libraries and aims to create a virtual resource that is in step with the global information society while at the same time empowering citizens through preservation of indigenous knowledge and through development of digital skills.

The model creates a platform using existing library infrastructure from where the project is carried out to communities. A multi-pronged approach uses community workers to collect oral and visual material, community members are taught how to add local content to the World Wide Web at the local library, and the library acts as moderator and custodian of the indigenous knowledge resource. A proviso of the model is free public Internet access at the library and the use of social Web 2.0 technology. People of all social and age groups are employed to steer the programme at ground level while volunteer contributions to the database is encouraged. This provides the potential for collaboration from the whole community.

The model will provide a virtual library resource of local indigenous knowledge, freely accessible to all members of the community. Availability of local content on the Web will enhance use of digital resources. Improved digital skills will result in economic empowerment of communities and be instrumental in poverty alleviation.

Ultimately the model will enable communities to manage their own indigenous knowledge in an economically viable manner. Global exposure of local communities will attract international economic, scientific and cultural interest. Virtual indigenous knowledge resources in African Libraries will play a pivotal role in the current global digital knowledge community whilst democratisation of the societies will progress through provision of knowledge.

Introduction

Digital information and communication technologies have revolutionised the ways in which knowledge and technical know-how travel around the world. The extent to which information requirements are met by the Internet throughout the world is reflected in usage statistics. According to the latest published figures 70 % of the population in North America use the Internet; usage in South America is 18 % whereas in Africa Internet penetration is 3.6% (Internet World Stats 2007).

Apart from the problem of accessibility, the global trend of using the Internet for preservation and dissemination of information causes a dilemma for the African information community. Amidst this world of plenty in terms of information and knowledge, the African local content on the Web is very low, because of lack of capacity to record, transfer and disseminate information. The result is that Africa and the library and information centres in Africa are at a major disadvantage in the current knowledge economy and are poorly equipped to make a meaningful contribution to the African Renaissance. Buy-in to digital resources by local communities remains low because of the paucity of local content which contributes to the failure of digital skills development.

A model is proposed whereby online indigenous knowledge resources are established as an integral part of local Public Library and Information Services. Web 2.0 technologies are used to create a collaborative online local indigenous knowledge database. The community assumes ownership of the database, while the library focuses on custodianship of the information resource. Community participation ensures the collecting, recording and preserving of local knowledge, and ultimately accomplishes knowledge sharing, skills development, job opportunities and empowerment within communities. The library provides database management, training and support.

Why do we need to preserve Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous knowledge is part and parcel of the culture and history of any local community. Development agencies “need to learn from local communities to enrich the development process” (World Bank, 1998). Indigenous knowledge also affects the wellbeing of the majority of people in developing countries (Ngulube, 2002). Some 80% of the world’s population depend on indigenous knowledge to meet their medicinal needs and at least 50% rely on indigenous knowledge for food supply (Nyumba, 2006). Indigenous knowledge is indeed the cornerstone for building an own identity and ensuring coherence of social structures within communities.

Because indigenous knowledge is mostly stored in people’s minds and passed on through generations by word of mouth rather than in written form, it is vulnerable to rapid change (Sithole, 2006). Development processes like rural/urban migration and changes to population structure as a result of famine, epidemics, displacement or war may all contribute to loss of indigenous knowledge. Even in remote areas the powers that push global or just non-local content, i.e. television, advertising, etc., are much stronger than those pushing local content (Nyumba, 2006). Indigenous knowledge faces extinction unless it is properly documented and disseminated (World Bank, 1998). This crisis can be averted by employing the model as set out below.

A model for community participation to preserve Indigenous Knowledge

The foundation of the proposed model is a triangular approach with three cornerstones, i.e. the public library, the community and current information ICT technologies. Together they shape the outcome of the programme and are inter-dependent upon one another. The model was originally developed to suit networked public library systems such as exist in the metropolitan areas in South Africa. These networked systems consist of multiple branch libraries in urban, peri-urban and rural areas, and a good IT infrastructure with free public Internet access. The model is fully adaptable and the programme can be run equally successfully from a single library, as long as there is Internet available in the area.

Information and Communication Technology

Developments in information and communication technologies over the last few decades have prompted a shift from collection development to collection management in libraries (Rowley, 2003; Lwoga & Sife, 2006). The recent emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has enabled large-scale collaboration in the creation of data online (Farkas, 2007). Furthermore the high degree of flexibility in the latest social software allows a dynamic environment which can be easily adapted to serve specific community needs.

The proposed model for the preservation of indigenous knowledge is built around an online database using Open Access social software technology. The database is created as a wiki, which is a Web page that allows users to easily modify content. It is an excellent tool for collaborative writing and for creating and editing shared documents (Farkas, 2007). A wiki can be viewed by anyone who has an Internet connection and changes to the content can be made by anyone with editing privileges. The ultimate example of a wiki is the Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that has recently taken the world by storm (http://en.wikipedia.org). Wikis are people-centered, they promote discovery, creation and sharing of knowledge (Grand, 2006). Ultimately they promote lifelong learning through community information provision.

Wiki software can be downloaded from the Web. Database set-up takes into account user needs at all levels of the society and can be expanded as new needs arise. The database is organized into different pages and the community’s own branding is added. In accordance with Mosimege (2005) it is indexed using folksonomies rather than brief descriptors normally used in standard taxonomic databases to avoid compromising the holistic nature of indigenous knowledge. Content is added in plain text, so there is no need to learn HTML. WikiMedia software supports any language and different media can be used to record information, i.e. text, sound and images. The website is hosted off-site to afford free access to all members of the community. Off-site server hosting with regular back-ups and downloads takes care of risk management, and new software releases and enhancements are supported by the development agency with seamless transitions to the end-user. Website ranking is enhanced by linking to relevant local authority and/or national websites.

The Library

The individual’s right to free and equal access to information and knowledge is a fundamental democratic principle (Hedelund, 2006). As part of social services, public libraries are well positioned to insure free and equal access to information and knowledge. By virtue of their focus on preservation and dissemination of information, they are ideally situated to facilitate the management of knowledge (Snyman & Van Rooi, 2006) and to provide opportunities for individuals in local communities to acquire the information necessary to make informed decisions.

The traditional view of the library’s role is to provide access to information resources by building up book collections. This restricted mindset is located in a time when books and documents were synonymous with ‘information’ (Myburgh, 2006). In order to meet the social obligation of the library today, the contemporary library has to provide access to information also from the oral, digital and any other media in which it is supplied. The use of computerized information systems can be effective as a system of conservation if they support the maintenance and transmission of knowledge within those communities that developed the knowledge (Mosimege, 2005).

Whilst libraries elsewhere in the world have been preserving indigenous knowledge for many years (e.g. Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (Smithsonian Institution, 2007); New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture (New York Public Library, 2007)) the situation has been different with African libraries. Libraries in Africa were originally designed to serve colonial interests, stocking books of primarily foreign content (Omole, 2002). With the coming of independence to many African states, transformation did not reach the libraries (Sithole, 2006).

The prohibitive cost of documenting indigenous knowledge compels libraries to establish public/private partnerships to achieve their goal. Among the notable successes in Africa are the telecentres in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania which provide rural and peri-urban areas with access to ICT’s through support of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (Kaddu & Nyumba, 2005). Richardson (1997) however argues that due to poor connectivity, inadequate infrastructure and human resource limitations, most of the centres provide very limited services.

Community oriented programmes in libraries elsewhere in the world include the Nepal Rural Community Library programme where a self-supporting community library system had been established, providing access to computers and the Internet (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2006). The libraries now develop local content which is used to share information across villages. In Chile the BiblioRedes Programme is meeting the communities’ need to preserve and promote local history by providing computers with Internet access in four hundred public libraries countrywide (Pacheco & Abbagliati, 2006).

The proposed model is in step with global goals as constituted in the African Charter for Popular Participation (United Nations, 1990), the United Nations Social Development Plan (United Nations, 1995) and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2000). It is also underpinned by the three guidelines for libraries as set out in the South African national policy document for Indigenous Knowledge Systems. The policy states the need for “a new model of library service in order to:

Facilitate indigenous and local community information access based on their own identified needs;
Provide opportunities for indigenous and local communities to actively record and share their contemporary history, culture and language with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples; and
Use new technology creatively to support Indigenous and local community development.” (South Africa. Department of Science & Technology, 2005).
The model proposes to use existing public library infrastructure as a platform from which the knowledge management programme is launched. It is planned to launch a pilot programme in Durban, South Africa, using the well established public library system. In the greater Durban area eighty five branch libraries, spread out over urban and peri-urban areas across the city and the rural areas surrounding the city, all have internet connectivity through the municipal network. In accordance with the model the library serves as the hub for the program and has various roles to fulfil.

Leadership

The library initiates the programme and enters into a partnership with the community. A program manager is appointed to steer the programme, liaise with stakeholders and spearhead marketing campaigns. Liaison with community leadership feeds into a consensus strategy which informs all aspects of the programme, including the project plan, funding, appointment of local field workers, data selection policy, methodology and mobilization of community members. Expected outcomes and responsibilities of stakeholders are defined and documented. Regular needs assessments and status reports are used to re-direct the programme if necessary.

Coordination

Within the library a department for digital resources is tasked to manage the indigenous knowledge repository in its entirety. This department coordinates the technical aspects of the ICT component as well as the community component of the programme. Centralised infrastructure such as office space and ICT infrastructure is provided. The logistics of daily administration, marketing, human resources and finances are the responsibility of the library. The appointment of indigenous knowledge fieldworkers is coordinated by the library. Funding and existing infrastructure will prescribe the roll out of the programme. Ideally a field worker is appointed at every library to serve the surrounding community. Community liaison and outreach is maintained through the central office.

Facilitation

The library facilitates database design, set-up and branding, along with free public Internet access at any branch library or other community centre from which the programme is run. Because the knowledge database is hosted on the World Wide Web, remoteness is not a prohibitive problem in gathering information. Information gathering is facilitated among all community members through indigenous knowledge field workers, whether at the library or at homes through outreach programmes. People are invited to share their knowledge, stories, histories etc. by visiting the library where they are offered the choice of either recording the information on the website themselves or allowing the field worker to enter the data. Alternatively field workers visit those members of the community who are not able get to the library, at their homes. Their stories are recorded on site in order to post the information later on the website.

Education and skills development

There are two aspects to the educational role of the library. Firstly the model prescribes the appointment of indigenous knowledge field workers. Because these are the people who are doing the data collection at grass roots level, it is important that they come from the immediate community. This ensures the building of trust relationships and buy-in from the communities. Field workers need to be trained in IT skills, interview skills and audio-visual recording skills. Secondly, the model is structured to encourage community members to join actively in the programme by recording their own data. For people who lack the necessary skills the field workers provide basic computer training and as much support as is necessary. Training sessions are run by the field worker at the library for groups or individuals. In this way digital skills transfer is achieved widely throughout the community.

Custodianship

The library acts as custodian of the indigenous knowledge e-resource that is created. At no point does it act as owner, but takes on the role of moderator of the database. This involves editing and organizing of the data, indexing, creating of folksonomies, hyperlinking, etc. to ensure effective retrieval (Hartman, 2006). Because the WikiMedia software allows input in any language, translation of selective data needs to be considered. To ensure adherence to selection policies and intellectual property rights, the library must review new input on an ongoing basis.

Outreach and marketing

Successful implementation of the model is reliant on community participation, therefore sustained outreach to the community is imperative. Continuous engagement with and mobilization of the community is structured by the library as ongoing outreach activities in various forms, e.g. storytelling forums, cultural events, social functions, exhibitions, historical and educational tours, craft workshops and the like. All sectors of the community are targeted, across all ages and socio-economic groups. These activities are a natural extension of the library’s normal outreach programme so the methodologies are well developed. Regular promotion of the programme is done through the local press as well as posters and leaflets distributed at community centres, health clinics, libraries, schools, shops, markets and other areas in the community where there is high pedestrian traffic. Introductions and presentations at community meetings further serves to market the programme.

The Community

Metropolitan areas in Africa are typically surrounded by peri-urban and rural areas, with large populations where there is little coherence in social structures, partly due to the dispersed nature of the living environment and partly due to the poor economic situation prevalent in these areas. It has been shown over the past few decades that top-down social development strategies do not achieve sustained public participation (Korten, 1983, 1990). The current model favours the micro-level approach that acknowledges the dictum that “development is about people” (Coetzee, 2001), and thus adopts a bottom-up approach, with the community as the most important member in this partnership.

The model strives towards inclusivity of every sphere of the community and all members are encouraged to participate and take ownership of the programme. Ultimately the programme is about preservation of community knowledge by the community, and therefore the community is regarded as the owner. The only roles that the Libraries and the ICT components play in this model are that of support as described above. Main role players among the community are the leaders, the programme field workers and the community members themselves.

Community leaders

Leaders from the community play a pivotal role in the establishment and continuation of the programme. Local leaders such as tribal authorities and ward councillors inform the direction of the programme to suit community needs. Their cooperation is indispensable in marketing the programme and mobilizing the community. Protracted engagement of local leaders in discussions around indigenous knowledge issues ensures alignment of targets that are in keeping with current sentiments and promote the sustained community interest in the programme.

Field workers

Field workers from the immediate community are used to drive the programme at ground level. They are known in and have intimate knowledge of the community. Thus they are able to build up trust relationships with and secure buy-in from members of the community. A natural consequence of such practice is the awareness and promotion of the programme that is carried out to the community in an informal way.

Field workers are stationed at community libraries but report to the programme manager at the central library. They are responsible for data-collection, digital skills transfer to community members and posting of the data on the website. They reach out to the community by inviting people to come to the library to post their information on the Internet. They also go out to functions and visit individuals as needed to do recordings which are added to the database later. Where areas are too remote for community members to easily get to the library, the library takes the programme to the villages to record the stories and oral histories on site. Ongoing promotion of the programme highlights advantages and fosters a culture of knowledge sharing.

Community members

The community in all its complexity constitutes the natural resource that forms the basis of the model. Ownership rests with the community and through community participation sustainability of the programme is ensured. Special target groups in the community include the elderly, the youth, cultural groups including artists and crafters, professionals and technologists.

It is widely recognized that the older people in the community carry a wealth of indigenous knowledge, both cultural and technical. The oral nature of most of this knowledge makes it vulnerable to extinction and in that sense the resource is already in a virtual medium, albeit one that cannot be backed up or stored off-site. The model targets the older members of the community to preserve this oral knowledge for posterity through visits by field workers to record their stories, histories, songs, dances and other knowledge.

Young people are invited to play an active role in the preservation and dissemination of their community’s indigenous knowledge. Through liaison with schools in the surrounding area the model encourages high school learners to participate in a rotating panel of students to provide a reference service at the community library in the afternoons. As incentive they are trained in digital literacy skills and information retrieval skills and awarded with competency certificates, free photocopies for their school projects and the like. The project will benefit from this practice, as these skills are continuously transferred back into the community, creating a mesh network of skilled people. Rural schools around the metropolitan perimeter have Internet access facilitated through public donor funding, which opens up the possibility of students and teachers participating in the programme by posting information directly onto the database via the Internet. This in turn creates secondary educational opportunities in the form of digital assignments. The model allows free participation with the necessary checks and balances built in through the moderation process.

Cultural groups are targeted to record past and present cultural life, the arts and crafts of the community, their music, songs, dances and rites. The model is structured to allow volunteer indigenous knowledge champions within formal groups in the community to take the initiative to gather information and post it on the website. The library provides support in the form of photographs, audio-visual recordings, free Internet access and appropriate organization of the online data. The selection of material is left up to individuals and groups, and support is provided to protect intellectual property rights.

The model expects professionals and technologists within the community to share their knowledge with other community members. This may be in the form of tacit or explicit knowledge which can be transferred to the website. Members from formal community structures, commerce and local government departments (e.g. health, agriculture, education, environmental affairs) with local information that belongs in the public domain will be encouraged to make the information available for posting on the database. In the case of published data that emanated from research on local material, the information falls within the scope of indigenous knowledge and as such forms part of the heritage of the local community. Typically at museums, research on local culture and natural history often results in research publications. This is a valuable educational resource for local communities and the information should be freely available to the community at large, albeit at a layman’s level, thus contributing to lifelong education.

Results

Community participation in a programme to preserve indigenous knowledge is expected to produce the following outcomes:

A collaborative database of local indigenous knowledge will be created.
A website will be established, providing free access to local indigenous knowledge, not only to members of the community, but to the global internet community.
Local content will be added to the World Wide Web with relevance to local communities.
Free Internet access will be provided to poor/low-income communities.
Use of digital resources will be enhanced among local communities.
People will be skilled in digital literacy and information literacy.
Conservation of indigenous knowledge and through that preservation of culture will be achieved.
African libraries will gain a foothold in the international information community.

A website of local indigenous knowledge will inform local technologies and culture. Improved digital skills will result in economic empowerment of communities and progress in poverty alleviation. Knowledge provision will enable behaviour changes and informed decision making, as well promote the creation of new knowledge within the community. It will stimulate innovative thinking, aid learning and promote indigenous technologies. Formal and informal knowledge levels in the community will be enhanced, leading to an informed society. Ultimately a culture of knowledge sharing between community members will improve social cohesion in the community.

Conclusion

By implementing this model for the preservation of indigenous knowledge communities will be able to manage their own indigenous knowledge in an economically viable and sustainable manner. Global exposure of local communities will attract international economic, scientific and cultural interest with potential growth in industries such tourism, agriculture and the like. A sustainable people-centred, Afro-centric digital library service will impact on social change and will play a pivotal role in the current global digital knowledge community, whilst democratisation of societies will progress through provision of knowledge. Finally African cultural values will be affirmed in the face of globalisation.

References

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KM, Emerging Technologies and Innovative Schemes

The KMAfrica.com Web 2.0 KnowledgeHub

KMAadmin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:28:15 -0700

A few people have asked about the architecture and vision of www.KMAfrica.com and so here is a short overview: The system is based on Drupal, a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) program. The system is described as one of the most popular content management frameworks in the world with a large user community and a wide range of applications from simple websites to complex administration systems being built on the Drupal system.

Drupal can store, share and stream any combination of media types ranging to simple text files through photos to audio and complex video materials. But the really exciting part of the technology is its' ability to facilitate 'making the connection' - to allow users the freedom to create and join in the kinds of conversations that allow know-how to connect with need-to-know. When I was at the KMAfrica2007 conference, it struck me how the unstructured coincidental and synchronistic conversations that happened during the coffee breaks were the most interesting, generative and memorable. They helped me with my growing edges at the time. So we are going to look for means to stimulate these conversations using KMAfrica.com thereby transforming the site into the vision of becoming the African Knowledge Hub. There were a number of presentations at KMAfrica 2007 about how the ability to make the connection within a peer group facilitated great strides in knowledge sharing and understanding. It is our vision at KMAfrica.com that these technologies will provide the communication tools to KM professionals and students throughout Africa to participate, contribute share and benefit from our shared knowledge.

Steve Banhegyi

Web 2.0

Knowledge Management in Fractured Societies: Women’s Initiatives

Abstract

Introduction

Knowledge and Power

Location

International Instruments and Knowledge Production

Women and ICTs

Case Studies

Conclusion

Footnotes & Bibliography

Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development

Contents

A model for community participation in African libraries to preserve Indigenous Knowledge - Betsie Greyling

Abstract

Introduction

Why do we need to preserve Indigenous Knowledge

A model for community participation to preserve Indigenous Knowledge

Information and Communication Technology

The Library

Leadership

Coordination

Facilitation

Education and skills development

Custodianship

Outreach and marketing

The Community

Community leaders

Field workers

Community members

Results

Conclusion

References

The KMAfrica.com Web 2.0 KnowledgeHub