4th IAALD Africa Conference - Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals

The International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) Africa Chapter  and the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA)  invite proposals for papers and workshops/seminars to be presented/organized at the 4th IAALD Africa Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, 30th May – 1st June 2018.

Conference theme: Agricultural innovations, information and knowledge: Catalyzing the attainment of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the African Union Agenda 2063

Proposals for Papers 
Papers should reflect and explore the conference theme - “Agricultural Innovations, Information and Knowledge: Catalyzing the Attainment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union Agenda 2063” and address any of the sub-themes (see Call for Papers and Workshops). Proposals for papers should be sent to Gracian Chimwaza (gracian@itoca.org copy itoca@itoca.org) no later than 30th September 2017

Proposals for Workshops
Capacity development is a major component of the IAALD Africa Conference and we invite proposals for interactive workshops intended to convey knowledge or skills to agricultural information professionals in areas relating to the sub-themes of the conference. Workshops can be organized as 2/3-day pre- conference events (27th-29th May) or half-day event (31st May). Proposals for workshops should be sent to Gracian Chimwaza (gracian@itoca.org copy itoca@itoca.org) no later than 30th September 2017.

Download the call for papers HERE.
More information will be made available HERE.

IAALD Africa Chapter
c/o ITOCA-Information Training & Outreach Centre for Africa
88 Opaal Road, Lyttleton, Centurion, South Africa
P. O. Box 11632, Die Hoewes, 0163, Centurion, South Africa
Tel: +27-12-664 1836, +27-12-664 1627
E-mail: gracian@itoca.org copy itoca@itoca.org

Multi-actor platform to advocate for open data in Ghana on the way

Group photo after opening session.
Photo: Justin Chisenga

Participants at the Forum on Open Data, Open Science and Open Access in Agriculture in Ghana have agreed to establish a multi-actor platform to advocate for open data in the country.

Initial ground work on the platform, the Ghana Open Data Alliance, has been done by the National Information Technology Agency (NITA). The Forum provided NITA with an opportunity to bring on board several other stakeholders, including the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen (GNAFF), and Farm Radio International, among many others.

The participants also agreed that appropriate open data policy framework, capacity development in data management, and data sharing standards, are key to the success of open data and open science in agriculture in the country.

Presentations and discussions at the Forum highlighted key initiatives on open data and open access in the country, concerns and fears, and the challenges being faced. The presentations included the following:

• Open Data and Open Science in Agriculture: Global Trends and Major Initiatives – Mr. Justin Chisenga, Capacity Development Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy.
• Building Capacities for Open Access and Visibility of African Scholarly Work - Experiences from AAU – Ms Nodumo Dhlamini, Director ICT Services & Knowledge Management, Association of African Universities (AAU), Accra.
• FARA and Open Data & Open Science in Agriculture - Mr. Dady Demby, Knowledge Management Officer, Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Accra.
• Ghana Open Data in Agriculture  – Mr. Eric Akumiah, Project Manager, Ghana Open Data Initiative, National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Accra. 
• Open Access to Agricultural Research in Ghana - Dr. Joel Sam, Director, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research – Institute for Scientific and Technological Information, Accra.
• Strengthening the Use of ICT for Agriculture, Rural Development and Wealth Creation - Mr. John Awuku Dziwornu, Vice President, Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen, Asutuare, Ghana. 
• Social Innovation and Open Data Nexus Critical for Smallholder Empowerment - Mr. Worlali Senyo, Director of Growth, R & D, Farmerline Ltd, Kumasi.

Speaking at the opening session, Dr Victor Kwame Agyeman, Director-General of the country’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), indicated that the CSIR was committed to open access and would soon implement an open access policy to improve access to its research.

In is opening address, Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Food and Agriculture

Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, FAO Representative
to Ghana.  Photo: Justin Chisenga

Organization Representative to Ghana, emphasized the need for governments to put in place enabling environments favourable to open data sharing, and regulations to enforce common standards for collecting, producing, sharing and using open data to ensure that new data is safely and ethically transformed into public goods.

Participants at the forum came from the following institutions, among others:

• National Information Technology Agency
• Ministry of Food and Agriculture
• Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fishermen
• Farm Radio International
• Association of African Universities
• Forum for Agriculture Research in Africa
• University of Ghana College for Basic and Applied Sciences
• CSIR Food Research Institute
• CSIR Water Research Institute
• CSIR Institute for Scientific and Technological Information
• CSIR Science and Technology Policy Research Institute

What remains now is for the participants at the meeting to take the initiative and and establish the platform as soon as possible.

What is the state of open data and open science in agriculture in Ghana?

What is the state of open data and open science in agriculture in Ghana? What are the major initiatives in the country on open access to agricultural data and information? What major challenges are being faced by stakeholders? Which institutions are leading open data and open science initiatives in the country? Do Ghanaian researchers in agriculture support open data and open science and why? Are major research institutions ready to share their research data? How about farmers’ organizations, what is their view about open data and open science in agriculture?

The above and many more questions will be addressed at the Forum on Open Data, Open Science and Open Access to Information in Agriculture in Ghana to be held on 11 July 2016 in Accra.

The goal of the forum is to provide a platform for stakeholders in Ghana to discuss strategies and share knowledge on institutional and national initiatives aimed at enhancing the visibility, accessibility and usability of agricultural data, science and information to enhance their contribution to food security and good nutrition

Participants at the forum will come:

• Ministries of agriculture, science and technology and related fields
• Agricultural and related research organizations
• Universities/schools/faculties of agriculture
• Private sector organizations 
• Farmer organizations
• Media organizations
• Civil society organizations (NGOs) involved in agriculture and rural development

The following organizations are collaborating on organizing the forum:

• Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (INSTI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
• Association of African Universities (AAU)
• Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA)
• College of Basic and Applied Sciences (CBAS) of the University of Ghana (UG)
• Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)
• Research4Life
• CIARD – Open Agricultural Knowledge for Development

A report on the Forum will be published on this blog next week. You can also follow also follow @JustinChisenga quicjk updates from the Forum. Look out for #AgriOpenData.

Access to ICT during training workshops, a lesson from AGORA/TEEAL workshop in Nigeria

Participants at  the AGORA/TEEAL workshop using personal laptops
 and  broadband modems to access online resources

On 18 August 2015, I walked into a meeting room at the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR), Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. The room was to be the venue for The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) / Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) Training-of-Trainers Workshop, 18 – 20 August 2015, which required the use of computers connected to the Internet (for AGORA) and local intranet (for TEEAL). The only ICT facilities available in the room were an LCD projector and a laptop belonging to my co-facilitator, Ms Olanyika Fatoki from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. There were no computers in sight for use by the 35 participants we were expecting to take part in the workshop.

I feared for the worst.

Since 2004, one major challenge that I and colleagues at the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA) have experienced, when planning training workshops on using Research4Life electronic resources, has been finding a room or venue with adequate ICT facilities to accommodate the more than 30 participants that usually attend such workshops.  Searching, viewing and retrieving PDF versions of scientific journal articles are a major component of the training AGORA training workshops.

Walking a training room without computers connected to the Internet was not re-assuring at all.

I was wrong and worried for nothing.

On the second day of the workshop, when most of the practical work and exercises on retrieving online resource from AGORA and TEEAL database were scheduled to take place, the training room had 35 participants in attendance and most of them had access to computing devices connected to the Internet.

Most of the participants brought their personal laptops and broadband modems (and wireless broadband routers) to the workshop, and were enthusiastically following the presentations/demonstrations and taking part in practical exercises requiring them to conduct online searches on AGORA. About four participants, who did not have laptops, used their smartphones to access AGORA, conduct searches and retrieve PDF versions of journal articles.

A workshop participant using her smartphone to carry out
practical exercises on AGORA

This development, where individuals have personal access to mobile ICT facilities should also make it relatively easy to organize training workshops requiring the use of ICT facilities. The cost of hiring ICT facilities, and sometimes sophisticated computer rooms, can now be reduced.

This also should have an impact on the provision of digital-based library and information services to users especially in academic institutions. If potential users of scholarly online resources have access to ICTs, potentially allowing them to access digital resources anytime from anywhere, librarians in Africa should re-think their information services’ provision strategies. There is no need to continue focusing on providing digital-based information services to users within the four walls of library buildings.

Attracting the youth to agriculture: where are the role models?

Ask any young man in Africa who wants to be a top African soccer star whom he would want to be and the names of Didier Drogba, Emmanuel Adebayo, Samuel Eto, Asamoah Gyan and a host of other names would pop up. How about as a top African actress? Lupita Nyong'o, Omotola Jelade-Ekeinde, Genevieve Nnaji, Omoni Oboli, Patience Ozokwor (Mama G), etc. will be mentioned. How about actors? Desmond Elliot, Ramsey Noah, Nkem Owoh, Jim Iyke and many others. These are role models if not “idols” for millions of youth in Africa. They are what dreams are made of for many aspiring footballers, actors and actresses Africa.

All professions in Africa have role models for the youth, may be except agriculture. Or are they there? If so, where are they?

If Africa is to attract the youth to agriculture, whom should we introduce to them as a role model?

e-Debate on "Youth sustaining family farming through ICTs" - 22 September - 7 October 2014

From: The ARDYIS Project Team, CTA

In the context of the International Year of Family Farming, and in the framework of its ARDYIS project, the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), in collaboration with the African Youth Foundation (AYF) is organising an e-debate on “Youth sustaining family farming through ICTs” on the ARDYIS discussion group (http://dgroups.org/groups/youth) from 22^nd September – 7^th October 2014.

During the 3 weeks, the discussions will be focused on youth, family farming and ICTs (experiences, opportunities, challenges, recommendations) and several Subject Matter Experts will be joining the debate to share their experience and answer to youth questions/queries. By the end of the debate, a synthesis report will be prepared and shared on the occasion of the World Food Day 2014.

Please find the announcement on the e-debate here: http://bit.ly/1p7aFC1 and a short introductory note on the topic here: http://bit.ly/1rH4XZh

You are invited to participate in the debate and share your views. Kindly also share this information with people in your networks who might be interested to take part!

Forthcoming Web 2.0 & Social Media training events in sub-Saharan Africa

Particiapnts at a Web 2.0 Learnining Opportunity training,
 in Accra, Ghana in 2013

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA),  in collaboartion with national partner organizations, has the following Web 2.0 & Social Media face to face training events in the pipeline for sub-Saharan Africa:

• 01-05 Sept 2014, National Library Service (NLS), Lilongwe, Malawi. Application closing date: 11 August, 2014. More info.
• 08-12 Sept 2014, Department of Information and Communication Studies, University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia. Application closing date: 11 August, 2014. More info.
• 08-12 Sept 2014, National University of Lesotho (NUL), Roma, Lesotho. Application closing date: 11 August, 2014. More info.
• 15-19 Sept 2014, Mananga Centre for Regional Integration and Management Development; Ezulwini Campus, Ezulwini, Swaziland. Application closing date: 25 August, 2014. More info.
• 22-26 Sept 2014, Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria. Application closing date: 1 September, 2014. More info.
• 22-26 Sept 2014, SomaliREN c/o SIMAD University, Mogadishu, Somalia. By invitation only.
• 20-26 Oct, 2014, National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research, New-Bussa, Niger State, Nigeria. To be announced
• Date t.b.d. UNIPORT, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. To be announced
• Date t.b.d. Democratic Republic of Congo. To be announced

In general, the Web 2.0 and Social Media Learning Opportunity cover the folloiwng:

• Web 2.0 and Social Media: concepts and principles;
• Selective access to information via (i) advanced multilingual search options; (ii) RSS and (iii) automated alerts;
• Content curation: Tagging and Social Bookmarking;
• Photos for the web;
• Remote collaboration (e.g. GoogleDrive, Dropbox);
• Online conversations (Skype, Google Hangouts, Viber, Whatsapp);
• Online mapping (New Google Maps);
• Blogging (Blogger or Wordpress);
• Micro-blogging (Twitter);
• Social networking (LinkedIn and Facebook), risks and mitigation measures;
• Online Communities of Practice;
• Web 2.0 and Social Media for Agri-business and marketing.

 

Vist the Web2forDev website for more information.

Research4Life helping Africa to attain MDGs

Forty-eight countries in Africa have free or low cost online access to over 35,000 peer-reviewed international scientific journals, books, and databases worth tens of millions of dollars, thanks to the Research4Life Programmes led by the World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the world’s leading scientific, technical and medical publishers.

Goal

Accessing online resources on Research4Life portal

Research4Life, a public-private partnership for international development, is providing access to global scientific literature (full-text documents in digital format) focusing on health, agriculture, environment and other life, physical and social sciences in the developing world. The goal of the Programmes is to improve the quality of research conducted in developing countries that will advance higher education, inform public policy decision, and prepare tomorrow’s leaders.  By so doing, Research4Life will contribute to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, reducing the knowledge gap between industrialized countries and developing countries by providing affordable access to critical scientific research.

Since early 1990s, thousands of students, researchers and lecturers in majority of public universities and research institutes in Africa have faced challenges to gain access to current scientific information needed for education and research. Universities and research institutes are unable to pay subscription fees to peer-reviewed international scientific journals that can cost the organisation more than $1 million per year. This is now addressed by the Research4Life programmes.

Programmes

The four Research4Life programmes are HINARI (Access to Research in Health) launched in January 2002 and managed by WHO, AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) launched in 2003 by FAO, OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) launched in 2006 by UNEP, and ARDI (Access to Research for Development and Innovation) coordinated by WIPO. The four UN agencies are working closely with other partners including Cornell University, Yale University, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, some two hundred publishers and technological partners including Microsoft.

Public institutions such as government ministries and departments, hospitals and clinics, universities and colleges, professional schools, research institutes, extension centres, national libraries, as well as local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 48 African countries are eligible for free or low cost access to Research4Life Programmes. The programmes are accessed at www.research4life.org and an institutional registration is required to obtain a dedicated username and password. Among others, institutions already using the programmes include the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security of Tanzania, the Agricultural Research Corporation (ARC) in Sudan, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, National Veterinary Research Institute (Nigeria), Black Lion Hospital (Ethiopia), King Faisal Hospital (Rwanda), Kenya Medical Research Institute, Aga Khan Hospital (Kenya), Makerere University (Uganda), University of Ghana, University of Zambia, Addis Ababa University and Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (Senegal).

Impact

The impact of Research4Life on work, life and community is documented in a booklet - Making a difference: Stories from the field:how access to scientific literature is improving the livelihoods of communitiesaround the world. Examples from Africa, illustrated in the booklet, include researchers, scholars and scientists in Malawi who produced quality and well researched project reports, scientific papers, theses and dissertations; a physician in Zambia who used scientific information from the programmes to improve the lives of HIV-infected children; a doctor in Ethiopia who successfully treated a patient with a rare and serious condition; a Nigerian researcher who completed his PhD studies and other research on organic agriculture, biopesticides and biofertilizers; and a Sudanese policy-maker who used the information to introduce evidence-based policy development designed to improve the Sudanese people’s health.

During the tenth anniversary of the launch of AGORA, in September 2013, Stephen Rudgard, then Chief of Knowledge and Capacity for Development at FAO, said that AGORA had contributed to changes in behaviour of scientists, academics and practitioners in terms of their information use. "Researchers and academics using AGORA have been able to plan their research more effectively and ensure that their work is not duplicative. They have been able to find new technologies developed outside their own arenas, test them to ensure they are applicable locally, and then pass them on to farmers. In addition, they have been able to use literature to update their curricula."

Capacity Development

 

Participants at a Research4Life workshop in DRC

Capacity development in using the Research4Life programmes in sub-Sahara Africa is provided by ITOCA (Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) and “Librarians Without Borders”®, in collaboration with the regional offices of FAO located in Ghana, WHO (Congo) and UNEP headquarters in Kenya. Since April 2004, more than 5,000 researchers, lecturers, policy makers, health professionals, development practitioners, and librarians have taken part in more than 85 Research4Life training-of-trainers workshops. From available data, Gracian Chimwaza, ITOCA Executive Director, estimates that the trained participants have gone on to reach more than 300,000 users downstream with follow-on training on the four programmes.

You want your Open Access initiative to succeed? Partner with research funders

This month I moderated a very informative webinar on Encouraging Openness and how stakeholder policies can support or block it, organized by CIARD (Open Agricultural Knowledge for Development) and delivered by Bill Hubbard, Director of the Centre for Research Communications (CRC) at the University of Nottingham.

During the webinar, Bill mentioned two points that gave me food for thought. These are that simple policies to encourage Open Access (OA) do not seem to work (unless where they are mandated with sanctions); and that research funders are key to encouraging OA.

Opening access to agricultural research information in Africa is a big issue. Please, note my use of the term opening access as opposed to Open Access. This is because from my experience a good number of researchers, especially in public research organizations in Africa, appear not to be too keen with the idea of Open Access as in free and unrestricted online availability to the content they generate. They of the view that they cannot just give away for free their research outputs, a factor that has contributed to slow progress on OA initiatives on the continent. Therefore, I am of the view that for a start opening access, as in ensuring that research output is properly documented and is made visible to enhance identification and access without any restrictions if the organization or researcher decides to so, is more appropriate in such an environment. After all, in the long run it will lead to OA. Placing too much emphasis on free and unrestricted online availability of research frightens a good number of people.

Since 2006, I have been working on initiatives that encourage opening access to agricultural research information in Africa. I have supported projects in this area in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, and provided technical support and policy advice to several other countries. The focus of the initiatives has been on working with key institutions involved in the generation, processing and dissemination of agricultural knowledge, placing emphasis on developing their technical and functional capacities and ensuring that the enabling policy environment in place. Depending on the initial assessment of the institutional readiness, support has included providing appropriate ICT (i.e. computer servers, workstations, scanners, connectivity, etc.); training staff in digital information management, developing digital institutional repositories,  and using content management systems; and developing copyright guidelines, and information management and communication (ICM) policies and strategies that encourage opening access to content.

Out of 16 institutions that I worked with in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, only the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) is doing well and has its institutional repository listed in OpenDOAR. What has happened to the other 15 institutions?

Bill is right when he says that simple policies to encourage Open Access (AO) do not seem to work, unless they are mandated with sanctions. Six of the institutions that I worked with information policies and strategies that incorporated OA, and these were endorsed by senior management. To date, the number of full-text documents in some of institutional repositories is almost the same as it was at the end of the projects. Not that many resources have been added because researchers are not depositing their works, and no one is sanctioned.

For a long time, even before the arrival of OA on the scene, most agricultural research organizations in Africa have had policies in place that required staff to deposit copies of their publications with the library or documentation centre. In most organizations these policies have rarely worked largely because no staff are sanctioned for not depositing their publications. Most researchers do not feel compelled to deposit their publications in the institutional repository to facilitate opening access to their works.

I also agree with Bill that research funders are key to the success of Open Access (or opening access) initiatives. Agricultural research in public research organizations in Africa is largely funded by external donors. Imagine what would happen if they all included Open Access to outputs of the research they fund in the conditions for financing research projects?

Your guess is as good as mine. Institutional OA policy or no policy, research output will be available for Open Access if the funders for research demands so.

I guess now I have ideas on how to approach my next OA initiatives.

Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo Awards) - 2014

By The ARDYIS Project Team

The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) and its partners are pleased to announce that submission for the 2nd Edition of the Youth in Agriculture Blog Competition (YoBloCo Awards) is now open!  Blogs can be submitted via the newly created website for the YoBloCo Awards (http://www.yobloco.info/) until 31 January 2014.

Individual young blogger, or youth blogging for organisations engaged in agriculture from ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries are highly encouraged to submit their blogs as soon as they can. Even if the blog is not fully ready or does not have many articles, it is recommended not to wait for the last minute to submit the entry.

All blogs (individual and institutional) can be submitted on this link: http://www.yobloco.info/enter-competition.

More information on the YoBloCo Awards here: http://www.yobloco.info/about

Survey of agricultural information centres, libraries and documentation centres in Africa

Is this the state of agricultural information centres
 in sub-Saharan Africa?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) -  Regional Office for Africa, in collaboration with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD Africa Chapter), is conducting an online survey of agricultural information centres, libraries and documentation centre.

The goal of the survey is to establish the state of agricultural information centres, libraries and documentation centres in sub-Saharan Africa.

Potential use of the results of the survey include the design of capacity development and technical support initiatives to enhance access, dissemination and exchange of agricultural information and knowledge in sub-Saharan Africa.

You can prepare to complete the online survey by downloading and reviewing a PDF (266K) copy of the questionnaire.

To complete the survey online, on Survey Monkey, click HERE or cut and paste the following link in your browser:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/survey-of-agric-information-centres

The survey closes on 20 December 2013

Digital agriculture information management in ECOWAS countries

I recently organized a seminar on Agricultural Information Management and Knowledge Exchange in ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) countries in Akosombo, a small town in the east of Ghana in the Eastern Region and the site of the Akosombo Dam. I invited senior officers responsible for information management and dissemination functions in Ministries of Agriculture to discuss the impact and the resulting policy and strategy implications of modern information and communication technologies on agricultural information management, dissemination, and knowledge exchange in their ministries.

Workshop participants

The participants came from  Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Only Côte d'Ivoire was not represented at the seminar. They included directors or officers in charge of ICT,  Archives, Libraries and Documentation, Communication and Public Relations, and Agricultural Statistics.

From the ensuing discussions it was evident that there is an absence of appropriate policies to facilitate information management and dissemination and a general lack of investments in digital agricultural information management and dissemination activities. The result is that a lot of emphasis is being placed on print-based information resources which by default are limited in circulation. In most instances very few copies of print documents are produced, mainly as grey literature, and are rarely documented making difficult to know what is available in the Ministry.

The absence of coordination among the units or departments involved in the collection, management and dissemination of information was also a major concern for some participants. They indicated that in some cases communication units and IT departments do not coordinate their activities regarding content generation for the Ministry’s web site.

The participants agreed that social media has a role to play in information dissemination and knowledge sharing. However, official use of social media tools in Ministries of Agriculture was said to be very limited. Some ministries are experimenting with social media, especially with Facebook. But without social media strategies in place, such experiments are doomed to fail.

While some Ministries of Agriculture (i.e. Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal) have developed websites, the discussions revealed that provision of content on the websites is erratic, and is a major challenge. Most websites do not provide access to full-text documents produced by the Ministries due to the absence of policies on digital information resources dissemination. In some cases, up-loading documents to the website takes longer than necessary because of weaknesses in the internal work flows for digital content management.

Agriculture statistics graphs
from CountrySTAT

One aspect of information management that is doing quite well in the region is agricultural statistics. Countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo have been assisted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to develop their capacity to provide reliable statistical data on food and agriculture, necessary to monitor national trends. This was done under the CountrySTAT initiative, and they all have websites where agricultural related statistics are publicly accessible.


If Africa is to fight poverty with information and knowledge, easy access to relevant information, such as information for agricultural and rural development, is critical. Ministries of Agriculture can easily make their information accessible if they managed and disseminated their information resources in digital information. To achieve this, they will have to put in place policies and strategies conducive for digital information management and sharing, and invest in both institutional and individual capacity development.

Research for Life Programmes at Njala University, Sierra Leone

The Universities Act of 2005 established the University of Njala (NU) as a Public Institution with a mandate to provide training in agriculture, education, environmental sciences, social sciences, community health sciences and technology. NU has campuses at Njala (main campus), Bo, Bonthe and Freetown.



Prof. Abu Sesay, Vice Chancellor and Principal,
Njala University

One challenge faced by lecturers and students at Njala University, like in most academic institutions in Africa, is lack of access to the latest scientific information published in peer-reviewed scholarly publications. Prior to the 11-year civil war (1991 – 2002), the University Library was relatively well stocked with books and journals. Today, its collection is old. The shelves reserved for journals hold old issues except for the latest copies (2013 samples issues from the publisher) of the Journal of Ecology and Journal of Animal Ecology and a couple others. Current publications on the shelves are mainly those produced by international development organizations such as the World Bank, FAO, CTA, etc, that are sent to the University for free; news magazines and local newspapers purchased by the Library mainly from Freetown, the Capital City of Sierra Leone.

The current Vice Chancellor and Principal of NU, Prof. Abu Sesay, is determined to turn the institution into “an outstanding centre of learning, scholarship and community service with a national and international profile”. Access to the latest global knowledge available in scientific publications, to enhance the teaching and research activities in at NU, would certainly contribute to achieving this vision.

Access to academic and professional peer-reviewed journals, especially in agriculture and related sciences, health and medical sciences, and environmental sciences by lecturers and students at Njala University should no longer be an issue. NU has very good Internet connection and subscribes Research for Life Programmes – HINARI, AGORA, OARE and ARDI.  These programmes provide online access to over 30,000 peer-reviewed international scientific journals, books, and databases. This includes access to full-text articles which can be downloaded for saving and/or printing.

Participants at the Research for Life training at Njala University

From 3 to 5 September 2013, I and Professor Bamidele Fawole (of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and ITOCA), travelled to NU to facilitate a national training workshop on Research for Life programmes. The trip was
worth it. Thirty enthusiastic lecturers, researchers, information technology specialists and librarians from academic and research institutions in Sierra Leone took part in the four-day workshop. They learnt how to access, search and retrieve full-text articles (in PDF or HTML formats) provided through the Research for Life Programmes. They were also introduced to information search strategies including using Boolean search operators. At NU, the challenge is no longer access to global scientific knowledge but how to effectively and efficiently use the more than 30,000 online resources available through Research for Life Programmes. The Vice Chancellor is determined to transform the university into a 21st Century institution. The lecturers should also play their part in the transformation process of the institution by conducting good research and recommending to their students to use the latest scientific literature available to them through the Research for Life Programmes.

Social media and researchers in agriculture in Ghana and Kenya

Are researchers in agriculture in Africa using social media? The answer is likely to be YES. However, are they using social media in their research related work?

Colleagues (Joel Sam, from CSIR in Ghana, and Richard Kedemi, from KARI in Kenya) and I recently carried out a study on the use of use of social media in agricultural research workflow. We used social media as an umbrella term to refer to mobile and web-based technologies, web platforms and web-based services that facilitate interactions and conversations among users and thus enhance their participation in the generation, distribution, searching and sharing of digital content. Regarding research workflow, we adopted the research lifecycle (see Fig. 1 below) proposed by CIBER, University College London and Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.

Figure 1 - Research lifecycle
[Source: CIBER, University College London and Emerald Group Publishing Ltd (2010:16)]

We invited 338 researchers from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Ghana to complete an online questionnaire hosted on Survey Monkey. Sixty-one (18%) researchers fully completed the questionnaire.

Our findings show that in general, the researchers in the two institutions have profiles/accounts on social media; Social Networking Services (SNS), that includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and MySapce, are the most popular category of social media tools; and these are followed by Voice over Internet (VoIP) Applications (i.e. Google Talk, Skype, etc,). Specifically, Facebook is the most actively used social media followed by LinkedIn and Skype.

The researchers are adopting social media for various reasons. Mostly were motivated with by the need connect with fellow researchers or to enhance their visibility within the research community and outside their countries or to connect with family members and relatives.

In agricultural research workflows, the researchers are using social media mainly in identifying research opportunities and finding potential collaborators for research projects. Overall, there is little use of social media in the dissemination of research results. LinkedIn and Google Docs are the most popular social media tools used in research.

We also found that the researchers are facing some challenges in the use of social media. Key challenges faced include unreliable Internet connectivity and lack of skills to make effective use of social media. Furthermore, use of social media in research is more of individual initiatives than part of the research organizations’ wide social media strategies. This is also common in most organizations in Africa and is not limited to agriculture research organizations.

Based on the findings, we are of the view that agricultural research organizations should improve their Internet connectivity and should implement policies and strategies that encourage the use of social media tools in the dissemination of research results in addition to the traditional methods of communicating research. The strategies should also incorporate capacity development initiatives in the use of both generic and specialized social media tools in research.  Strategic approaches to the use of social media in public agriculture research organizations in Africa could potentially open up research carried out in these organizations.

[Note: A presentation based on the study was made at the 13th IAALD World Congress at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. The full paper will soon be available in the e-LiS repository].

IMARK e-learning course on managing spatial information

The Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) Steering Group has announced the release of the course entitled: “Management of Spatial Information ”, available in English. The course provides a comprehensive overview of the nature and characteristics of spatial data, how it can help improve the quality and scope of activities in organizational processes, how to manage the infrastructure internally and how to integrate the infrastructure in a wider context of data acquisitioning and provisioning. The course was developed by FAO in partnership with ITC - Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente.

The course is available on CD (on request) and online.

Other IMARK modules/courses, also available CD and online, are:

• Knowledge Sharing for Development
• Digital Libraries, Repositories and Documents
• Web 2.0 and Social Media for Development
• Networking in Support of Development
• Building Electronic Communities and Networks
• Investing in Information for Development
• Digitization and Digital Libraries (superseded by the module Digital Libraries, Repositories and Documents)
• Management of Electronic Documents (superseded by the module Digital Libraries, Repositories and Documents)

IMARK courses provide an opportunity for self-paced learning to individuals who want to acquire skills in modern information management and exchange.

“African researchers are active consumers of content but inactive contributors”

In late March 2013, I took part in a workshop on National Digital Repository Framework organized by the Association of African Universities (AAU) in Accra. Participants, mainly from universities, discussed setting up national digital repositories of theses and dissertations, as part of AAU’s Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) initiative. A comment made by one presenter, that “African researches are active consumers of content but inactive contributors”, attracted my attention. I decided to give it a thought and I am afraid I have to say that he was largely right.

Most public research organizations and universities on the continent cannot afford to subscribe to scholarly publications without donor funding. For most of these institutions, they last paid for journal subscriptions using institutional budgets in the late 1980s and in 1990s. Since then, they largely depend on the good will of the international community to sustain their research and academic information needs.

At the click of a computer mouse button, thanks to modern information and communication technology (ICTs), today researchers, faculty members and students in Africa have access to thousands of journal titles, books and other information materials in digital format. This is possible due to several initiatives including the Research4Life Programme, the Programme for Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) and open access initiatives such BioMed Central. Availability of easy and around the clock access to these digital resources puts researchers, faculty staff and students on the continent at par with their colleagues in the developed world in as far as access to the latest research is concerned. However, how much of the research generated in Africa is accessible to the outside world?

Data available from the 2010 Thomson Reuters’s Global Research Report: Africa shows that from the years 1999 to 2008, on average Africa produced about 27,000 scientific papers per year, about the same volume as that of The Netherlands. Furthermore, Africa’s research scene, in terms of published outputs, is dominated by three countries – Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa. 

What then, are our researchers doing? 

Africa, as indicated by the BBC, has the potential to play a big role in the global science. However, there is little government-funding going into research. For example, in 2006, the African Union’s Executive Council endorsed that by 2010 governments in Africa should spend at least 1% of the GDP on research and development. How many countries have met this target?

Another web 2.0/social media training workshop is over. But...

Amuda, Justin (facilitator) and Linda

Agricultural research scientists, faculty staff, development practitioners in the agricultural and rural domain, and information professionals in Africa are slowly turning to web 2.0/social media to support their networking activities and for accessing and disseminating information more effectively. The use of web 2.0/social media requires new knowledge and skills and for the past five days, I have been sharing my knowledge of social media with 20 enthusiastic individuals at a Web 2.0 Learning Opportunity workshop in Accra, Ghana.  These individuals are actively engaged in agriculture and rural development, agricultural related research, agricultural information management, and media. They were selected from among 47 applicants who had expressed interest in the training workshop.

The workshop was hosted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) - Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (INSTI) and supported by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) and the Regional Office for Africa (RAF) of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). The content focused on developing social media strategies, using social media tools such as Twitter, blogs, wikis and LinkedIn in building communities and knowledge sharing, and content licensing using Creative Commons.

Since 2008, I have conducted several training workshops on web 2.0/social media. Sharing knowledge with the workshop participants is the easy part of any workshop for me.  The hard part comes after the workshop and it has to do with the participants.  At the end of each workshop that I have conducted, I ask myself the following questions:

• How many workshop participants will go on and adopt the social media tools that were introduced to them?
• How many blogs created during the workshop would continue to be populated with content? 
• How about tweeting? Will they continue to do so?

I have several examples of blogs created by some participants at the

Doreen and Esther from CISIR-INSTI

workshops in 2010 and 2011. Today, these blogs only contain content that was posted during practical work during the workshops. It is worrying. Several factors contribute to this state of affairs. Experience has shown that a good number of participants turn up for training workshops and that is all. There is no after life. In addition, some of them do not have access to suitable technical infrastructure and policy environment that support the use of social media in their institutions. Therefore, no matter how much some workshop participants would want to continue using social media, once back in their work environment, it is back to business as usual.

It is a challenge to think that a large number of people who may be taking part in a training workshop may not have time and opportunities to practice their newly acquired skills. Social media is personal and I always expected participants at my workshops to take a personal decision to adopt social media tools and integrate them in their professional life.

I have done my part!

Curtains close down on CRS' 5th ICT4D conference

Judy Pyane (USAID), Ben Ray (Zerion),
Mark Davies (Esoko)
and Kwame Bentil (Image-AD) panelists
discussing business models for ICT4D

The curtains have just closed down on the Catholic Relief Services’ 5th Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) conference, held in Accra from 19 to 21 March 2013. The event, which in my view was a success, brought together religious leaders, the private sector, public sector, non-governmental organizations, and entrepreneurs involved in ICT4D initiatives. More than 150 participants shared experiences and lessons learned in implementing ICT4D initiatives across the globe. Discussions and exchange of information focused on the conference theme: "Mobile Services that Empower Vulnerable Communities"

Being from the agriculture domain, I enjoyed the presentations focusing on various aspects of  ICT4D in agriculture. Among them, the following stood out:

• Esoko – a market information service targeting projects and businesses and helping them to collect and disseminate information across the value chains. Esoko is based in Ghana and has operations and/or partners in 16 African countries;
• Fambook – an application developed by the Catholic Relief Service for use by field agents to register farmers, farmers groups and develop business plans incorporating profitability analysis;
• mFarm – an integrated platform aimed at helping stakeholders in the agricultural value chain to communicate and establish business relationships. mFarm is developed by Image-AD based in Ghana.
• FarmForce – a cloud based solution for managing smallholder farmer production and out grower schemes. Sygenta International Foundation funds FarmForce;
• ICT for Weather and Water Information and Farm Advice – an IFAD supported project by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The project is promoting the use of ICT-based technologies for the delivery of weather, water and crop information and advice to smallholder farmers in Africa;
• Community Knowledge Worker – a Grameen Foundation’s programme targeting smallholder farmers and supplying them with information to improve their farming practices.  The CKW initiatives involves farmer leaders at the grassroots level and these trained to use mobile phone applications to provide information and advisory services to the farmers and to administer surveys.

Master class on Farmbook led by Shaun Ferris of CRS

After listening to several presentations and discussions, both in the breakout and plenary sessions, I was left with the following question:

Why do have too many pilot ICT4D initiatives, especially in Africa, and almost no sustainable scale ups?

If you are reading this blog post, I would be glad to have your views. Please, leave a comment.

 

UNECA launches ASKIA initiative



ASKIA portal

Various initiatives to enhance the visibility and to improve access to digital content from and on Africa are under way across the continent. On 14 March 2013, I witnessed the launch of one such initiative, the Access to Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA), in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mr. Makane Faye, Officer-in-Charge of the Knowledge Services and Library Services Section at the United Nations Economic Commission (UNECA), launched ASKIA at the plenary session of the Third Session of the Committee on Development Information, Science and Technology (CODIST-III).

 

According to Faye, the ASKIA initiative defines a framework for bringing together a variety of scientific and socio-economic information for the African community, including scientists, researchers, students, economists and policy makers, over an interactive online portal. The initiative, which responds to the recommendations made at various CODIST meetings and conference across Africa by African experts from the fields of information and libraries and policy makers, will focus on the following:

•  ASKIA online portal: which will serve as a one-stop access point to all knowledge from/on Africa;
• ASKIA Federated Search Engine: which will facilitate collation and discovery of knowledge  from/on Africa through a single search;
• Geo-data repository: a repository of maps from Africa;
• Knowledge hub: which will provide value added services through knowledge contextualization;
• Capacity building: focusing on enhancing capacities of institutions in UNECA member states through partnerships.

ASKIA’s goal is to strengthen online knowledge discovery and access by tapping into global scientific and socio-economic knowledge on and from Africa.

 

ASKIA is also an implementation programme of the African Virtual Library and Information Network, which unanimously endorsed by an expert group meeting convened by UNECA at the second meeting of the Committee on Development Information (CODI-II) in September 2001.

 

Providing access to digital content from Africa discussed at CODIST-III

Gracian Chimwaza (ITOCA) and
Justin Chisenga (FAO) at CODIST-III

Over the past four days, I have been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia participating in the Third Session of the Committee on Development Information, Science and Technology (CODIST-III). CODIST is one of the seven subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) composed of senior officials and experts from member States who meet on a biennial basis. The theme for CODIST-III was Measuring Innovation in Africa.

On 12 March, I took part in the pre-CODIST-III roundtable of the Knowledge and Library Information Services (KLIS) sub-Committee. The theme for the round table was “Innovations promoting information access and diffusion in Africa: best practices, challenges and the way forward”. Discussions mainly focused on initiatives that are working towards opening access to digital content generated in Africa. These included development of institutional repositories in African universities, the Access to Scientific and Socio-economic Information in Africa (ASKIA), the Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD), Uganda’s implementation of the World Digital Library initiative, and the impact of social media in libraries. Following the discussions, the participants at the round table noted, among others:

• The absence of necessary technical, legal and governance frameworks to support adoption of Open Access model and other emerging technologies that would enhance access to the continent’s digital content;
• Proliferation of initiatives aimed at creating digital repositories. These are mainly externally supported/funded and in most cases, there is duplication of efforts.
• The need for coherence in information management and dissemination initiatives existing in Africa;
• Inadequate and/or limited capacity in many countries to manage digital information assets to support innovation for national development.

A key recommendation that came out of the round table is that UNECA should provide a forum for development partners, international organizations and member states to deliberate on the integration of their initiatives to avoid duplication and to leverage on the sharing of resources.