The Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA) is implementing a four-year EU funded project administered by IFAD called CAADP-XP4.
CCARDESA is currently hosting a four-day regional training workshop on information, knowledge and data capture guidelines in Boksburg, South Africa.
The overall objective of the project is to enable agricultural research and innovation, including extension services, to contribute effectively to food and nutrition security; economic development and climate mitigation in Africa.
The project is targeting seven countries in the SADC region, thus, Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
CCARDESA is a sub-regional research organization established as a subsidiary entity of SADC and charged with the responsibility of coordinating agricultural research and development in the Southern Africa. CCARDESA is implementing a four-year EU funded project administered by IFAD called CAADP-XP4. The overall objective of the project is to enable agricultural research and innovation, including extension services, to contribute effectively to food and nutrition security; economic development and climate mitigation in Africa. The project is targeting seven countries in the SADC region and these are; Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The project seeks to deliver five key outputs and one of them is on knowledge management which aims at enhancing knowledge management and communication for decision support sharing innovations and advocacy related to climate relevant agriculture within the SADC region.
CCARDESA says there’s an increased demand for agricultural quality information, data and Knowledge which have caused the development of new modern technologies, especially in the data collection processes. Information-based decisions cannot be made in the absence of accurate data.
The SADC region experience poor access to agriculture, climate change and research data which has serious implications on the relevance of the decisions taken and program implementation. This situation poses a challenge in the implementation of CAADP and the reporting of achievements based on the Indicators of the Malabo Declaration and to the targets that have been set to guide the biennial reviews of CAADP plans at the country level. It also poses challenges for the reporting on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators which also have to be grounded on reliable data.
The use of modern approaches in data collection and sharing tools have been proven to improve collection, accuracy, and accessibility of information. Knowledge capture is an important element of knowledge management because it allows for knowledge transfer and retention. In order to bridge the knowledge gap and accessibility, CCARDESA through the EU funded CAADP-XP4 project is planning a regional workshop to familiarize the CCARDESA ICKM Focal point persons on the usage of the guidelines for knowledge, information and data capture. Additionally, the ICKM focal point will also acquire knowledge management and community of practice principles which will be shared during the workshop.
The overall objective of the workshop is to familiarize the CCARDESA ICKM Focal point persons on the usage of the guidelines for knowledge, Information and data capture and build their capacity on principles of knowledge management and community of practice.
The specific objectives of this assignment are to familiarise the ICKM officers from SADC member states on the use of Information and knowledge capture guidelines, strengthening capacities of national level stakeholders in Knowledge Management to actively contribute to the mainstreaming of knowledge for agricultural research and development, and strengthen the understanding of Malabo Declaration by the ICKM community of practice so that ICKM focal points can share information on its implementation.
Expected Outcomes are that participants would have attained applicable basic knowledge management concepts, ICKM focal point persons understand the Information and data capture guidelines to allow them develop knowledge products and articles on the Malabo commitments and that ICKM focal point persons are empowered with skills to further benefit from the COP.
