If agriculture was an Olympics competition, many African farmers would certainly be gold medalists. Zephaniah Phiri, the late world class water harvester of Zvishavane in Zimbabwe would have collected dozens of gold medals. There are many such farmers from Cape to Cairo and Senegal to Somalia. While modernization is trying to present standards of excellence Read more about Many African farmers can perform like Gold Medalists[…]
Many well-intentioned organisations and people are being frustrated by the shortcomings of using case studies, most significant change stories and conference presentations in spreading success from one African community to another. Most reports produced by several consultants are not making a difference due to multiple reasons (known and unknown). On the other hand, more than Read more about Limitations of using documents and reports to share knowledge in Africa[…]
A lot can be learnt from remarkable ways through which African socio-cultural systems generated and shared knowledge. There were reliable conduits for sharing knowledge from one age group to another, one gender to another and one society to another. Besides respected knowledge brokers, each community had sense making tools linking different communities of practice. Some Read more about Why some approaches and technologies are not moving beyond early adopters[…]
Many developing countries are witnessing trends where indigenous knowledge systems are transforming to a commercial stage. This is exposing the myth that indigenous knowledge can remain pure and undiluted in the current rapidly globalizing world. The modern economy forces farmers, traders and other economic actors to contribute knowledge to their socio-economic networks. Every farmer or Read more about From farmers and traders to knowledge artisans[…]
There are many reasons why developing countries suffer from a severe mismatch between knowledge supply and demand. Less than 20% of knowledge in African countries has been documented. Besides driving policy and economic development, such knowledge is trying to influence the 80% tacit knowledge which is undocumented. While computerisation and digital technology are expanding in Read more about How can we build equilibrium knowledge ecosystems in developing countries?[…]
While a lot of resources have gone into producing and pushing information to farmers and rural people, there has not been enough effort into understanding the uptake and utilization of all this information. Barriers and enabling factors to knowledge uptake have not been dealt with. With dwindling resources, the modernisation-driven communication model of pushing information Read more about Why we must assess knowledge uptake in agriculture and rural development[…]
One of the enduring challenges in African agriculture is defining effective metrics to measure the value of knowledge. In most agricultural value chains, knowledge is not considered a cost component. Farmers and other value chain actors consider inputs, labour and equipment to be the only elements in calculating profit. Excluding knowledge, which is apparently becoming Read more about How can we measure the cost of lost knowledge in the agriculture sector?[…]
Socio-economic challenges facing many developing countries are revealing the shortcomings of rewarding individual performance. Most problems have become so complex that individual people or organisations cannot solve them alone. In agricultural-driven economies, rewarding agricultural performance should be seen to be moving from individuals to community incentives. That’s one of the indicators of knowledge sharing. Incentives Read more about From individual rewards to community incentives[…]
While African financial institutions are still stuck with traditional banking models invented in the West, African agricultural value chains have shifted in ways that threaten to render banks irrelevant to agriculture. Rural and agricultural finance modeling is being forced to consider value chain collateral and the existence of a market as opposed to physical forms Read more about African agriculture is witnessing a shift from physical to value chain collateral[…]
The way public and private institutions have been set up in most developing countries does not create space for adequately absorbing feedback from many people. Bureaucratic structures such as government ministries continue to privilege certain sources of information and knowledge at the exclusion of what is coming from outside. However, in the prevailing digital era, Read more about How can agricultural policy makers stay ahead of trends?[…]