Nodumo Dhlamini
| Organization type | International Organization |
|---|---|
| الدولة | Uganda |
This member participated in the following Forums
المنتدى Forum: "Building the CIARD Framework for Data and Information Sharing" April, 2011
Question 4: What actions should now be facilitated by the CIARD Task Forces?
I am glad to hear that CIARD plans to commence a Capacity Development Taskforce. This would be a good starting point.
I strongly believe that Capacity Development is an important activity under CIARD. This could work in the following ways:
- An analysis of the capacity gap needs in the area of agricultural information, communication, knowledge sharing and management
- Promotion & Awareness (through advocacy on the importance of capacity development) of ongoing capacity development initiatives such as the MSc Agricultural Information & Communication Management academic degree whose aim is to build capacities of agricultural professionals to fully and effectively manage agricultural knowledge in the knowledge era. This MSc AICM has a modular approach in its structure - practitioners could take specific modules that apply to their fields of interest. Simplified additional self led training courses could also be developed from these modules
- Support for strategic people towards building their capacities
- Linkages and partnerships with organisations involved in capacity development
- We also need to assess technical capacity gaps - partner with others globally to improve our own capacities.
CIARD Taskforce should:
- Support initiatives towards the standardization of data/information formats
- Facilitate foresighting / forcasting studies to guide the direction for sharing agricultural information effectively
- Advocacy for the prioritization of capacity building for agricultural professionals to be proficient in the use of emerging ICTs to improve agricultural information communication, sharing and management.A number of initiatives exist in Africa to build the capacities of Agricultural Professionals in the field of AICM (Agricultural Information and Communication Management).
Question 3: What are the emerging tools, standards and infrastructures?
- The models of social networks such as Face Book, Linked In, Twitter will determine issues of interoperability in a big way. User generated information is here to stay
- The concepts of semantic web design will also feature in a great way.
- Cloud computing is clearly the way to go.
- Translation will be a key issue to be addressed – countries like Africa where the languages are quite diverse will continue to pose a challenge. Thus the support of initiatives such as google translate are key
- Mobile technologies and platforms cannot be ignored
Question 2: What are the prospects for interoperability in the future?
Prospects for interoperability are very high. However they depend on the agreement of international standards for data formats, designs and tools. The agreements to share information located in institutional repositories will also be key. We need to approach this issue at global, regional, national and institutional levels. We also need to be aware of where the technology is moving in relation to web design.
Question 1: What are we sharing and what needs to be shared?
My name is Nodumo Dhlamini based in Kampala, Uganda. I represent RUFORUM. We are implementing a regional MSc AICM (Agricultural Information and Communication Management) program at Egerton University (Kenya), University of Nairobi (Kenya) and Haramaya University (Ethiopia). The emerging lessons from this academic program are that there is a great need for it, there is a need to support more practitioners to go through the program (either the whole MSc or particular modules), there is a need to provide this program as an online program, there is a need to link the graduates of this program to solve real challenges faced by Africa in the area of AICM. Agricultural professionals, faculties, researchers and other practitioners in Africa are still lagging behind when it comes to effectively sharing agricultural information and knowledge.
Agricultural academic and research institutions are sharing: Research abstracts; Research theses; Teaching Content; Agricultural technologies/innovations; Calls for proposals/grants; collaboration and networking opportunities; On social networking sites more and more are sharing experiences, conducting surveys related to agriculture, etc
The following needs to be shared:
-
Simplified research outputs/technologies/innovations for the benefit of the farmers. These could also be translated to local languages.
-
Synthesized lessons on implementing agricultural technologies – these could be written as stories that farmers can connect to.