Good day,

I'm Sandra from Seychelles. Been wanting to participate in this forum since last week but our server was down, and this week when we are having internet connection its a health related issue keeping me from participating.

Nevertheless I will just give my view and experience from Seychelles for the past 2 years.

As mentioned by another participant, information in the context of Africa have not really been shared yet we all want information from others. Anything to do with research has been regarded as personal belonging or that of an institution. This is something which needs to be changed. If we really want whatever work we've done in terms of research, to be applied and help in the development of Agriculture and achieving food security, the only way forward will be to share the information. Even if we are not personnally acknowledge for the effort, at least we will get the personal satisfaction that we've made a difference.

In Seychelles under a SADC project we came to realise that we are having so much information lying in hard or electronic copies in different offices and results after so much hard work were not being used to help our stakeholders. Following our stakeholder information need assessment as explained by Sanjay and Krishan earlier, we manage to identify our stakeholders, their info needs, knowledge they were having and wanted to share and the medium they wanted the information to be given to them and the time they wanted it. So we started to compile the information that already existed so that they fit the requirement of our stakeholders. We have gone further to include the stakeholders in coming up with research program, by getting them to identify the areas they want to be addressed and prioritized their needs. We have started to put more emphasis on on-farm trials as requested by the farmers themselves. Hence it is easier to accept the results and apply it to increase their production. Since farmers are also invited to view on farm trials and result presentation in meetings, interaction between different stakeholders has increased and we have noticed that indegenous knowledge are also being shared. There is now information and knowledge sharing in a two way.

To conclude information were not being really shared, but now information which are of use and help in achieving food security are being given to different stakeholders and are being used accordingly. They include, plant protection, nutrient & water management, economic profitability, protected environment to name just a few.

Now the way forward is to put all the information on a website, where, other stakeholders can access the latter and make use of it.