- Indigenous Knowledge - Africa Region

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE II

What was the GKII Conference about?

The Second Global Knowledge Conference hosted by the Malaysian Government and the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) was held in Kuala Lumpur from 7-10 March 2000. More than 1400 people, representing the public and private sectors met to discuss strategies that put information and knowledge in the hands of developing countries and the world's poor.

The Conference was composed of three parallel events:
1. GK Forum (organized by the Malaysian Government)
2. GKP Action Summit organized by the Global Knowledge Partnership
3. Knowledge Fair/Sharing The main themes of the Conference were access, empowerment and governance.

What was the Bank’s role?

The World Bank’s main focus at the conference was on IK as a tool for empowerment.

We were invited to:

(i) Make a keynote presentation at the Forum on the role of IK in maintaining cultural diversity. Nicolas Gorjestani, spoke at the session for Track 3 (Maintaining Cultural Diversity in the 21^st Century). The emphasis was on the Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Development. He was joined by two commentators from Canada and Malaysia, moderated by the deputy DG of UNESCO.

(ii) Participate in a panel on empowerment of local communities at the Summit together with IFAD and two NGOs from India and the Netherlands. We outlined the Bank’s achievements in the area of IK since the 1997 GK Conference in Toronto.

(iii) Present specific cases of IK at knowledge sharing sessions. Local community representatives demonstrated four case studies from Senegal, Ghana and Uganda.

(iv) Display the IK Program’s knowledge products at the fair.

For a full list of the program, events, speeches and snapshots of the GKII Conference website.

Opening Day – Tuesday 7^th March 2000

The conference was inaugurated by James D.Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank and Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia. Both stressed the importance of local knowledge as an element in development. JDW reiterated the Bank's commitment to assisting partner countries in the leveraging of knowledge, global or local and to provide assistance in establishin an environment that is conducive to a knowledge based society. Among others, the Dep. Prime Minister stressed that the international community, especially the international organizations, are obliged to strongly integrate local elements.

In the afternoon, Nicolas Gorjestani made his presentation: Maintaining Cultural Diversity in the 21st Century. (195K PowerPoint file)

The presentation was well appreciated by the commentators, Therese Paquet-Sevigny from Orstom in Canada, and Prof. Shamsul Amri Baharuddin of Malaysia.

The subsequent break-out sessions brought forward a number of issues. The emphasis was on the local communities' responsibility to decide and determine how to promote, develop and preserve their own culture and knowledge. The knowledge economy and especially the modern ICT are a challenge and an opportunity for the communities to take up these responsibilities. Another issue that emerged was that local languages should be used more widely not only for the dissemination of IK but also for knowledge exchanges in other domains.

In the evening, the Knowledge Fair was opened by the Minister of for Energy, Communications & Multimedia, Datuk Leo Moggie, who visited the World Bank Booth. We gave him a brief account on the IKD Program. He was particularly interested in the role ICT play in the utilization and dissemination of IK.

Wednesday – 8th March 2000

On Wednesday, we had two knowledge sharing sessions. The first session, "The Kampala Declaration", introduced by Nicolas Gorjestani and presented by Zerubabel Nyiira, Director of the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology. Dr. Nyiira presented how Uganda, with World Bank assistance, is developing an national policy on how to integrate IK into the national development process, including the CDF. In the afternoon, Guus von Liebenstein, Director of CIRAN/Nuffic introduced the second Knowledge Sharing session. The speaker was Dr. Fary Selate Ka from ARED, Senegal (Association for Research, Education and Development). Mr. Ka presented ARED's work that is mainly related to capturing, documenting and disseminating IK in local languages.

In the afternoon, in the "Empowerment track" of the conference, a panel chaired by IFAD, addressed local knowledge issues. (18K PowerPoint file). The panelists were Anil Gupta, India, Coordinator SRISTI/ Honeybee Newsletter, Guus von Liebenstein, Netherlands, Director CIRAN/ Nuffic, Adam Nayyar, Pakistan, Director Research, National Institute of Folk & Traditional Heritage and Reinhard Woytek, Africa Region, World Bank (148K PowerPoint file). A fairly lively discussion evolved around IPR, local languages, the use of ICT and gender.

Suzanne Essama and Noemie Del Marr of the Africa Region IK Team organized a booth at the Knowledge Fair that received much acclaim from visitors. The Fair was opened by the Datuk Leo Moggie, Minister of Energy, Communications and Multimedia. Mr. Moggie visited our booth and was particularly interested in the role ICT plays in the dissemination of IK.

The photo above was taken at the opening. From left to right: Mr. Guus von Liebeinstein, Director, CIRAN, Netherlands; Mr. Reinhard Woytek, IK for Development, World Bank; The Malaysian Minister of Multi-Media; and Suzanne Essama, World Bank.

Thursday 9^th March 2000

Nicolas Gorjestani gave a presentation at the session on cross-cutting issues on local knowledge. He summarized the main issues and presented ten action items for the Action Summit to consider. The action items were well received and shaped the agenda. In the evening there was a "marketplace" where the participants voted for the ideas/actions that appealed to them most. Six actions listed under local knowledge, received a strong backing. These included: (i) "community-to-community" exchange; (ii) helping local communities to develop local content; (iii) enhancing the capacity of IK centers; (iv) developing national and regional strategies for integrating IK into development programs; (v) local language dissemination of IK cases; (vi) venture fund for innovations in indigenous practices.

There were two additional knowledge sharing sessions:

The Imam from Malicounda, Demba Diawara reported how a village community managed top abandon female circumcision in their area. He clearly highlighted the effectiveness of local change agents.

Amina Nasolo, Information Officer from Uganda's Multipurpose Telecenter in Nakaseke gave an impressive overview of the role a Telecenter plays in a community as a focal point of knowledge sharing. Most notable was her account of how the local community identified their own issues and problems and used the Telecenter to call on the extension service to provide advice. Another significant contribution was the knowledge sharing across local communities that occurred around the construction of improved pit latrines to improve sanitary conditions. In summary, the Telecenter acted as a connector between communities, as a broker of information and eventually as a knowledge resource center, as all the information exchanged will eventually be stored in databases. Shortly, the Telecenter will have a special activity related to the identification and documentation of IK. Most remarkable, though, was the absence of any "bits and bytes" discussion during the knowledge sharing session, proving the point that ICT are a means to an end.

Conclusion

The final action plan of the GKII Action Summit and the Forum includes a strong endorsement of the IK program and specific call for (i) identification, development, dissemination of local knowledge in various forms, including local languages; (ii) support to develop strategies for using IK in development.