This document describes useful steps and activities to initiate a national process to mainstream indigenous knowledge (IK) in development. The checklist is based on the experience of the Indigenous knowledge for the Development Program of the World Bank and will continuously be adapted. There exists no single best approach, all steps have to be designed specifically to meet a countries given situation. The IK Program has provided assistance to IK mainstreaming efforts in Eritrea, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda with one or several of the steps described..

Country Driven Process

Any initiative related to IK clearly must be a country driven process.

If there is no ownership right from the start, the process will not succeed. At any point in time it is advisable to include legitimate representatives of bearers of IK. Seeking other donors' input may also be helpful at this point.

Identify a "Sponsor"

Depending on the specific situation the sponsor would be a fairly senior person in the Government in a rather important Ministry (one that has resources, influence, power of leverage etc. - a Ministry of Finance may be preferable to, for example, a Ministry of Sports, Youth and Culture). The sponsor would provide a protective umbrella over the entire IK mainstreaming process, advocate it on the political level, mention it in speeches, entice donors, be a promoter for the press, etc.
Alternatively, if the person is from outside the government he or she should ideally be of such prominent stature so that the powers that be cannot only not afford to ignore what this person says, but actually would seek alliance with him or her.

There is one caveat: persons of such rank and clout usually have very demanding schedules; their eventual impact lies in the fact that they can be "quoted" as being supportive of a national IK strategy rather than being involved on an operational, day-to-day basis.

Link process to national or sector priorities

An existing political process (strategy, program etc) in the country, (the CDF or the PRSP from a Bank perspective) would be a good carrier for the message and would help to widen the support of IK mainstreaming. The IK integration activities should be supportive to the process and benefit from it at the same time. Given the inherent volatility of political processes care should be taken in choosing the degree of association with the process.

Identify a Champion"

The Champion is a sufficiently well connected (especially to the sponsor) senior person from a well reputed institution/ organization, preferably public, but not necessarily though. His/ her organization/ institution should have the ability or even the mandate to work across sectors in the country. It should also have experience with cooperation with Civil Society. It is also helpful if the institution should be perceived as impartial, by and large. The institution should have the clout, the organizational capacity and the convening power to call potential stakeholders around the IK subject for cooperation. It should be able to draw in civil society, public and private sector, the press etc. The champion is the driver of the process. The champion also ensures that he or she is not the only person in the institution that "champions" IK. As the initiative becomes more operational, it is equally important that mid level staff of the organization assumes ownership and gradually takes over the day-to-day work related to the IK activities.

Co-opt Strategic Allies

A Champion and a Sponsor are necessary, but not sufficient to drive the IK process. Normally, many institutions, public, NGO and even private ones are working on IK issues already and they are the ones who would have already accumulated substantial knowledge on the potential of certain IK practices and systems, and the bearers of IK, they may have their confidence or even represent them. They often work in isolation, on tight budgets, on the fringes of their respective scientific establishment and locally rather than on a national level, on specific subjects, rather than across sectors. They need to be part of any process towards a national strategy. Provided any of these organizations has broad base support, especially in civil society, and it is not driven by passion alone, it could assume the role of a champion. However, their progress to involving relevant government institutions, (such as the ministries of environment, agriculture, health etc. across sectors) needs to be closely monitored.

Understand the institutional landscape

A comprehensive national IK strategy may be the ultimate objective. But it is not essential for the promotion of IK to start working across all sectors. Focusing on one or two key sectors, such as health, environment or agriculture - or even sub-sectors - may be sufficient. However, by the very nature of IK a cross-sector approach is unavoidable at a later stage. Before engaging, it may therefore be helpful to better understand the institutional landscape. A quick road to understand the institutional landscape may be to ask an organization that is already engaged in IK, and considered fairly neutral, could be requested to produce a "map" of the institutional landscape.

Support forum for national exchange and strategy formulation

A forum for exchange could help for the organizations to get to know each other and to agree on a platform on how to move the agenda forward towards integrating IK into a national development agenda. The forum should be "inclusive", i.e. all stakeholders should be represented. An initial result could be a road-map for the adoption and mainstreaming of a national IK strategy in a country or a sector. The often dispersed and isolated IK related activities in a country normally lead to a call for the coordination of such activities. Care should be taken that this co-ordination takes the form of information-sharing rather than the control of activities of the various players.

Identify concrete activities

Identify concrete activities early in the process which promise results "presentable" to the sponsor and which show local level impact that would be considered relevant for a national process level of the champion in cooperation with one or more important stakeholders. These concrete activities do not necessarily have to be cross sectors and on a national level.

Don't forget the metrics

It is very important to prove of relevance of IK as early as possible. Designing indicators should include a baseline (or at least a properly formulated hypothesis) and output as well as impact and performance measures. Including stakeholders and beneficiaries when identifying indicators will make them more relevant.