Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Publication compiling case studies of the 2010 Latin American and Caribbean Knowledge Share Fair now online



This publication, Feria del Conocimiento América Latina y el Caribe: Casos destacados en agricultura, desarrollo y seguridad alimentaria, only available in Spanish, is now available on line. The publication gathers the highlights and conclusions of the Knowledge Share Fair Latin America and Caribbean, held 25-27 May 2010, at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia.

The main objectives of the Fair were to demonstrate how the active and strategic participation of knowledge improves the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of any work, while giving participants, some 200 professionals from over 70 organizations and 18 countries, an opportunity to experiment with knowledge sharing tools and methodologies and share and learn good practices. Participants were also able to socialize experiences related to knowledge management in agriculture, development, and food security.

The event, organized by the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community, served to gather experiences related to rural development, mainly agriculture and livestock production, and exemplify what’s happening in terms of knowledge management in Latin America.

Of the numerous case studies presented at the fair, eight related to agriculture, development, and food security—key issues addressed during the event— were selected for inclusion in the publication and serve to illustrate how knowledge-related processes involve complementary technological, technical, and human factors.

Five case studies (Condesan, Prodarnet, Preval, INIA, CIAT) illustrate purely regional experiences while three (CIARD, Vercon, and SGRP) provide an interesting global perspective.
As matter of conclusion, the authors pose the need that knowledge sharing be explicitly used to promote learning between actors. “Knowledge currently plays a key role in many development policies, accompanied by a important effort of the informatics sector and ICTs in general. Nonetheless, the learning and social engineering that accompany knowledge should become the main forces promoting knowledge and innovation, not the contrary, which is what happens nowadays.”
Although the publication is in Spanish, a translation of titles of sections and case studies has been provided.

Click to download:
Individual sections:
  • Conclusion (by Sebastião Ferreira, Simone Staiger and Camilo Villa)
The Fair’s organizers gratefully acknowledge IICA’s collaboration in the design and layout of the publication.

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