Knowledge sharing for rural development

Since the "Green Revolution", world food production has grown at a dizzy pace. Yet hunger continues to spread throughout the globe, chiefly in the countryside, as small farmers are increasingly forced into ruin.

The creation of mechanisms to generate and share knowledge - both among farmers and with investigators and specialist centres -, is now a condition of survival of rural communities.

As part of the answers to the issue of knowledge for rural development, great expectations have arisen from the potential of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, there is no evidence to demonstrate that these technologies can, in and of themselves, provide solutions to the problems of rural development.

Nonetheless, there is mounting evidence, that through a process of community appropriation, these technologies can indeed be a strategic component of more integrated solutions.

It was with this understanding that, in March of 2006 in Ecuador, the Workshop on knowledge-sharing for rural community development was organized.

This publication gathers together experiences shared during this event as well as other related experiences which show-case different facets and methods for knowledge sharing in the context of rural communities.

These experiences make it clear that technology, as powerful as it may be, is a tool, whose contribution to development will depend upon how the actors and the communities adapt it to their own goals.

More: Sharing Community Knowledge

Tags: agricultural information ICT latin america