Presented by Peter Ballantyne at the USAID-TOPS Food Security and Nutrition Network East Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Meeting, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 11-13 June 2012
Open knowledge sharing to support learning in agricultural and livestock research for development projects
1. Open knowledge sharing to support learning in
agricultural and livestock research for development
projects
Peter Ballantyne
Food Security and Nutrition Network East Africa
Regional Knowledge Sharing Meeting, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, 11-13 June 2012
2. Topics
Why we need learning – ‘business as
usual interventions’ don’t work
ILRI and more effective development
Why share and learn – starting points for
knowledge management?
Ways to share and learn – approaches we
use at ILRI
3. Business as usual – Ask the farmers
What’s your I’ll go find Feed
main problem some
technology
4. Business as usual – What’s on the
scientists’ shelf
What feed
technologies Planted forage
have you got? Urea treated straw
Bypass protein
OK, let’s try
those
5. “Our findings indicate that
business as usual feed
‘promotion’ and
interventions are not too
promising.”
Alan Duncan (ILRI)
“If you do what you’ve
always done, you’ll get
what you always got.”
Mark Twain
6. ILRI roles in program learning
ILRI as a ‘knowledge’ partner – in
development projects
Learning,M&E, impact assessment
Knowledge, expertise, facilitation, CD
Evidence, validation, …
ILRI as R4D ‘solution-finder’ with partners
Participatory, multi-stakeholder …
Explicit learning/knowledge focus …
ILRI’s ‘open’ research, knowledge and
learning approach [local to global]
7. Some starting points
Together - researchers, communities,
and development partners - know so
much …
How do we create, document and share this
knowledge?
How do we support learning, and share the
results?
How do we enrich these processes of
documenting, learning, and sharing?
Can we do R4D better?
To increase the effectiveness of R4D!
8. Some ‘answers’
1. Co-create and co-learn in multi-
stakeholder platforms
2. Document and mobilize knowledge
from the (un)usual people
3. Make research knowledge, events,
processes and platforms ‘open’
4. Engage, engage, engage …
9.
10. 1. Innovation platforms
spaces for
diverse actors
to engage in
dialogue, and to
jointly identify,
learn about and
address issues
Innovating with
communities
15. Discussion support tools
Farmer focus
Rapid value chain
assessment
Participatory
‘FEAST’ feed
assessment with
communities
Technology
prioritization with
farmers (Techfit)
16. Discussion support tools
Contribution of livelihood activities to household income (as a
percentage)
6% Results in:
6%
32%
Promising feed
Agriculture
14%
interventions that
Livestock
Remmitance
might work
Labour
Others
Business
20% Better understand
22%
why usual suspects
often don’t work
Solutions suggested by farmers Learning from
Crops at backyard, around
communities
fence, farm side
Reducing the herd size
Improving the utilization of
straws of different food crops
Providing farmers with
continuous training
17. 3. Open the knowledge
Open research
‘Working out
loud’
26. Working out loud!
“bringing activities out of closed repositories and
applications [and events and processes], and pulling
them into the open increases the likelihood of learning
information earlier.”
- Stowe Boyd:
http://blog.podio.com/2011/08/01/working-out-loud-make-
WOL = Observable Work + Narrating Your Work
Narrating Your Work: journaling what you are doing
in an open way for others to follow
Observable Work: creating / modifying / storing
your work where others can see it, follow it and
contribute to it, before it is final
27. 5. Engage over time
Partners,
collaborators
Relationships
Feedback
Open mindsets
Social learning
Social media
28.
29.
30. Challenges
Process versus products
Getting to open
Finding ‘facilitation’ and process
expertise
Fear of new ‘tools’; fear of
‘overload’
Making time to learn and share
31. Contacts
KM and KS @ ILRI: Peter Ballantyne (
p.ballantyne@cgiar.org)
Participatory video: Beth Cullen (
b.cullen@cgiar.org)
Innovation platforms: Alan Duncan (
a.duncan@cgiar.org)
http://infoilri.wordpress.com