Category: international development

Poultry for Progress and the Chicken of Change

One of my jobs a few weeks ago was to facilitate sessions at the Rome Share Fair. This included making sure there was some sort of blog post or notes from each session. Well, I fell behind after one session. I got my blog post up on the Graphic Facilitation workshop, and convinced Sophie Alvarez to blog about the Communities of Practice Clinic Etienne and I did, but then there were FOUR more! Mamma mia. Here is one… from the session on New Technologies and Innovative Approaches in Rural Family Poultry. (Slides below)

Antonio Rota (IFAD) and Olaf Thieme (FAO) have been working on an approach to small scale poultry farming in rural areas that offers a glimpse into the factors that help farmers succeed in putting food on their table and making  living for their families. We joked that this session could have been called “how to make a development project that works” or, riffing off of Rob Burnet’s talk on Tuesday where he talked about an attention getting technique they used, the “Chicken of Change!” (Graphic recording I did of Rob’s talk is here.)

First, a bit about the session. We kicked things off with a human spectrogram (http://www.kstoolkit.org/Human+Spectrogram) to learn  more about the 20 people who came to the session. The group was diverse; some with a lot of experience with poultry and others with less experience but plenty of interest.

While there may be more interest in the stars of livestock, cows, I’ve learned that it is poultry, goats and other small animals that are accessible to the very poor and very rural. Chickens can produce eggs and meat for high nutrition, and selling eggs and chickens brings in income.  These little chicks offer financial empowerment for women. But poultry just isn’t on the radar screen and there are not many statistics to help shine a light on chickens and ducks for development. Poultry production can contribute to the MDGs around poverty, hunger, education, gender empowerment, health, and even reduction in HIV/AIDS. Super chickens!

I realized as I listened there is a ton of common sense in our work, but what matters is listening and acting on that common sense.

Antonio and Olaf shared a story about a village poultry project that, while scientifically sound, ran into some practical problems, like the challenge of finding high volumes of local varieties of chickens well suited to a free-ranging lifestyle, and reasonable ways to get eggs hatched. (Just a side note: in our preparation, Antonio mentioned that some people talked about “free ranging” chickens as “scavenging livestock.” Hm, interesting how language might shape  our perceptions, eh?)

I was amazed how fascinating all the elements were as Antonio and Olaf told engaging stories. There were issues of vaccine distribution for Newcastle disease. Access to vaccines varies by distance from cities and the creation of vaccine networks is critical.. Poultry raising practices in general vary by distance from cities, with more intense production in peri urban and urban settings where there are more resources and capital. In the very rural areas, women have to make due with what they find locally.  And all these things need to mesh with local customs and practices. So is the big pattern emerging? Yes, context! Local knowledge and adaptation matter.

Innovation does not have to mean rocket science. 90-95% of poultry loss is from disease and then second greatest loss is predators, including humans. Villagers developed a simple basket cage to protect their chicks out a wide varieties of material. Breed choices focus on runners who can evade predators and forage in the rural areas, not a slow broiler. In the cities, you can build hen houses for more intense production.

To grow more chickens you need more birds. Brood hens only work for small production. So villagers have created simple incubators that can be built in remote locations. Think about it. If you are targeting 10,000 women with 10 hens each…where do you find 100,000 local breed chickens? Large scale breeders offer “Ferrari” birds that require a lot of feed. Then woman have to decide, “feed the birds or feed my children?” These past dilemmas have caused evaluators to say “Chickens don’t work.” But they can.

Oil lamp incubators were developed by women in Bangladesh. This and related methods are adaptable to different contexts informed by the women’s’ experiences. For example, in the past, telling women to turn the eggs every hour, around the clock was downright impractical. Sponsors provided a lot of training, but people abandoned the work after training. One woman however was successful, but not willing to turn the eggs every hour. She turned twice a day and still the eggs hatched successfully. Voila! Local adaptation.

The training was also adapted, moving from two full sequential days, to 28 days of working with the women in doing the work, solving the little problems. This reflected the hatching cycle. This is where the idea of the buffer zone of sand for the oil lamp hatchery was identified and which greatly increased success. Now new village industry is building on local breeds with locally done genetic improvement through cross breeding for village conditions. This is an important remote option of poultry breeds for the poor, rural farmers and populations.

Few institutions are focusing on poultry. There apparently is little focused research. No one is doing extensive training. So we need more networking for exchange of information on poultry production. And information that is locally and contextually adapted.

The days of projects with blanket design for rural poultry are finished at IFAD and FAO. From now on they will be specifically tailored around social, economic and location specific conditions. Marginal areas need local breeds, local knowledge and resources used for food security. Closer to urban and peri urban centers we can look more at market based systems.

We need to listen to farmers and local knowledge about what is possible and use a comprehensive approach, with motivation, training for success as well as technical advice.Antonio and Olaf offered a word of advice to the new player, BMGF. “If they only invest in one of the many technical factors they will fail. We have learned from our mistakes. We know we need a holistic approach. We want to share what we learned.”

New technologies and innovative approaches in rural family poultry (SLIDES)

PoultryPublication

Graphic Facilitation Workshop from #sfrome

This week I’ve been at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for the Agricultural Knowledge Share Fair. One of my roles was to facilitate a half day graphic facilitation workshop and then share a report to those who did not attend. (disclosure: I facilitated something like 8 sessions and thankfully some of my colleagues are helping me. Sophie Alvarez of CIAT has a great post on the communities of practice clinic that Etienne Wenger and I did together and Pier Andre Pirani is doing a post on the “chat show” we did on the application of social media in international development. Still to write are posts on the session on rural poultry, migration and land use issues for the Masaai in Tanzania, “making agricultural knowledge travel” chat show and… I think that may be it. Mamma Mia!)

In living up to the “show, don’t tell” adage, there are some beautiful images created by the participants which I can share.

20110929-220930.jpg More here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/tags/sfrome/

My goal was not to do a drawing class. Instead I wanted to encourage people to experience then joy of the physical act of drawing, then connect that joy to the power of visuals to encourage conversation and their use in a diverse set of group processes.

After we experienced the joy of beautiful colored pens chalk and the liberation of drawing on large scale paper, we reviewed a variety of visual facilitation practices such as mind maps and mandalas, river of life, sketch noting and graphic recording, card sorting and hands on drawing icebreakers. Participants took turns with graphically enhanced flip chart note taking. Finally we did a quick graphic recording so each participant could begin their own graphic facility toolkit. They did amazing work.

What was more amazing was to see enhanced use of visual practices in the following days of the fair, as people applied what they experienced.

Ironically the next day dawned and the Internet access was out just before Rob Burnet of Well Told Story was to begin his keynote. This was particularly challenging to the Fair team because social reporting was part of the heart and soul of the Fair. So they asked me to graphically record the talk which was fun because one of Rob’s key strategies for reaching Kenyan youth was comics! In the end then wifi was back and the social reporters tweeted about the analog note taking!!

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Monday Video: 4 Perspectives on CoP Evaluation

I often have a “deer in the headlight” look when someone asks me about evaluating communities of practice. I think that is because I have some stereotype in my head about evaluation. But in fact, when I let my common sense kick in, I know of and use many evaluation approaches. I guess I never called them “evaluation approaches.” Recently my friends Etienne Wenger, Bev Trayner and Maarten deLaat wrote a lovely paper on “Promoting and Asessing Value Creation in Communities and Networks.” It is lovely because in many ways it gives voice to the “common sense” practices I’ve used and seen around me. And it gave me confidence to say yes to an interview with the KMImpact Challenge earlier this year. The video came out today. Besides sounding like I’m on speed… what do you think? How do you evaluate your communities?

via Nancy White of Full Circle Associates on CoPs – YouTube.

Guest Post: Adejare Amoo on an Industrialist’s Role in eLearning in Africa

Nancy’s Note: In June I was lucky to help facilitate a couple of events for UN University at eLearning Africa in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. One of our panelists was the wise and warm Adejare Amoo from Nigeria. Adejare’s role was to illuminate how business can be part of innovating in eLearning in Africa. In preparation for his part in our “fish bowl” exercise, he drafted an outline that I really appreciated. Because we did not have time to cover all his points, I invited him to do a guest post on my blog. I think Adejare is my FIRST guest post since I started this blog May 26, 2004. I will also post a few reflections from eLearning Africa in a subsequent post.

As for Adejare’s post I love this line: “The higher education institutions in Africa need to follow the industrialists’ innovation concept and good practice policy, whereby they start their projects on a clean slate,  think big, start small, fail quickly, and scale fast, using ICT. Above all, the higher education institutions in Africa should adopt and adapt “open innovation policy” which has helped the industry to grow, just as it has helped most of the higher education institutions in the developed nations to use e-learning pedagogy for quality mass education production which has positively impacted their environments’ development.” Read on! And thanks to Adejare!

AN INDUSTRIALIST’S ROLE IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN AFRICA
I am an e-learning entrepreneur, a highly innovation promoted and real time evolving industry. I am based in Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa (about 150 million population). Students as well as research & development results are identified as the products and services from  Higher education institutions in Africa. However these products and services form a core input in the industrialist’s production process system. In effect, the industrialist is a major consumer of higher education products and services.

Furthermore, as a major stakeholder in higher education system in Africa, the industrialist sponsors some relevant higher education research and developments programmes, as well as some relevant higher education projects  –academic and non-academic, such as infrastructural developments. Some of the industrialist’s employees are parents and relations to the students, whose progress is of utmost importance to the industrialist’s organisation>. In addition to being a donor, the industrialist is a network builder in higher education system. As a council member, he contributes to higher education policy and practice formulation.

HOW AN INDUSTRIALIST FEELS INNOVATION IS NEEDED IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN AFRICA

Innovation has been identified as turning new ideas into beneficial and/or profitable products and services. It is characterised by information and communications technology (ICT) driven experimentations and sharing of ideas.

Higher education system in Africa is confronted with some challenges. Both the admission and carrying capacities of the higher institutions are too low to satisfy the high demand for quality mass education delivery required to develop their environment.  Most of the institutions stick to their own obsolete ideas and practices, without allowing for other innovative ideas and practices from outside their institutions.  These institutions are starved of adequate funding. In view of the self contented policy and practice in most   African higher institutions, support assistance could not be readily obtained, since the donor partners could not understand their challenges. Most of the higher institutions in Africa are yet to apply technology in their education administration and delivery. The prerequisite solution to these challenges is radical innovation.

The industrialist also needs innovation of his company’s products and services to improve on customer satisfaction, satisfactory return on investment (ROI) to the investors/shareholders, and efficient as well as  effective social responsibility performance as a corporate citizen. The stakeholders desire innovation in the company’s products and services, and which innovation must come from all the inputs in the production process. Such inputs include the identified higher education products and services, i.e. qualified manpower and research & development results.
Expressed mathematically, “Summation of innovation of process inputs equals innovation of products and services.”

INDUSTRIALIST’S GOALS IN INITIATING OR SUPPORTING INNOVATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN AFRICA

he industrialist’s primary goal is to achieve his organisation’s set vision, mission, and values. This is, most essentially, to be and remain no.1 profitable producer of his company’s quality products and services, as well as fulfil the company’s  good corporate citizenship responsibilities, through innovation. The industrialist also aims at achieving the planned innovation objectives and strategies for the organisation, products and services, through innovation from the higher education products and services as part of the inputs. As a corporate citizen, the industrialist needs to fulfil the organisation’s  responsibility in promoting innovation of higher education process system, plantation of entrepreneurial seeds for generation innovation, as well as promotion of the organisation’s image and network.

INDUSTRIALIST’S MAIN STRENGTH OR ASSET INPUTS TO HIGHER EDUCATION INNOVATION PROCESS IN AFRICA.
From the point of view of comparative contemporary policy and practice in the higher institutions in the developing and developed nations, it will be observed that most of the universities that make the first hundred leading universities global ratings worldwide employ the application of the above mentioned innovative characteristics, i.e.  information and communications technology (ICT) driven experimentation and sharing of ideas  in their administration and academic operations.  The ubiquitous internet technology application has facilitated sharing of ideas and good practices such that the entire world is reduced to a digital village, with respect to the higher education institutions in the developed world.  This must have been borrowed from the successful high tech companies, which believe and practice the idea that companies should make greater use of external ideas and technologies in their own business and allow their own technologies and ideas to be used by others.  (Henry Chesbrough, UC Berkeley). In Practer & Gamble (P & G)’s “Use-It-Or-Lose-It Programme” innovation strategy, after an internally generated innovation has been successfully applied within the organisation for three years, it is thrown open to other organisations that could benefit from it. The higher institutions could benefit from such strategy.

The high tech industrialists have capitalised on the above mentioned innovation driving forces to make a significant impact in the higher education institutions, most especially in the developed nations. To the industrialist, innovation is a revolution. It involves high risk taking, along with high failure probability result, and to be undertaken by all stakeholders. The industrialist considers this phenomenon as part of innovation game. It provides opportunities for continuous experimentations as well as controlled frequent and rapid changes.  For instance, Microsoft’s innovation strategy allows its employees to spend about 20% of the company’s time on controlled experimentation of their personal innovative ideas, that could positively contribute to the company’s benefits and ROI to its stakeholders. The company accepts that about 50% of such experimentations could fail. Furthermore, Microsoft provides high tech tools and equipment to some higher education institutions, in Nigeria, for their digital/computer labs. On the other hand, while implementing its “Innovation Research Programme” strategy, Hewlett Packard (HP) votes a huge amount of dollars to sponsor research projects in the higher education institutions annually and use the generated results in its products and services innovation.  In the industry, consumer generated innovation is assuming a greater trend. Similarly, the industry should generate innovation from the higher education institutions, being the major consumers of the products and service, i.e. the students and research & development results.

As the industrialist commits so much  resources into promotion of innovation in the higher education institutions, the challenge of ownership of proprietary rights of products and services resulting from such research and development activities, undertaken by the institutions, could become important and controversial issues. This is where mutual and collaborative understanding should be embraced by both the higher education institutions and the industry.

The industrialist possesses and provides financial support to the higher education institutions, through grants, endowments, foundation, donations, scholarship, sponsorship for conferences, etc. Relevant examples of such donors in Nigeria include Microsoft, HP, Intel, Nestle, Shell, Chevron, and Dangote, among others. The company possesses relevant technology and infrastructure. Provision is made for both the students and teachers to access the industrialist’s technology and infrastructures such as laboratory for research and development. Places are provided for students/teacher industrial work experience, as well as for sabbatical work experience for teachers. Collaborative exchange programme between the industrialist’s staff and student/lecturers is promoted. The industrialist is involved in higher education institutions’ social and academic extra-curricular activities, building and sustaining network between the industrial group and the higher education institutions. Promotion of socio-cultural activities engages the industrialist. The company initiates and participates in community development programmes such as health, poverty alleviation, capacity building facilities, etc. The industrialist organises competitions and quiz and also provides facilities for entrepreneurial skills acquisition to be shared with relevant students/teachers.

INDUSTRIALIST’S NEEDS TO HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN
To effect the innovation, the industrialist will require collaboration and cooperation from higher education institutions leaders and the entire institutions’ community. Collaboration and cooperation from other stakeholders in higher education innovation — parents, NGO’s, and socio- cultural organisations, will be relevant. Open access process policy and practice will enhance “open innovation”, which will involve sharing of technological developments and information, as well as ideas. High quality support/participants and manpower, with positive attitude, integrity, creativity, interpersonal relation, etc will be of mutual benefit. The industrialist will be a member of the governing council of the higher education institutions, where policy and practice are formulated. The industrialists will be represented on all relevant government’s boards and high powered policy and practice formulators, to make audible voice.

The government will provide motivation in terms of tax rebate, recognition and other incentives, which will include conducive business environment — infrastructure, power supply, transportation means, peace, safety, security, etc. Funding from equity, loan and/or grant will be highly required.

CONCLUSION

The higher education institutions in Africa need to follow the industrialists’ innovation concept and good practice policy, whereby they start their projects on a clean slate,  think big, start small, fail quickly, and scale fast, using ICT. Above all, the higher education institutions in Africa should adopt and adapt “open innovation policy” which has helped the industry to grow, just as it has helped most of the higher education institutions in the developed nations to use e-learning pedagogy for quality mass education production which has positively impacted their environments’ development.
Mine is just to provoke more contribution on the way forward to quality mass higher education delivery in Africa, using e-learning pedagogy and other information & communications technologies, for accelerated and sustainable development.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges confronting quality mass education delivery for development in Africa.

Engr. ADEJARE AMOO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – ADEJARE  AMOO

Engr. Adejare AMOO  is a Consultant/Managing Director of CorporateMind Associates Nigeria Limited, engaged in blended education, through their website www.corporatemind-elearn.com and a learning/study centre . This is in support of accelerated and sustainable realization of the goals of the global socio-economic development programs such as MDG, and EFA. The targets of his social entrepreneurial effort cover the disadvantaged communities , such as the youths, girl child, the physically challenged, and the women , among others, in the developing nations.

He retired from Nigeria’s oil and gas industry in 2000 after 27 years work experience. He did an ICT Certificate course on e-Commerce  to support his passion for ICT in education. He is currently the Chairman of the ICT Group, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He participated in the stakeholders workshops organized by Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria, on education reform programs in 2006 to 2010. He participated in the eLearning Conference in Paris, and in EDUCA Berlin, as well as in the eLearning Africa Conferences between 2005 and 2010.He participated in the Second Science With Africa Conference in Addis Ababa, 2010. He participated in many international online education forums and webinars, including the e-Learning Expert Online Forum 2009, organized by UNU-ViE, Bonn.

He is currently the Nigeria’s ambassador to WWW.SCIENCE-CONNECT.COM NGO. He authors and publishes the Nigeria wiki-page on the NGO’s website. He has a very strong international network. He is bilingual with proficiency in English and French languages. A youths mentor and a community leader, he is married with children. His ambition is to dedicate the rest of his life to support the less privileged  in the developing nations, using ICT.

Carl Jackson on Supporting Online Communities in International Development

Carl Jackson of Westhill Knowledge Group (formerly at IDS – Institute of Development Studies), colleague at KM4Dev, friend and all around smart and funny guy took 20 minutes to share some of his experiences supporting and participating in online communities in international development. He has worked with a number of IDS’s Eldis communities, including Africa Adapt. While you can peruse the communities’ websites, nothing replaces hearing about the practice of stewarding and participating IN the community.

Click below for a listen — it’s about 18 minutes packed full of practical advice.

Carl Jackson on Online Communities in Development

Here are some of the nuggets I extracted:

  • People are seeing  online communities and networks as core instruments of how we work.We can now cheaply create broad based activist networks. For example, Africa Adapt – with participatory researchers, policy makers, community advocates around climate adaptation. In 1.5 years built a sense of community, and has organized F2F events at a continental level. Used to be much harder to get off the ground. Now people prepared to give it a go or at least a benefit of a doubt.
  • Focus, focus, focus: Carl reinforced the importance of subject specific focus… this then attracts a specific kind of people
  • Some groups are harder to attract than others. On the whole, the one group where it has been harder to get awarness and buy in is with is the scientists in climate science community. In international development there is quite a strong divide between the natural scientists and social scientists. They have different networks and ways of sharing knowledge.
  • Policy makers CAN be attracted with focused offerings. Within Eldis communities had a debate between experts on food security and gender, convened by BRIDGE at IDS. Researchers and policy makers from a range of organizations.
  • Preparation for events matters. With a focused, short time frame event, they did substantial bilateral engagement w/ potential participants 3-4 weeks leading up to the date. A lot of work went into brainstorming themes they could focus on in the discussion, and in gathering and synthesizing brief bios of participants. They noticed in other discussions of this type a lot of initial energy gets soaked up in introductions, getting comfortable.
  • Open conversations with less clear focus are still important. People are looking for more increasing awareness of the landscape, who the actors are, events are, values and languages. For that kind of orientation, open discussions are still really valuable. They allow you to discover things. In time delimited, you drill down, but not much discovery.
  • Why has ELDIS community succeeded? Primary value of ELDIS communities: be in there for the long haul. When the communities  were set up there were other spaces like that, but the level of demand for ELDIS communities and level of initial participation was quite low. When you have short term performance requirements — could have bombed quickly. But the grant makers that work w/ IDS have a longer strategic vision about the value of collaboration, bringing in diverse and little heard voices — commitment was there. Seedbed for initiatives.
  • Reputation still matters: IDS has been able to – because it has established reputation for research and training beyond its online work gives a certail level of brand recognition and associated knowledge resources on the broader Eldis portal. Quality and back up that can be hooked into community spaces. Drawing on the resource guides.
  • Individually driven spaces require less support.  The largest number on ELDIS are set up by members for a blog or event, sharing documentation or share videos.  They are doing stuff in a very unsupported way beyond the provision of technical support and troubleshooting advice for things like setting up profiles and adding functionality to their personal spaces.
  • Events benefit from strong staffing and preparation. The Food security and gender event was part of a wider programmatic effort around that subject, purpose of gathering knowledge for publication. 3 people working on the preparation for 2 day event with a 2 month lead time. Carl estimates that  total time of individuals that went into prep and facilitation, follow up was 30 person days. Consider the value of convening 30 experts internationally to have a very detailed cutting edge discussion. If you’d have looked at how else, the costs of convening that kind of group logistically in a physical space – order of 5-10 x cost.
  • Design as if you are in their shoes. In thinking about design, especially new group coming together, it is important to try and think your way into where they are coming from, scenarios they might consider participating in. That’s a way of designing a process that leads to an online collaboration with as little logistical friction, anticipates some of the interests and needs they may have. Policy makers want a tractable output of feedback to policy. Researchers want highlights of current research or gather ideas for new research topics. Put yourself into the shoes of the participants and construct a process that is useful for both participants and commissioners of the event.
  • Light facilitation rules the day. Now that people are much more comfortable participating in online spaces, the facilitation needs to be when it is live needs to be much more light touch. People don’t need so much hand holding. Facilitation should not be acting as chair of discussion– neither necessary or helpful. More about holding the space, backchannel matchmaking/connecting, draw out the quite – pastoral care behind the scenes. Then the energy the participants bring to the discussion doesn’t get blocked. I don’t think you can lead discussions online, you can only nudge them
  • Any other advice? It’s important – when the community does come together in a good way, has a powerful discussion, important to translate that something as quick as possible into something tangible. There are often good intentions of producing outputs, but the wheels grind slowly, nice polished in 3 months. You have to be prepared to quickly synthesize and publish some kind of project. Rough and quick is better than polished and slow. They can immediately get the extra value.

You can find Carl on his company website, www.wkg.uk.net or on Twitter at @Carl_WKG