ZAR4DIN attends SADC - ICART AICKM Regional Workshop, 30th August - 3rd September 2010, Pretoria, South Africa.

Three members of the Zambia Agriculture Research for Development Information Network (ZAR4DIN) attended a follow-up Regional Workshop on Agricultural Information, Communication and Knowledge Management (AICKM) Strategy Development  Meeting of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Network of Agricultural R & D Information managers. The meeting was held at St. George Hotel, Pretoria, from 30th August to 3rd September 2010.

Participants to this workshop were drawn from all SADC member states except Namibia.

The workshop was held under the auspices of the Implementation and Coordination of Agricultural Research (ICART) project. The objectives of the workshop were as follows:

• To share the experiences gained in the region on the development of AICKM Strategies at national level, using a method developed by the Network.
• To start the process of developing a regional AICKM strategy on AR&D Information in the SADC region
• To review the SADC-AIMS portal and its improved functionalities, in line with international standards and trends, for use by the Network
• To discuss the management of AR&D information & documents and exchange of AR&D information in electronic format using web-based tools, with particular reference to document repositories, open access and archives and the evaluation of information products and services
• To adopt general guidelines of the Network for the generation, management, exchange and evaluation of AR&D information in the SADC region, and Training (ICART) in the SADC region.

Zambia contributed a lot to the development of the regional AICKM strategy based on the experiences gained during the development of the national AICKM strategy.

Three participants attended from Zambia namely; Mr. Davy Simumba of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (Zambia Agriculture Research Institute - ZARI), Mr. Danny Munsanje from the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development (Department of Livestock Development) and Ms. Christine Wamunyima Kanyengo from the University of Zambia Library.


Contributed by: Christine Wamunyima Kanyengo, Davy Simumba and Danny Munsanje.