12 Oct 2023

The Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) has proposed for a needs assessment project to be carried out prior to establishing a knowledge management hub aimed at transforming the agricultural sector.

This was said by the director of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation of National Agricultural Research and Development Institute (NARDI), Dr Martin Kebakile during the NARDI and CABI Stakeholder Roundtable workshop in Gaborone on Tuesday.

Dr Kebakile said Botswana, through NARDI had requested CABI for support in establishing a Knowledge Management Hub to deliver a comprehensive user-friendly knowledge source system that could facilitate transformation of the country’s agricultural sector.

The expectations of NARDI from the needs assessment activity, he said was to clearly determine the needs of NARDI and the country at large for establishing the knowledge management hub.

“We should be able to estimate the cost for establishing the hub, break the silos between our national stakeholders to deliver a formidable knowledge hub to our citizens and foster working links between CABI, Chinese Academy Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and national stakeholder,” he said.

Dr Kebakile pointed out that there was need for a knowledge management hub and that it should be digitalised in order to assist in managing NARDI’s internal business processes, as well as looking into knowledge development core-creation with stakeholders, knowledge and data storage.

“We’ve got a lot of knowledge which is sitting in files, some of which is still very useful in this country and we need to see to it that we transform it into a digitalised form, so that it is easily accessible by many, from anywhere in the country and be able to make use of it,” he said.

Therefore, once established, he said the hub should also be able to facilitate data or knowledge exchange, ‘’including indigenous knowledge that our farmers could be having, they should be able to go through this system to exchange that knowledge with us for the benefit of the agricultural value chain.’’

This system, he said would also help support agricultural information dissemination and provide real time data for making proper decisions about the development of the agricultural sector.

For that reason, he stressed that the system should be friendly and be accessible from anywhere in the country, by anybody given access to it, to be able to get information and improve on what they were doing.

“It should also be able to facilitate productivity enhancement and assist our farmers to get knowledge, whether through e-learning or other means support systems to influence product diversification by acquiring knowledge from other sources in the world to link producers with the marketers and facilitate the market access,” added Dr Kebakile.

The mandate of NARDI, he said was to engage in high quality, innovation intensive and needs based research and development, as well as technology transfer activities across the agricultural value chain, fundamentally to benefit the consumers, farmers, industry, government and science.

Additionally, he said the institute’s other specific objective was to promote research, including technology transfer and commercialization.

“In line with our mandate, we are saying we do have pockets of knowledge and, now, how do we bring it together to transform the agricultural sector, as part of the country’s aspirations to transform from a resource based to a knowledge based economy,” he said. He emphasised the need to identify the needs and address them in order to have a robust system that could help deliver the required outcome.

Presenting on resources and capabilities of CABI in relevant and focus areas, the director of Memberships at CABI headquarters in London, United Kingdom, Dr Qiaoqiao Zhang said the organisation would be responsible for the development of Botswana’s research agenda, as well as generating improved crop and livestock production technologies to enhance the development of a productive and environmentally friendly agricultural sector.

The four-member team and wider CABI team, Dr Zhang said would also produce an initial summary from the situation analysis, a comprehensive report outlining key requirements for the hub and what CABI and Chinese Academy Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) could do to support its development and key recommendations- possibly for a phased development.

Furthermore, she said the teams would also produce; cost estimate of developing the hub, evidence of benefit to support CABI, CAAS and Botswana would jointly source funds, technical or knowledge exchange workshop with participation from Botswana counterparts, CABI, CAAS and other partners. 

Presenting on the objectives and methodologies of the Needs Assessment Project, the Regional Representative of CABI-Southern Africa, based in Lusaka, Zambia, Dr Noah Phiri explained that conducting a needs assessment for establishing a knowledge hub for Botswana would provide a better understanding of what Botswana really needed and what would be required to support the country in establishing the hub.

Analysis of both current and desired situations of knowledge management practice in the country, Dr Phiri said would also help identify the gaps, needs and priorities, as well as provide information to estimate the potential cost of establishing a knowledge hub. Ends