The held a four-day capacity building meeting for communication, Knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation staff from the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) across Africa. The training that attracted participants from across 14 African countries and was held at Lake Victoria hotel, Entebbe from the 26th -29th September 2022.
The overall objective of the workshop was to undertake consultation and capacity building KM and M&E staff in the NARs on critical Knowledge Management and Monitoring and Evaluation Processes, resources and sharing mechanisms for impact full reporting at all levels.
Dr. Enock Warinda, the Executive Director of ASARECA, in his opening remarks, said Africa can only talk about economic growth when we have data that is developed to have a sustainable agricultural sector that improves livelihoods. He also urged the private sector to work towards the transfer of technologies to those that need to access them and informed the participants that ASERECA has a platform given to them by 14 governments in East and Central Africa to help with the transfer of technologies like germ plasm in Cameroon and Sudan.
This training is building on work done in 2021 to conduct training sessions aimed at further enhancing the capacity of M&E and KM specialists in member NARIs to support the development and collection of research data and knowledge products.
Communication, Knowledge Management, and Monitoring and Evaluation functions are highly interdependent and entail systematic planning, implementation and monitoring of processes for generation, processing, packaging, storage, dissemination, access and use of information and knowledge to increase the innovative capability of its stakeholders.
The 14 member states represented were from Burundi, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Kenya, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.