ICART regional workshop on Agricultural Information, Communication and Knowledge Management (AICKM)

24-29 May 2009. Gaborone, Botswana. The objectives of the ICART regional workshop meeting were to follow up with representatives from research and extension/information services on their previous exposure to the computer-based communication tools and to discuss, to review the training materials that can be used for capacity building at national level, to discuss a regional AICKM strategy and to work towards a harmonized approach for the organization of national workshops for the development of the national IACKM strategies.

The following countries were represented in this ICART meeting: Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Madagascar did not attend because of the embargo put upon the country by the SADC.

Presentation of the eRAILS Platform. The Platform was presented and a hand on session was organized using the country admin accounts created for each countries. The following actions were performed on the platform by the participants. Access the eRAILS platform, Login to the country account, Create a website, create pages in the web site, create sub pages, upload picture and post information, perform a search at the eRAILS home page. Madagascar eRAILS example was shown to participants.

The eRAILS platform was well appreciated by participants and a number of them planned to use it to disseminate their information. They particularly appreciated the fact that the platform allows institutions that do not have a website to benefit from the platform and easily create their own site while in the same time allowing those who already have their websites to be linked to it and be included in the searches performed from the Platform. The eRAILS feature allowing to perform searches both on the resources hosted within the platform and on the external resources linked to the platform has been considered as a great added value.

There is no better brilliant concept than this eRAILS approach/concept’ dixit representatives from Mauritius.

• The following countries volunteered to be part of the cases to be shown during the RAILS pre-conference event during the IAALD conference in July 2009 in Accra: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe. The following countries also expressed the same willingness earlier on: Cote d’Ivoire, DR Congo and Zambia.
• All the SADC countries are to organize national meetings for national for the development of AICKM