ILRI InfoCentre participates in the First International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives

The Conference/Forum that took place at the Addis Ababa UN Conference Centre on July 1–3, 2009 brought together staff and senior program leaders of key African intergovernmental and development organizations to discuss the importance of ensuring that the development and use of information and knowledge resources and services are recognized as critical for inclusive development and empowerment. The forum also explored how best to mainstream knowledge development and use in the design and implementation of African development strategies and programmes.

ILRI InfoCentre staff, Abeba Desta, Bizuwork Mulat and Sissay Webshet participated in the First International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives.

The forum underscored that research has shown that reliable access and use of knowledge and information resources and services have been omitted in the design and implementation of most past and present development strategies designed to bring about positive change in African countries. Such documents include Millennium Development Goals (MDG), documents of NEPAD, poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSP), Report of the Commission on Africa and the Lagos Plan of Action. The Forum also pointed out that the recurring omission indicates that African development efforts have not been sufficiently based on critical knowledge and capacity for delivering and benefiting from development programmes, and also noted that such neglect is the result of lack of awareness of the critical contributions made by access to and use of knowledge resources.

At the conference, there the need to digitize libraries was discussed and agreed upon, though there were participants that argued that digitizing all libraries would inevitably exclude most African users, who do not even have access to computers, let alone reliable internet connections.

Bizuwork Mulat comments on the conference, “This has been an awesome experience. Coming together with so many leaders in the field of information and knowledge sharing is so challenging and inspiring. I want to do more of this.”

ILRI had an exhibition stand at the Conference. The stand was set up and demonstrated by Asabech Eshete and Abeba Asmelash. As always, the ILRI booth was visited and admired by many.