Opening Address by the Training Programmes Manager of CTA at the opening of the second CTA Web 2.0 Learning Opportunity Workshop

Vice Chancellor,

Principal Officers of University of the Gambia

Resource Persons,

Course Participants

Ladies & Gentlemen

CTA (the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation) was established within the framework of a co-operation agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (known collectively as the ACP states) and the European Union. This agreement referred to as the Lomé Convention, was put in place in order to improve the management of agricultural information in ACP countries. In June 2000, the ACP and EU States agreed on a new framework known as the Cotonou Agreement as the new basis for continued ACP-EU co-operation. CTA shares the stage with many other institutions in being called upon to support the ACP States. In response, it has defined its niche – those areas in which it has some comparative advantage and in which it can make a special contribution. The Centre acts as an information broker between organisations and professionals in ACP and EU States. It seeks to establish fora for promoting dialogue and the exchange of information between organisations and professionals in ACP States in order to enhance their technical capacity and skills in information and communication management for agricultural development.

CTA’s two operational objectives are based on this new framework. The first is to improve the availability of, and access to, relevant, adequate, accurate, timely and well-adapted information on priority information topics for ACP agricultural and rural development. The second objective is to improve the communication management capacity of ACP agricultural and rural development organizations. Training programmes in information and communication management and strategy development are key instruments of these operational objectives. 

During visits to a number of institutions, CTA fact-finding missions got the strong message that exposure to Web 2.0 applications would be highly needed. An explicit request to support ACP institutions was made by the group of ambassadors of Central Africa to the European Union after they had been exposed to these technologies at a short sensitization workshop organised by CTA.

CTA’s Training Programme has organised a series of Web 2.0 training courses in various regions of Africa. The first was in Uganda in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning and the Regional Universities Forum (RUFORUM) in 2008. That course exposed the great need for this type of course especially in research and academic institutions. A follow-up course was run in 2009 with the RUFORUM for universities in East and Southern Africa and in the same year, two subsequent regional courses focusing for Web 2.0 Tools for Research Support and Networking in Africa were organised for francophone participants from West and Central Africa in Senegal and for Anglophone participants in Ghana. In 2010, CTA ran courses in Benin, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.  In 2011, ten countries were chosen for national countries namely Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, Fiji in the South Pacific, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda in East Africa, Zambia in Southern Africa, Cameroon in Central Africa and Nigeria and The Gambia in West Africa.

Last week, we held the first of two 5-day courses scheduled for The Gambia. From the evaluation results, we noted that the course was very well-appreciated and many participants valued the potential contribution a course such as this can make to their productivity at work. We hope that participants this week will exhibit the same level of enthusiasm.

Objectives

The general objective of the Web 2.0 Opportunities is to improve the skills of researchers and development actors in the use of a variety of Web 2.0 applications for information retrieval, collaborative generation of content, information sharing and effective and cost-efficient communication. The goal is to improve networking and the management of agricultural information and among development actors.

Learning Outcomes

• At the end of the course, participants will be able to:
• Identify and explore currently available Web 2.0 tools;
• Create alerts to obtain desired information streams;
• Subscribe to social networking sites;
• Publish their own content online using blogging applications;
• Develop content on assigned topics using Web2.0 tools using wikis and Google docs
• Utilise online mapping tools effectively

Develop action plan for the use of collaborative tools in institutions in the region.

Our ultimate objective is that the course will create concrete and measurable changes that will be reflected in improved performance in the work places of each of the participants.

CTA wishes to thank the University of the Gambia, and its Vice Chancellor, Professor Muhammadou Kah for offering the facilities of this great institution for the organisation of this course and for the support by personally coming to see the participants and address them during last week’s course. We would like to thank the University Librarian, Mrs Isatou N’jie for her all her efforts so far in the coordination of these courses.

Our resource persons, Mr. Johnson Opigo and Mrs. Beran Gillen have shared a lot with the participants of last week’s course. We thank them for being there to share their experiences with the participants and to guide them towards the achievement of the course objectives.

We warmly welcome the new group of participants. As adult learners coming from various technical backgrounds and with a very clear view of how you intend to utilize the skills gained on this course, we believe that you will apply the skills effectively to enhance your work. The key elements of Web 2.0 are collaborative information generation and sharing, and cost-effective communication. I believe you will put all of these elements into practical use at the end of this course. Your effective participation is crucial to the overall success of the course.

We wish you all a very fruitful course.

Thank you for your attention.

Rodger Obubo

Training Programmes Manager