Open knowledge sharing to support learning in
agricultural and livestock research for development
projects
Peter Ballantyne
Food Security and Nutrition Network East Africa
Regional Knowledge Sharing Meeting, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, 11-13 June 2012

Topics
 Why we need learning – ‘business as
usual interventions’ don’t work
 ILRI and more effective development
 Why share and learn – starting points for
knowledge management?
 Ways to share and learn – approaches we
use at ILRI

Business as usual – Ask the farmers
What’s your I’ll go find Feed
main problem some
technology

Business as usual – What’s on the
scientists’ shelf
What feed
technologies Planted forage
have you got? Urea treated straw
Bypass protein
OK, let’s try
those

“Our findings indicate that
business as usual feed
‘promotion’ and
interventions are not too
promising.”
Alan Duncan (ILRI)
“If you do what you’ve
always done, you’ll get
what you always got.”
Mark Twain

ILRI roles in program learning
 ILRI as a ‘knowledge’ partner – in
development projects
 Learning,M&E, impact assessment
 Knowledge, expertise, facilitation, CD
 Evidence, validation, …
 ILRI as R4D ‘solution-finder’ with partners
 Participatory, multi-stakeholder …
 Explicit learning/knowledge focus …
 ILRI’s ‘open’ research, knowledge and
learning approach [local to global]

Some starting points
 Together - researchers, communities,
and development partners - know so
much …
 How do we create, document and share this
knowledge?
 How do we support learning, and share the
results?
 How do we enrich these processes of
documenting, learning, and sharing?
 Can we do R4D better?
 To increase the effectiveness of R4D!

Some ‘answers’
1. Co-create and co-learn in multi-
stakeholder platforms
2. Document and mobilize knowledge
from the (un)usual people
3. Make research knowledge, events,
processes and platforms ‘open’
4. Engage, engage, engage …

1. Innovation platforms
 spaces for
diverse actors
to engage in
dialogue, and to
jointly identify,
learn about and
address issues
Innovating with
communities

2. Documenting (un)usual voices
 Community
perspectives
 Beyond reports
Listen and learn

Participatory video

Most significant Any observable
changes impacts?

Discussion support tools
Farmer focus
 Rapid value chain
assessment
 Participatory
‘FEAST’ feed
assessment with
communities
 Technology
prioritization with
farmers (Techfit)

Discussion support tools
Contribution of livelihood activities to household income (as a
percentage)
6% Results in:
6%
32%
 Promising feed
Agriculture
14%
interventions that
Livestock
Remmitance
might work
Labour
Others
Business
20%  Better understand
22%
why usual suspects
often don’t work
Solutions suggested by farmers  Learning from
 Crops at backyard, around
communities
fence, farm side
 Reducing the herd size
 Improving the utilization of
straws of different food crops
 Providing farmers with
continuous training

3. Open the knowledge
 Open research
 ‘Working out
loud’

Open planning – events and thinking

‘Open’ events – all the discussions

Open projects – work in progress

Open sharing – gaps, weaknesses …

Open presentations

Open photos

Open reports and repository

Open for feedback

Working out loud!
 “bringing activities out of closed repositories and
applications [and events and processes], and pulling
them into the open increases the likelihood of learning
information earlier.”
- Stowe Boyd:
http://blog.podio.com/2011/08/01/working-out-loud-make-
 WOL = Observable Work + Narrating Your Work
 Narrating Your Work: journaling what you are doing
in an open way for others to follow
 Observable Work: creating / modifying / storing
your work where others can see it, follow it and
contribute to it, before it is final

5. Engage over time
Partners,
collaborators
Relationships
Feedback
Open mindsets
Social learning
Social media

Challenges
 Process versus products
 Getting to open
 Finding ‘facilitation’ and process
expertise
 Fear of new ‘tools’; fear of
‘overload’
 Making time to learn and share

Contacts
 KM and KS @ ILRI: Peter Ballantyne (
p.ballantyne@cgiar.org)
 Participatory video: Beth Cullen (
b.cullen@cgiar.org)
 Innovation platforms: Alan Duncan (
a.duncan@cgiar.org)
 http://infoilri.wordpress.com