This paper attempts to discuss the importance of knowledge in community economic development a case of Tanzania. The paper will attempt to define what knowledge is by looking at different definition from various literatures. Secondly the paper will look at different types of knowledge. Thirdly will discuss the importance of knowledge in Community Economic Development Fourthly will sight some challenges and finally the paper will give some recommendation and conclusion.
Introduction:
There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, or any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories as a result the definition of knowledge has been a matter of on-going discussion by the philosophers and intellectuals.
Oxford English Dictionary defined Knowledge as facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience and education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. What is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/knowledge define knowledge applying the classical definition by pointing out that in order for there to be knowledge at least the following criteria must be fulfilled: a statement must be justified true and believed; the believer's evidence is such that it logically necessitates the truth of the belief.
Patrick Reany; (1988) defines knowledge as a relation between two or more concepts, where concepts are mental objects but these concepts do not exist apart from a conceptualizer, an intelligent being. Thus human knowledge is subjective and has no absolute meaning." The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose.
Types of knowledge
Communicating knowledge:
This is knowledge that is represented symbolically that can be used to indicate meaning and can be thought of as a dynamic process. Hence the transfer of the symbolic representation can be viewed as one ascription process whereby knowledge can be transferred. Other forms of communication include imitation, narrative exchange along with a range of other methods.
Situated knowledge:
Situated knowledge is knowledge specific to a particular situation or environment. Imagine very similar breed of cassava, which is grown in different parts of Tanzania can have different use or not used. Take a case of Coast region where cassava is taken as staple food by the community can be quite different in Kilimanjaro where cassava is not eaten due to the fact cassava grown in that area is not sweet and sometimes are poisonous. If people will rely on knowledge from Kilimanjaro where due to minerals that are found in the soil causing cassava to be poison may lead people from Kilimanjaro to starve even if they are in the coast area where cassava are sweet and edible. In addition to that some methods of generating knowledge, such as trial and error, or learning from experience, tend to create highly situational knowledge which is often embedded in language, culture, or traditions.
Partial knowledge
In most realistic cases, it is not possible to have an exhaustive understanding of an information domain, so then we have to live with the fact that our knowledge is always not complete, that is, partial. Most real problems have to be solved by taking advantage of a partial understanding of the problem context and problem data. That is very different from the typical simple math problems that we solve at school, where all data are given and we have a perfect understanding of formulas necessary to solve them
Importance of knowledge in CED
The Importance of knowledge may be accessed or captured at three stages in a CED project these include: before; during; and after the implementation of the project. In undertaking a new project in a Community Economic Development the community needs to learn and be knowledgeable with the project that they are going to undertake before the project starts. Failure to do that the project may end up in not giving the expected results. At this stage knowledge is gathered in various forms or ways. These include learning from best practices that has taken place from the similar projects undertaken previously or undertaken somewhere. For example on coffee farming project people from Kagera can learn from Kilimanjaro people who grow coffee on best practices about coffee growing.
Secondly knowledge may be captured and recorded during the initial project analysis. This stage community is involved in identifying and analyzing the problem to come up with concrete information on causes, effects; and the magnitude of the problem. Then they make analysis of the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within and outside the community for undertaking the project. All these information/ knowledge will help them during the implementation for a viable project.
Sighting one example of the importance of gathering information prior to the implementation of the project the following study is sighted as follows: One NGO in Mwanza supported a community in solving a problem of high mortality rate of under five children. The solution to solve the problem was to construct toilets to each household. Unfortunately after two years when the evaluation was done still the rate of children mortality showed that was still high as it was before. This was due to the fact that the NGO did not get enough facts about the problem. The issue that was identified later was people do not have the habit of washing hands after toilet use. In addition to that in that society they had a tradition of washing hands in the same bowl and the children had to wash hands last after the adults. This resulted to children to wash hands with already dirty water which was also not safe as a result they become victim of sickness causing death to children under five.
Thirdly knowledge is important during the implementation of the project. People will need to access relevant information on the progress of the project implementation. This is done through follow up and monitoring. The community and other stakeholders will learn if they are doing well or they have encountered some problems in the process of implementation. The information/ knowledge gathered will indicate if the implementation of the project is going according to the time table; making good use of the resources; all stakeholders are meeting their responsibilities. The information gathered can lead them to review or proceed on with the program implementation.
Finally is after the project implementation. Information about the success or failure of the project is gathered. This is done through the evaluation process whereby information or knowledge on the results and impacts of the project will be realized. The information gathered and lesson learnt will help the community and other stakeholders to celebrate their achievements or will help them in designing a new project. Sighting the same project on reducing high mortality rate among children project in Mwanza, the information that were gathered by the evaluation it helped the organization to design a new project that included creating awareness to community members on the need of washing hands after toilet use and the use of running water in washing their hands before eating.
In CED projects government and community economic practitioners are applying various participatory information capturing and gathering methods: These include Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA); Obstacle and Opportunities Development (O & OD) Participatory Learning Action ( PLA).. This is to ensure that the right information is gathered in time, in order to take the most appropriate decision on the community economic development
Challenges on gathering knowledge:
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive process: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose In view of that illiteracy among the community in Tanzania especially in rural is one of the obstacle in knowledge transfer and collection. People are not able to read and write to learn knew knowledge and apply it for their economic development.
Lack of facilities at local level up to national level to facilitate information gathering and transfer to communities as a result most of the knowledge found to situational and partial for community development take the case of Kilimanjaro in rural up to date they still believe that cassava are poisoned and do not take cassava as food.
Lack of Government policies and strategies that facilitate local knowledge and innovations to be transformed and incorporated to modern knowledge as a result most of the knowledge is not developed, documented and used by the community for Community development e.g. there is a lot knowledge owned by local people that is not shared and documented e.g. traditional medicine etc
Top down approaches and quick result oriented among Government and CED practitioners. Practitioners do not take enough time to gather enough information and listen the concerned community as a result most of the Community programs are not owned by the community as a result are not sustainable
Lack of networks and strategies for exchange of information, dissemination and research among institutions as a result to information and knowledge to lie idle in shelves at research institutes e.g. Sokoine Universities and other agriculture institutes where you find a lot of researches that have been conducted for agriculture production that need to be shared to community for high production.
Conclusion and recommendations
Knowledge is power as it is said in a proverb “A wise man has a great power and a man of knowledge increase strength”. Government and Community Economic Development practitioners need to be well informed about communities for them to facilitate viable programs for community development. Government and other institution are to facilitate knowledge creation and transfer by promoting education at all levels as an educated and skilled population can use knowledge; develop incentives and mechanisms for knowledge creation relevant to community economic need; create interaction among research centre, enterprises and universities; support collection and improvement of indigenous knowledge; create a system that can tap into global knowledge to assimilate and adopt it as well as create local knowledge; facilitate the effective communication processing and dissemination of information infrastructure. Government need to create channels for the communication of indigenous knowledge to the young (primary school children) and incorporate useful elements in the development process. The broad purpose of any future study is to change the negative perception toward indigenous knowledge, which is perceived as a barrier to development
Therefore the need for Knowledge innovation, transfer and documentation is vital for real Community Economic Development. Knowledge is the foundation of community economic development.
References
Banji. Oyelaran Oyeyika: Innovation in Africa Development (pdf)
Jean-Eric Aubert: Knowledge Economy For a Africa Why? What?, How? World Bank Institute
Patrick Reany; 1988 Arizona Journal of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 2, March 1988, pp. 7-14
http://ajnpx.com/html/AJNP.html.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/knowledge
http://www.WorldBank.org/etools/knowledge for development
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