Mr Mohammed Njobdi, the National Project Coordinator of the World Bank Assisted APPEALS Project, has described a knowledge management workshop organised for its key staff as a milestone.
Declaring the workshop open in Calabar, Njobdi said the forum was part of efforts to make the project a ‘’robust, knowledge –centred organisation.’’
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that APPEALS is the acronym for the Agro Processing, Productivity Enhancement
and Livelihood Improvement Support initiative.
The project is being implemented in the six states of Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Lagos with a focus on 11 commodity value chains.
NAN also reports that the value chains include ginger, rice, cashew, wheat, cassava, cocoa, maize, poultry, aquaculture, tomato and dairy.
‘’The Project is investing in Knowledge Management because we strongly believe that effective knowledge management can help us build a smarter workforce,” Njobdi said.
He also said it would improve the efficiency of decision-making thereby contributing meaningfully to the achievement of the project’s development objective.
The coordinator added that the need for knowledge management had been provided for in the project’s Appraisal Document to specifically generate knowledge from project activities, facilitate knowledge acquisition and experience sharing from within and across the world.
‘’The knowledge generated is expected to enhance effectiveness in project implementation and support the scaling up of project activities by leveraging federal and state government programmes in agricultural productivity improvement and processing,” he said.
According to the project coordinator, the provision in the document captured under Component 4.2 seeks to promote systematic knowledge-sharing between states.
In addition, it also seeks to replicate effective local solutions across communities and states while filling identified knowledge gaps.
He said the workshop was informed by the outcome of an in-house Knowledge Management Needs Assessment conducted among staff of the project at both national and state levels.
The outcome, he said, indicated the need for capacity building on the subject for project staff across all its
Implementing Units.
‘’The key objective of this workshop, therefore, is to equip the project staff with the relevant skills required to apply knowledge management tools and techniques to enable them have clear understanding of the concept and process of the knowledge ecosystem,” he said.
A total of 72 officers are attending the two-day workshop that has as its expected deliverables, a knowledge management strategy and a repository that will warehouse knowledge from a wide-range of sources.
These would be made accessible by project staff in support of implementation activities. (NAN).
