Community
Informatics (CI) provides a basis for approaching cost effective service
delivery
in rural areas by
focusing on the utilization of development of capacities and skills in local
communities as a
means for enhancing and leveraging technical and external human
resources,
reports Brenda
Zulu.
These according NaijaAgroNet
were examples drawn from Columbia, Kenya and Sudan presentations at the on-going
ICT4Ag the digital springboard for inclusive agriculture on "Strengthening
Grassroots Engagement in Agriculture Research and Development (ARD)
Policy Processes" in Kigali.
These NaijaAgroNet
Learnt showed that by integrating technical infrastructures with community and
social processes, it is possible to link rural areas to national service delivery systems while
developing local capacity and supporting the local social and economic
development in rural areas.
Ligia Maria Mejia
Diaz, a Researcher at Research Group of Basins, Tolima University in Columbia
shared her experience on Participatory GIS (PGIS) a tool contributing to the
empowerment and governance of communities for the benefit of sustainable
development.
She said that
PGIS presented their local population with an increased power and the inclusion
of the marginalised through education and participation in geographic
technologies. She said PGIS was a tools for marginalized communities whose
opinion was usually ignored in the planning process.
Mejia Diaz says
there was a need to for training as this was a very important part of PGIS .
The project challenges included changing the original design of the project to
a new design as the community surprised the researchers by their wealth of
indigenous knowledge.