IMPORTANCE OF KNOWLEDGE IN POVERT REDUCTION

COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
PROGRAM
ICD 533 PRINCIPLES & PRACTICLES OF DEVELOPMENT
SEPT 2007 ASSIGNMENT
JOURNAL


KNOWLEDGE
&
IMPORTANCE OF KNOWLEDGE IN POVERTY REDUCTION



TUTOR’S NAME: DR SINDA HUSSEN SINDA
STUDENT’S NAME: NEEMA WELLU NSALLU ( ID No 728177).
DSM class (attended in Arusha)





TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.0 INTRODUCTION---------------------------------------------------------------------------------4
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW-------------------------------------------------------------------------4

2.1 Definition-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------4
2.2 Knowledge acquisition-------------------------------------------------------------------4
2.3 Knowledge creation-----------------------------------------------------------------------4
2.4 Knowledge evaluation--------------------------------------------------------------------4
3.0 TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE----------------------------------------------------------------------5
3.1 Tacit Knowledge--------------------------------------------------------------------------5
3.2 Knowledge economy---------------------------------------------------------------------5
3.3 Life long knowledge----------------------------------------------------------------------6
3.4 Explicit Knowledge-----------------------------------------------------------------------6
3.5 Other ways of describing knowledge---------------------------------------------------6
4.0 KNOWLEDGE FOR POVERTY REDUCTION---------------------------------------------6
4.1 UNDP view on Knowledge--------------------------------------------------------------6
4.2 World Bank view on Knowledge products and services-----------------------------7
4.3 The importance of ICTT on knowledge facilitation---------------------------------8
5.0 KIND OF KNOWLEDGE WE NEED FOR POVERTY REDUCTION------------------8
5.1 Knowledge about development partners-----------------------------------------------8
5.2 Knowledge on resources-----------------------------------------------------------------9
5.3 Knowledge on technology---------------------------------------------------------------9
5.4 Education and training as fundamental of Knowledge-------------------------------9
5.5 Knowledge management-----------------------------------------------------------------9
6.0 EMPERICAL REVIEW-------------------------------------------------------------------------10
6.1 Knowledge and poverty reduction in Tanzania--------------------------------------10
6.2 Current situation-------------------------------------------------------------------------10
6.3 Knowledge as the key for poverty reduction----------------------------------------10
6.4 Use of indigenous Knowledge for development------------------------------------11
6.5 ICT in Tanzania aid for development-------------------------------------------------11
6.6 Mwl Nyerere argument on knowledge-----------------------------------------------12
6.7 National Strategies on Poverty reduction--------------------------------------------12
7.0 POLICIES RELATED---------------------------------------------------------------------------12
8.0 CONCLUSION-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------13
9.0 REFERENCES-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------14








LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

GDLN-----------------------------Global Development Learning Network
ICT --------------------------------Information, Communication and Technology
IK-----------------------------------Indigenous Knowledge
UNDP----------------------------United Nations Development Program
WB I------------------------------World Bank Institute












1.0 INTRODUCTION

This paper comprises the overview term Knowledge, types of knowledge, the role of knowledge in poverty reduction.

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Definition: Knowledge defined as expertise and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Knowledge is known as a particular field or in total facts and information or awareness or familiarity gained by experience of fact or situation. However there is no single agreed definition of knowledge presently. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia)

2.2 Knowledge acquisition: Knowledge involves complex cognitive processes, 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.

2.3 Knowledge creation
Knowledge unlike capital and labour, knowledge strives to be public good. Once knowledge is discovered and made public, it can be shared with many users. Therefore the creator of knowledge finds it difficult to prevent others from using it. Instruments such as trade secret, protection and patents, copy rights and trademarks provide the creator some sort of protection.
There are different kinds of knowledge that can useful be distinguished such us knowledge of facts, knowledge about society, the natural world and human mind. The knowledge can be used to identification of resources, Knowing scientific principles, reflects skills, the ability to things on a practical level.



2.4 Knowledge evolution
Knowledge revolution has been the spearhead by rapidly advances in the science a wide range of areas from information and communication technologies (ICT) to biotechnology, to the engineering of new materials. The rapid development and spread of knowledge facilitated by technical progress is creating a more competitive and interdependent world. The knowledge revolution provides great potential for countries to strengthen their economic and social development by providing more efficient ways of producing goods and services and deliver them more effectively and at lower to greater number of people. The knowledge divide between the advanced countries ,who are more generating most of this knowledge and developing countries who are comparatively less developed markets, institutions, telecommunications, infrastructures or educated people to create, adapt and make effective use of the rapidly growing stock of knowledge and there have to develop strategies to overcome some of these constrains.

3.0 TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
3.1 Tacit knowledge:
Is knowledge gained by an individual by experience, rather than that gained through formal education and training. Tacit knowledge can be articulated as the informal knowledge. The concept of tacit knowledge comes from scientific and philosopher (Michael Polany, 2000). Is the knowledge that people carry in their minds, it is difficult to access, other people are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people places, ideas and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge requires extensive personal contact and trust.

3.2 Knowledge Economy
Knowledge gained through, learning and training can be explained as knowledge of economy, and the implication of the knowledge economy is that there is no alternative way of prosperity than to make learning and knowledge creation of prime importance.
The learning economy individuals and countries will be able to create wealth in their proportion to their capacity to learn and share innovation (Foray and Lundvall, 1996; Lundvall and Johnson, 1994). Formal education, too, needs to become less about passing on information and focus more on teaching people how to learn.

3.3 Life long Knowledge
It is the knowledge given at organizational level such as institutes, it is vital for individuals and organizations. At a level of organization, learning must be continuous. Organizational learning is the process by which organization acquire tacit knowledge and experience. Such knowledge is unlikely to be available in codified form, so it cannot be acquired by formal education and training. Instead it requires a continuous cycle of discovery, dissemination and the emergence of sharing understandings which lead to successful firms which are the priority to need to build a learning capacity within the organization.

3.4 Explicit knowledge
It is the knowledge that has been or can be articulated, and stored in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The most common forms of explicitly knowledge are annuals, documents and procedures. Knowledge also can be audio-visual. Works of art and product design can be seen an other forms of explicit knowledge where human skills, motives and knowledge are externalized. (http:en.wikipedia.org)

3.5 Other ways of describing Knowledge
Knowledge can be described as communicating knowledge (Symbolic representations), Situated knowledge (knowledge specific to a particular situation), Partial knowledge (one discipline of epistemology focuses on partial knowledge).


4.0 KNOWLEDGE FOR POVERTY REDUCTION

4.1 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) view
Exchange of information is helpful in fighting poverty the exchange which will supply necessary information about the National and perhaps international markets to the poor who would then know what product, where it is solid to bring better profit.
Knowledge is the light it is weightless and tangible, it can be travel throughout the world. Billions of people still live in poverty unnecessary. For example they lack knowledge on how to prevent and treat communicable diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea.
Knowledge- sharing used to build capacity for successful development. Through the millennium declaration and the millennium development goals the world is addressing the many dimension of human development, including halving by 2015 the proportion of people living in extreme poverty. Developing countries are working to create their own national poverty eradication strategies based on local needs and priorities.
United nations development programme UNDP advocates for these nationally- owned solutions and help to make them affective through insuring a greater voice for poor people, ascending assess to productive assets an economic opportunities and linking poverty programmes with countries, internal economics and financial policies. Also UNDP contributes to efforts at reforming trade, dept belief and investments arrangements to better support national poverty reduction and make globalisation work for poor people aid in information sharing UNDP/ poverty reduction www.undp.org/poverty/overview.htm 3/12/07

4.2 World Bank view on Knowledge products and Services
Creating, sharing, and applying knowledge through its analysis and advisory services has always been an important part of the Bank’s role in assisting client countries to promote growth and reduce poverty. In recent years the Bank has begun to organize its knowledge activities in a systematic way. It focuses on three areas: making effective use of knowledge to support the quality of its operations; sharing knowledge with its clients and partners, leading to participatory development activities supplemented with a range of technology based programs to enhance knowledge sharing; and helping clients enhance their capacity to generate, access, and use knowledge from all sources.The Bank’s global knowledge outreach initiatives include the World Bank Institute (WBI) learning programs, which broker and distill local and global knowledge; the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN); the Development Gateway; World Links; the Global Development Network; African Virtual University; www.worldbank.org/ks/initiatives.html.)The growing awareness that the efficient use of knowledge makes the Bank a more effective institution has led to the mainstreaming of capacity building in its operational work. For example, a “knowledge economy assessment tool” is being used to help countries diagnose their policy and investment needs as they enter the global economy. In response to increasing country demand, WBI leverages its partnerships with other content providers and donors to deliver, for example, courses for journalists, seminars for parliamentarians, and action-learning programs on anticorruption and legal and judicial reform for government officials and policymakers

4.4 The importance of ICT on knowledge facilitation
Information and communication technology ICT are the enables of change. They do not themselves create transformation in society. ICT are best regarded as the facilitators of knowledge creation in innovative societies (OECD, 1996). The new economics looks at ICT not as drivers of change but as tools for releasing the creative potential and knowledge embodied in people.
However, the ICT sector has a powerful multiplier effect in the overall economy compared with manufacturing. A 1995 study of the effect of software producer Microsoft on the local economy revealed that each job at Microsoft created new jobs in Washington State, whereas a job at Boeing created 3.8 jobs (Mandel, 1997). Wealth-generation is becoming more closely tied to the capacity to add value using ICT products and services. The value of accumulated knowledge within New Zealand is an important indicator of its future growth potential.

5.0 KIND OF KNOWLEDGE WE NEED FOE DEVELOPMENT
5.1 Knowledge on development partners
Fighting poverty requires a Global strategy to share knowledge systematically and energetically to ensure that people who need that knowledge get it on time. The World Bank has become a department to find out who know what and access of expertise for different dev. Activities. Continuously sharing with Global and local know –how with client – countries, public and private partner and other civil societies to ensure poverty reduction/ fight of poverty.
5.2 Knowledge on resources
Education is the key to knowledge, education increases peoples capacity to learn and to interpret information. High education and technical training are also needed to produce the Labour force/human resources that can keep up with a constant stream of technological advances. Which produce cycle and depreciation of human capacity e.g. education farmers with the information about best use of new method.

5.3 Knowledge on technology.
World Bank recognizing that developing Productivity of technology plan in promoting economic growth and social progress. The World Bank with partners and civil societies committed to help the developing countries to address challenges and opportunities of new advances in science and Technology

5.4 Education and training as fundamental of Knowledge
Education is the fundamental enables knowledge creation. Well educated and skilled people are key for creating, sharing, disseminating and using knowledge effectively. The knowledge economy requires an education system which is flexible, from starting from basic education that provides the foundation for learning, to secondary and tertiary education that can develop core skills, including technical ones, that encourage creative and critical thinking critical for problem- solving and innovation, to a system of life long learning from childhood, to formal schools, training institutions and universities and informal learning( Skills learned from family members or people in the community.) http://www.development/gateway.org

5.5 Knowledge management
Knowledge management is a management theory which emerged in the 1990s. it seek to understand the way it which knowledge is created, used and shared within organizations. Knowledge management comprises a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent and distribute knowledge. The large companies have resources dedicated to knowledge Management, other as a part of information, technology on Human resource Management departments and sometimes reporting directly to the head of the organisation. As effectively managing information is a must in any business, knowledge and information are intertwined; knowledge management is a multi-billion dollar world wide market.

6.0 EMPERICAL REVIEW
6.1 KNOWLEDGE AND POVERT REDUCTION IN TANZANIA

6.2 Current situation
The poverty situation in Tanzania is manifested in a poor quality of social and economic services, less than half of the rural population have access to safe and clean water and large of a part of countryside is inaccessible during the rainy seasons. The other attributes of poverty are exclusion, powerlessness and voiceless ness, especially of women in social and political spheres; children also suffer from limited rights of survey and development
Rural poverty in the country has been halved in the period from 1995 to 2001, at present about 36% of people living in rural areas are classified as power. The program is reflected in the United Nations Development Programmes, Human index for Tanzania which rose from 0.3 in 1990 to 0.4 in 2002. Poverty is still widespread and acute and generally a rural phenomenon. I.e. 85% pf country’s poor people live in rural areas and in agriculture as their main source of income and live hood.
According to the house survey of 2000/03 some of 20% of rural people live in extremely poverty and about 35% are considered poor within the Agriculture sector; food crop producers but both play under cyclical and structural constraints are subjected to Natural disasters such as drought and floods; also lack of market linkages inputs credit and irrigation water

6.3 Knowledge is the key for poverty reduction
Since independence in 1961, the government of Tanzania has had poverty eradicate as its man goal, one of the intervention measures suggested is the introduction and implementation of socials and economic policies which address the issues of poverty both at National and individual level. This many necessitate increase state intervention in education and other social welfare service, the creation and dissemination of knowledge which is useful in our culture context in addressing the key challenges of straitening to reduce pervasive poverty Tanzania.

6.4 Use of Indigenous Knowledge for Poverty Reduction.
Indigenous knowledge (IK) is defined as local or traditional knowledge that is unique to every culture or society, which sometimes influences local decision-making in different areas. In some communities, it is even regarded as a problem solving mechanism to rural communities. IK is recognized as having relevance to the daily life routine of most individuals, economic development, culture preservation and political transformation, which lead to poverty reduction. IK plays part in contributing to poverty eradication among communities in Tanzania. IK is implicit knowledge and thus difficult to systemize, it is embedded in community practices, institutions, relationships and rituals
The indigenous knowledge database is a product of the Tanzania Development Gateway, an initiative that uses Information Technology and the Internet to promote social and economic development within Tanzania. The database has been established to enhance sharing and dissemination of IK information, experiences and practices in Tanzania.
Objectives of this database is to provides a platform/ system where IK is captured, stored and disseminated, Provide a mechanism of sharing this knowledge and also integrate it with modern science and technology to enhance information dissemination , Promote sharing and dissemination of IK information, experience and practices in Tanzania. In realization of IK and its contribution to social and economic development, the database will promote development of IK systems to improve local communities by establishing a mechanism. (Indigenous knowledge gateway Tanzania).

6.5 ICT in Tanzania aid for development
A rural -urban digital divide, Regional aspects of internet use in Tanzania The digital divide is the gap between those with regular; effective accesses to digital, technologies, in particular the Internet, and those without. This article takes a closer look at the digital divide within Tanzania. Based on a survey among Internet café users in rural, semi-urban and central regions of the country, we find that the divide is mainly a question of finding venues with technology to access the Internet. (Admin, November 26, 2007)

6.6 Mwalimu Nyerere Argument on Knowledge.
Education fir self-reliance (1967) Nyerere advocates that education should be given to every individual in a nation so as to transmit accumulated wisdom and knowledge from one generation to another.. In this way the younger generation would be prepared for their future membership of their society, and for their active participation in its maintenance or development.
Also he argued that education is for service. It should aim at producing workers, farmers, technicians, and other categories of workers. Knowledge provided in our schools and institutional should be judged interpreted and put in practices. Thus knowledge should develop individuals an inquiring mind, on ability to learn from others with ability to disseminate that knowledge to younger ones and a basic confidence in their own positions as free and equal members of society, so as` to enable then to judge social issues by themselves.
Education should increase man’s power over himself and his environment. The function of learning is the development of men and mankind. The education should enlighten and show him how and why is should limit his desires, why and how to conquer, shape and protect his environment for posterity.
Lastly Mwalimu argued that the aim of education related to liberate men e.g. the primary purpose of education is liberation of men. Education has to make man more of a human being in the sense that his potentials have to be revealed to him through agency to know himself; It has therefore to enable man to throw off obstacles to freedom which restrict his full physical, political, social and mental development.
The role of a university in developing countries is to contribute, to give ideas, manpower, and services for the furtherance human equality, human dignity and human development. (Education foundations, history of education, 1986).

6.7 National strategies on Poverty reduction
The Government prepared and adopted Development vision in 1999 National strategy in 1997, which spell out a vision for society with object poverty. The National strategy aimed at providing guidance to all stakeholders in identifying, formulating, implementing and evaluating the level of poverty. Also provided a framework to guide poverty by year 2025, based on the following key sectors: health, nutrition, water, agriculture, education and rural roads. The National Strategy has identified aspects of strategic interventions namely:- those creating environment building the capacity for poverty eradication. The vision 2025 is in line with international development goal remains a point of references for current poverty reduction actions
The reduction in the share of population living below the poverty line from around 50% currently to 30% by year 2015 will require significant effort to enhance productivity and increase investment in human capacities requires measures to increase incentives and returns for undertaking such investments and increase public support e. g Primary education and Hearth care structural transformation and intervention of cross cutting issues such as prevention and management of HIV/AIDS
Lastly a long term strategy for agriculture involves sustained macro-economic stability, more effective research and extension, improved infrastructure and developing institutional framework for supporting transformation of agriculture and rural development more broadly.

7.0 POLICIES RELATED
Education and training policies: Recent policy in education sector, technical Education and Training (1996), National Higher Education Policy (1999) and Science and Technology policy (1996) http://w.w.w.tz.online.org As indicated in policy document the role of education sector is to ensure quality, access and equity at all levels on education. Specifically these policies are aiming in improvement of quality education and training, expansion of provision of education and training promotion of science and technology and broadening the base for the financing of education and training. Other policies include the human rights thus all individuals have equal write to access information, education the agencies of knowledge. The important of Information, Communication and Techno lodge can facilitate the knowledge dissemination to the grassroots.



8.0 CONCLUSION
Therefore knowledge is the light; it is power and the key for poverty reduction.
Based on Mwalimu Nyerere augments the need of creation and dissemination of Knowledge from creators to the grassroots it is crucial. The ICT should be used to educate people in the society the strategies and interventions made by the government on poverty reduction, for example the students’ graduates from universes should be expertise to the rural development. Knowledge on improved agricultural methods such as use of fertilisers and primary health care. Our media should be used to educate people on different development areas. Use of radios, television, magazines, telephones etc.


REFERENCES
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Chengo.M, (1999) Economic Development, Connection: Enhancing Human Capital, importance of ICT and Globalization for Knowledge sharing

Deiverport, T (1998) Working knowledge, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

Http://www.med.govt.tz/templates multipage document Knowledge Economy, 2/12/07

Http://www.tanzaniagateway.org Indigenous knowledge gateway sharing and dissemination of ICT information5/12/07

Http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/knowledge Knowledge Management and importance of Intellectual capital , types of knowledge. 5/12/07

Indigenous Knowledge Gateway, Sharing and dissemination of Indigenous Knowledge http://www.tanzaniagateway.org

Krough, G (2000) Enabling Knowledge. Connection: Oxford University Press. New York.