14th to 17th at the six eighty hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. UNECA has been implementing a UN project entitled "knowledge networks through ICT access points for disadvantaged communities" jointly with the United Nations Regional Commissions, with ESCWA as the lead agency, over a period of 36 months starting in 2006.

The main goal of the project is to empower poor and disadvantaged communities through the transformation of existing ICT access points in selected countries around the world into knowledge hubs of global knowledge networks. The project aims at increased engagement of target beneficiaries in disadvantaged communities (with an emphasis on women) in these knowledge networks.

This involvement will serve to deploy relevant knowledge pertaining to key areas of sustainable development such as employment, education, gender and health. Close collaboration with other relevant United Nations agencies as well as representatives of Governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations, has been maintained throughout the different phases of implementation.

It is to be recalled that following the launch of the Africa Knowledge Network (AKN) in July 2009 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a Steering Committee comprising of Mr Paul Barera of Rwanda Telecentre Network as Chairman, Ms Janet Achora of WOUGNET as member and Mr Aggrey Omondi of Kenya Telecentre Network as member, was formed and held its first meeting in Addis Ababa at the UNECA HQ office from 20 to 21 August 2009. The meeting reviewed the action plans of AKN and came up with the revised action plan.

The day started with an introduction by Achekol Abebe of the two guest from UNECA, Ms Aida Opoku-Mensa, the Director, ISTD and Mr Sizo Mhangala, the Chief ICT Policy, Development Section, ISTD.  This was followed by participants introducing themselves. Participants were drawn from telecentres and telecentre networks from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia. Shortly after the PS in the Ministry of Information and Communication, Dr. Bitange Ndemo arrived.

In his Speech he emphasised the need to document local content, since Africa was loosing its language and culture resulting in a people without values systems and foundation. This is due to Africa being an oral society, where the word of mouth which is easily forgotten is widely used. His wonderful ideas of local content were area which we always ignore like, families ways of life in Africa, traditional conflict resolution systems among others.

The PS, later launched the first issue of the AKN newsletter which was produced by KenTel.

Janet Achora who sits in the AKN steering committee gave the background of the baseline research. The AKN’s plan of action is conducting baseline research in each community telecentre in the participating countries. Accordingly, the baseline research will be conducted in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

In each country, a coordinating telecentre was also nominated at the meeting and accordingly BYTC for Burundi, YNSD for Ethiopia, Ugunja CMC for Kenya, Nyamata CMC for Rwanda, Sengerema CMC for Tanzania, and WOUGNET for Uganda were identified to co-ordinate the baseline research at country level. However, the research will be conducted and lead by each telecentre involving their respective communities.

In the Afternoon session Pete Cranston introduced the local content development training. Participants were grouped and given discussion questions, on the Key issues to consider while conducting the baseline research in the community and what kind of questions to ask the community.

On Key Issues these are some of the feedback from the groups
-    Community sensitization and mobilization about the baseline research
-    Identification of stakeholders within the community
-    Identify information needs, information sources
-    How are the participants chosen, e.g. gender and age, categorise community by defining users
-    Packaging of information
-    Methodology of needs assessment
-    Survey tool development
-    Analysis techniques and which tools to use, sampling techniques e.g SPSS or Spreadsheet
-    Timing of the administration of the survey to look into issues like weather and time of day
-    When administering the questionnaire use of local persons is important

Some of the questions to ask and how they should be include:
-    Short and specific questions
-    Demography levels of the community
-    Income levels and economic activity of the community
-    Any other existing telecentres or institutions offering same service within the community
-    Infrastructure
-    HIV & AIDS
-    Literacy levels
-    Use of appropriate technologies
-    Information needs for the community
-    Conflict resolution strategies and how the telecentre can be used to address the same
-    Local language use
-    Opinion leaders and elders in the community
-    How would the community like to participate in the telecentre activities
-    Use of new media

Pete having worked with Open Knowledge Network which was a similar initiative shared his experiences with AKN. In summery he sort to understand the scope of content to be covered by AKN, the relationship between content at local level and other levels within a country or beyond, and the role of AKN in general.