Reflections on the Cross-Country Learning Event on ICT & Livelihoods in Tema Ghana

I had heard a lot about Cross-country learning events (CCLEs) from colleagues and last year I had a brief participation in the CCLE on ICT & Gender in The Hague, but now I would actually be part of a CCLE from the start. Denise (IICD), Annemiek (IICD) and Ibrahim from GINKS had spent already a lot of time in the preparation of the event. The Visas were a nightmare especially for the South American participants. Participants changed, flight schedules changed, and even the location changed during the preparation. But on the 27^th of November Denise and I flew to Ghana. On Sunday we managed to meet with Eddie, the co-facilitator (see his profile and contributions to iConnect-Online here). He had been out of town so we could not discuss the programme and facilitation earlier. Late afternoon we travelled from our Accra Hotel to our CCLE hotel in Tema. We had time to discuss with the translators, who were setting up their booths. It was a tri-lingual event with simultaneous translation for all participants. One by one the participants arrived from Bolivia, Uganda, Zambia, Ecuador, Mali, Burkina Faso and from the Northern part of Ghana. Communicating with the people from Burkina, who travelled in a noisy bus, was difficult because both Denise and I don’t speak very much French. But they managed to arrive. On Monday morning we were all there but one. Cecilia from Ecuador had a day delay with her plane. The translation at first was tough to follow. You have to get used to the voices, you miss the emotion in the voice and have to concentrate more, but you get used to it and the added value that everyone could speak in their own language (although several spoke local languages as well) was good.
 
The first day was a day of introduction of the people and their projects. We learned about the meaning of each others name, about their personal stories of the impact of ICT on their work, and how they were selling the one thing that everyone should know about their project. Clear was that many people were not really used to this elevator pitch and talked much longer about their project!
 
Day 2 we were digging deeper with a special session on market price information platforms with a special guest, Bernard, from Esoko. But mainly also the experiences of SEND Foundation (Ghana) and Prefectura Santa Cruz (Bolivia). Eddie our facilitator energized us after lunch with an impressive dry football exercise. The afternoon was much appreciated by the participants. AOPEB (Bolivia), Coprakazan (Mali) and NAIS (Zambia) presented their case to the three different language groups. I facilitated the Coprakazan and it was interesting to observe the difference between the French language participants, English and Spanish. They all had very valuable questions and recommendation, but a different approach.
 
Day 3 we reflected on key lessons in 5 years of ICT & Livelihoods programmes. First at individual level and after that on country level. All countries could present their findings. Some key quotes from that sessions: “Radio is a major tool to disseminate information in rural areas of Bolivia”, “In Burkina Faso sms is the most important tool to reach out to more farmers”. From Ghana they mentioned “High illiteracy rates under farmers is a major challenge for the fast development of the agricultural sector”. For Mali a major breakthrough was “the demystification of ICT has achieved in Mali that farmers are not afraid anymore for computers, this made it easier to disseminate information”. For Zambia an important lesson from the last five years was that “Linkages between research – extension and farmers in the agricultural sector made agricultural practices more visible in Zambia”. The common factor between most of our projects is according to Uganda “The effective dissemination of information to farmers”. The closing afternoon focused on networking and knowledge sharing on local and international level. Denise showed the new iConnect-Online platform and encouraged everyone to share their stories and blogs in the iConnect Livelihoods group.
 
The last evening we had a stunning dance performance from a Ghanaian Dance group. The whole group did an attempt to dance as well. It was directly clear why all the dancers had a nice six pack, because it was hard work and a very high tempo. After the dance I left the group to go to Accra already, because I had a mHealth seminar the next morning and the traffic jam from Tema to Accra is huge. I really enjoyed the three day CCLE and looking forward to see everyone online.