Wednesday, December 17, 2008

The role of Knowledge in Poverty Reduction

1.0 Introduction
This paper is on the role of knowledge in poverty reduction. This paper will show that knowledge contributes to poverty reduction but Tanzania has not tapped full its own knowledge for development of its people. Tanzania is blessed with a lot of natural resources including minerals, water, forests, land and wildlife. Yet the country is among the poorest in the world. Some people question why is Tanzania poor with so much natural rsources and the answer they get is that, Tanzania lacks knowledge and technoloy to exploit its resources.

2.0 Theoretical Literature Review
Knowledge is defined variously as (i) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education (formal or informal); the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". Moreover, different religions also have different meanings of knowledge mainly depending on their beliefs. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose. There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remains numerous competing theories. The definition of knowledge is a matter of on-going debate among philosophers.
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning. Acquiring knowlede, needs investment in the field of knowledge.
There are two kinds of knowledge. One is explicit knowledge, which can be expressed in words and numbers and shared in the form of data, scientific formulae, product specifications, manuals, universal principles, and so forth. This kind of knowledge can be readily transmitted across individuals formally and systematically. This has been the dominant form of knowledge in the West. The Japanese, however, see this form as just the tip of the iceberg. They view knowledge as being primarily tacit, something not easily visible and expressible.
Tacit knowledge is highly personal and hard to formalize, making it difficult to communicate or share with others. Subjective insights, intuitions and hunches fall into this category of knowledge. Furthermore, tacit knowledge is deeply rooted in an individual's action and experience, as well as in the ideals, values or emotions he or she embraces.
To be precise, there are two dimensions to tacit knowledge. The first is the "technical" dimension, which encompasses the kind of informal and hard-to-pin-down skills or crafts often captured in the term "know-how". Master craftsmen, for example, develop a wealth of expertise at their fingertips, after years of experience. But they often have difficulty articulating the technical or scientific principles behind what they know. Highly subjective and personal insights, intuitions, hunches and inspirations derived from bodily experience fall into this dimension. Tacit knowledge also contains an important cognitive" dimension. It consists of beliefs, perceptions, ideals, values, emotions and mental models so ingrained in us that we take them for granted. Though they cannot be articulated very easily, this dimension of tacit knowledge shapes the way we perceive the world around us.
Knowledge management is a management theory which emerged in the 1990s. It seeks to understand the way in which knowledge is created, used and shared within institutions. The objective of mainstreaming knowledge management is to ensure that the right information is delivered to the right person just in time, in order to take the most appropriate decision. In that sense, knowledge management is not interested in managing knowledge per se, but to relate knowledge and its usage. This leads to Organizational Memory Systems.

3.0 Empirical Review
Every Tanzanian child of primary school going age (six years) has an equal opportunity to go to school. The country has a secondary school in almost every ward and the target is for each ward to have its own secondary school. Moreover, there are vocation training centers in each zone. On top of that by December 2007, the country had around 30 universities and university colleges. These are among the strategies for generating knowledge in the country.
However, exposing people to education and various trainings alone is not enough to have a significant input in poverty reduction efforts in the country. Knowledgeable Tanzanians have to be recognized and used effectively for the development of the country. The country must have a focus when it trains its people otherwise, a lot of resources will be used in training people but the outcome will not be seen. For instance, some veterinary and human doctors graduate in Tanzania and go to work in other countries where they are paid better and hence contribute to the development of those countries.
In 2006 there was a drought in Tanzania that resulted to electricity rationing in the country as the country depends mainly on hydroelectricity. In responding to the situation, a government institution CAMATEC based in Arusha claimed to have the knowledge of using daily domestic wastes collected in Dar es Salaam city to generate electricity. Unfortunately, the top leadership was not interested instead it was in a process of importing expertise from Thailand to make rain that could fill Mtera Dam to the level that could allow it go on producing electricity. Thanks God it rained before the deal was concluded. All in all this shows how our leaders value foreign knowledge than the local one and this discourages the creativity of Tanzanian professionals.
Sokoine University of Agriculture has been producing graduates in agricultural sector since 1984 but these graduates are not used effectively. With all these graduates and others from lower level (Certificate and Diploma) agricultural institutions only 34% of farmers access extension services and 18% only access improved seeds while 98% of cows are of indigenous species. All these exist in the presence of Agricultural Research Institution (ARI) in every zone in Tanzania. This shows how the generated knowledge is not used for improving the livelihoods of Tanzanians.
When you do not value yourself, outsiders will also not value you. This is what is happening with gold mining in Tanzania where the top mine engineers in different mines are outsiders who are said to be knowledgeable than Tanzanians in the field of mining. But the University of Dar es Salaam has been producing graduates in the field of mining for years. One can ask, is the university delivering the wrong knowledge?
The creation of knowledge needs focus and once it is created, it has to be effectively managed, valued and monitored. However, knowledge creation needs investment and has to be equally accessible to both men and women for equitable and sustainable development.

4. Policy Review
One of the goals in the Tanzania’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty is Ensuring equitable access to quality primary and secondary education for boys and girls, universal literacy among men and women and expansion of higher, technical and vocational education. This is aimed at equipping Tanzanians with important knowledge for the development of the country.
The Education and Training Policy 1995 among others aims for development of integrative personalities; promotion of the acquisition and appreciation of national culture and of the constitution; promotion of society-centered learning and the use of acquired skills and knowledge for the improvement of the quality of life; development of self-confidence, inquiring mind, and development oriented mindset; giving adaptive and flexible education that meets the challenges of an ever changing world.
Amongst the sixteen (16) objectives of The National Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania include: promotion of science and technology as tools for economic development; promotion of scientific and technological self-reliance; stimulation of the generation of scientific and technological knowledge; Institutionalizations of mechanisms for identification, promotion, and development of special talents and aptitudes for science and technology; and promotion of women participation in science and technology and creating appropriate technologies for lessening the burden of house chores and drudgery of life. On the other hand the Higher Education Policy 1999 has put major thrusts on: dramatic expansion of enrolments; correcting the gender imbalances in enrolments; improving female participation rates in science, mathematics and technology; improving the funding of higher education, and R&D in particular; being responsive to market demands in the training enterprise; increase autonomy of institutions of higher learning; improved co-ordination and rationalization of programmes and sizes, and promotion of co-operation among institutions of higher learning.
These policies are aimed at creating domestic knowledge for improving the livelihoods of Tanzanians ultimately poverty reduction.

5.0 Conclusion
Knowing ‘what’ and knowing ‘how’ (knowledge) is one of the essentials in poverty reduction espacially when the knowledge is within the country/community of concern. Borrowing knowledge is not as good as own knowledge in poverty reduction. Effective exploitation of resources is an important element in poverty reduction but without knowledge, resources cannot be exploited.
Therefore, Tanzania needs to create and manage its knowledge for poverty reduction. More emphasis should be placed on the use of local knowledge to contribute in economic growth for poverty reduction. Moreover, knowledge production has to be demand driven and this is possible if participatory approaches are applied in adentifying knowledge gaps.


References
Knowledge, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/knowledge, Accessed 9th October 2007
The relationship between the education sector reforms and other national policies, http://www.moe.go.tz/policy_issues.html, Accessed February 2008
The United Republic of Tanzania (2005). National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty, popular version, Dar es Salaam.
Types of knowledge, http://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/km-7.html, accessed 9th October 2007

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