Knowledge Managment and Sharing in Best Practices 

The RF Specialist will develop a knowledge management system that can be accessed by, IFAD-supported projects and programmes, IFAD and UNOPS staff, and other development stakeholders interested in sharing and applying region-specific knowledge and lessons learnt on rural finance issues. The knowledge base can be external from internet sources and other IFAD world experience, or internal from the project experiences which are shared across region. Activities will include:

 Promotion of  Process documentation - assisting projects and programmes to develop share their experiences, according to a simple and standardised format, on what has worked and not worked, implementation issues, lessons learned, and the impact on their clients.  The information collected from the programmes will be collated and short papers will be drafted and discussed with other programmes on the interactive site. The project will undertake to document the refined experiences annually.   Based on the lessons and experiences an exchange visit will be used to enable programmes and projects. Through peer learning it is hoped that the programmes/projects can benefit from past experiences in order to avaoid pitfalls and create impact on the clients.

Dissemination - The development of dissemination tools, including training, web-based internet interface, newsletters, thematic workshops, MIX market participation, exchange visits, etc. The web-based interface will be promoted within Eastern and Southern Africa and programmes will be trained on the tool. Newsletters will be used for those programmes/projects that do not have access to the internet or connectivity is slow.

Development of a Knowledge Base -to be made available through existing web sites such as IFAD's Communication portal, as well as through newsletters, email and reports. The knowledge base will generate information from the partner's rural finance inititative int eh region.  The project will be involved in searching the internet and other sources of knowledge, summarizing this information and availing it through user friendly format for the programmes/project using the different dissemination methods.