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Harnessing the digital dividend: an
approach to knowledge-sharing in Africa
Bakri M Abdul Karim and Bernadette Dia Kamgnia, African Development Bank
K nowledge management is integral to the African
Development Bank’s (AfDB) mandate as Africa’s
premier development financing institution. In his
inaugural statement at the beginning of a second term
of office as President of AfDB (1 September 2010), Dr
Donald Kaberuka affirmed that he will strive to “strongly
reinforce internal knowledge generation, dissemination
capacity, to inform our own work in this area, but also
to determine how best Africa draws dividends from this
new global economy.” This statement is clear evidence
of the extent to which AfDB recognizes the importance
of knowledge as an agent of sustainable development,
and how the bank is building strategies to combine
knowledge and financial resources towards developing
innovative solutions to Africa’s complex development
challenges. Established in 1964, AfDB’s prime objec-
tive is to mobilize financial resources, provide policy
advice and knowledge, and build capacity to assist its 54
African member countries in achieving inclusive growth
and sustainable development.
Over the past 50 years, the bank has built a huge stock
of critical development knowledge that it pledges to make
easily available to its member countries as well as to other
development stakeholders worldwide. In order to manage
this knowledge AfDB has maintained a number of online
repositories, which store information resources that can
be described as a ‘hybrid’ collection of both physical and
digital material. Most of these resources have not been made
available to the public even though the bank has a mandate
to share the knowledge it generates with its development
partners. This is mainly due to the lack of appropriate tools
and platforms for knowledge-sharing.
An open-access digital portal, in the form of an African
Development Knowledge Digital Portal (ADKP), while
complementing the existing Knowledge and Virtual Resources
Center of the bank, defines an ideal solution to harnessing
digital technology for knowledge-sharing in the continent.
Deployment of a modern digital portal with underlying
digital asset management software is necessary to improve
access to development knowledge in Africa. The ideal
AfDB recognizes the importance of knowledge as an agent of sustainable development
Image: AfDB
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