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platform will allow an institution such as AfDB to offer a

unique interface to harness the knowledge resources avail-

able internally and externally. The platform also would

have an open architecture that uses international standards

and is web services oriented, which will allow extensibility

and future growth. Finally, the portal will provide a user-

centric solution regardless of the location of the content.

Any software solution should support either in-house

or outsourced digitization. The use of a modern content

management system for integrating user access to digital

resources provides significant advantages in flexibility,

speed of deployment and long-term adaptability.

While many challenges remain in the road towards more

affordable and widespread access to the Internet in Africa,

connectivity is in motion in many countries. As a result,

much emphasis has shifted to the challenge of how to

best utilize the technologies that are already available in

the countries that possess these technologies. During the

past decade, information and communication technolo-

gies (ICTs), and particularly the Internet, have started to

contribute to economic growth in Africa by creating new

jobs that had never existed. Consequently, Africa is on

its way into higher productivity rates with services now

closer to citizens. Farmers are getting value out of their

produce as they receive pricing information on their mobile

phones. Governments in Africa are also gearing up to use

mobile platforms to offer government services. The mobile

Internet is delivering many more services to the people

than was envisaged a few years ago. As such, it is high time

to harness the emerging technologies as tools to harvest

development knowledge.

The African Development Knowledge Digital Portal is

a collection of information resources stored in digital formats

(as opposed to print) and accessible online using an infor-

mation retrieval system through the Internet. The digital

content may be stored locally at a global institution, for

example on AfDB’s server, or accessed remotely through

computer networks. The portal consists of various types of

interrelated systems, including a digital content repository

and an information management system. The main concepts

The architecture of the ADKP

Source: AfDB

The ADKP will complement the existing AfDB Knowledge and Virtual Resources

Center, enabling digital technology to be harnessed for knowledge-sharing

Image: AfDB

Content management system

Discovery tool and online catalogue

Events management

Access control

Wiki

User accessibility

E-commerce

E-learning

Social media

Forms

Blogs

Forums

User space

Menus

Integration with Google books

Bibliographic enhancements

RSS feeds

User account and search profile

External

sources

Search tool

Facet browsing discovery

Bibliographic citation

Multilingual interface

Social tagging

User review and rating

User lists

Sharing with social networks

Document

management system

Africa’s

knowledge

Online

catalogue

Media

collection

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