Knowledge for development: a literature review and an evolving research agenda

Bonn: German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)

ISBN: 978-3-88985-638-8
Price: 6 €

This paper undertakes an extensive review of the literature dealing with the newly evolving field of knowledge for development and its management. Using the processtracing method, it sees the origins of the emergence of knowledge management for development in the management sciences of the 1950s and 1960s and traces its journey from there to the development studies of the 1990s and 2000s. It maintains that, since its arrival in the domain of development studies, practice and research on the issue are evolving in three dimensions, namely: the micro, the meso and the macro dimensions. The micro dimension concentrates on the individual level, the meso on the organisational level, and the macro on the global systemic level. The first two dimensions constitute the area  designated as ‘knowledge management for development’ (KM4D) and the last dimension is designated as ‘knowledge for development’ (K4D). If one adheres to this differentiation, one arrives at three fundamental findings:

• While there are plenty of analyses dealing with the micro and meso dimensions, thereis a lack of analysis and prognosis for programmatic action on the macro dimension.

• Following each of these dimensions in isolation leads one to different programmaticaction.
• There is, for this reason, a need to balance the three.

Based on the above, this paper criticises the monoculturality in the production of global development knowledge that is primarily Western, as well as the inadequacy of existing information and communications technologies (ICT). It argues that the opportunities of joint knowledge creation between the global North and South and of more inclusive knowledge dissemination in the South offered by the ICTs are not being optimally utilised. It then charts a research course that adequately covers the three dimensions mentioned above, while specifying clear research questions aimed at ameliorating the inadequacies of global  cooperation in knowledge production and highlighting necessary corrections tailored to specific inadequacies in specific global regions. 

About the author

Akude, John Emeka

Political scientist

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