Charles Dhewa is a proactive Knowledge Management specialist, evaluator and thought leader on African food systems, mass markets, rural development and indigenous knowledge systems. Working at the intersection of formal and informal agricultural markets across Africa, his organization, Knowledge Transfer Africa also known as eMKambo (www.knowledgetransafrica.com / www.emkambo.co.zw gathers trends around food systems to ensure agricultural value chains are driven by knowledge, technology and innovation. He is always clarifying opportunities and influencing policy through his thought leadership blog https://emkambo.wordpress.com as well as Ted Talks like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVMCfCMFJOo. At international level, Charles is a Core Group member of the Knowledge Management for Development D-Group (www.km4dev.org) as well as a communication and evaluation consultant under the IDRC-supported initiative known as Designing Evaluation & Communication for Impact (DECI) https://evaluationandcommunicationinpractice.net/. He also belongs to several professional regional and international associations.
Zimbabwe
Charles Dhewa
Chief Executive Officer
Knowledge Transfer Africa Private Limited
Posted on 17/04/2025
From my experience working with big development organizations in East and Southern Africa, although most of their interventions are well-intentioned, big organizations often overlook the importance of developing pathways for retaining knowledge from their work and passing on that knowledge to local communities. The way human resources are engaged through contract employment is not designed to retain and maximize on knowledge generated. Due to the periodic contractual nature in which experts are hired, when a contract officer leaves s/he goes away with the acquired knowledge and expertise that is not written in operational procedures and templates. In cases where the contract officers were working farming communities, when the experts leave with their knowledge, farming communities go back to their ways of doing things based on their own relationships and knowledge preservation culture.
The fact that developmental frameworks by international organizations lack continuity is exacerbated by limited investment in capacitating communities and local stakeholders like chiefs and government departments to run on their own when the project ends. Ideally, the role of development should be to empower communities so that they can add value to existing resources. Most development projects start with consultants, then activities are handed over to project staffed and the project ends with another set of consultants doing an evaluation. There is no room for transitioning the knowledge to communities. The same happens in government where people go with their tacit knowledge which is different from institutionalized community knowledge.