Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa

Dgroups at FARA

by Myra WopereisDirector of Knowledge and Technologies, FARA

2012 Dgroups Annual Meeting15 Nov 2012

Outline

• Purpose of dgroups• Current status • Benefits • Challenges • Conclusion

Purpose of dgroupsTool to assist FARA: – as a forum to reach out (virtually) to diverse members across the

world– to communicate and manage platforms across the continent

Current status

• Members– 2528 from 102 countries– Skills improving in use of dgroups (including ethics)

• sub communities : 50

Benefits

• Provides continuous link with constituents in between the FARA Science week held every 3 years

• Empowers non-research stakeholders to engage in discussions on Africa’s agriculture research, extension, education initiatives.

• Advocacy and dissemination tool

• Focused discussions and management of platforms

Challenges • Management

– maintaining dynamic subcommunities and catalyzing discussions

– managing diverse skills and interests of members

– harnessing access to member details/profile

• Clear advantage compared to other tools i.e. social media tools (ning, linkedin, etc.)

• Members– understanding purpose of dgroups

– managing their own accounts

– following threads of discussions

Conclusion

• Clear benefits of dgroups to FARA

• Strengthen its use within the communications strategy including social media strategy of FARA

• Rationalizing the subcommunities, members’ list

• Assessment of effective of dgroups for FARA

• Need for comprehensive strategy and plan to manage FARA dgroups (dedicated staff to manage dgroups)

Key questions

• Monitoring and evaluation of dgroups • Member’s database analysis, use, exporting to

other programs• Management of main community vs.

subcommunity vs. subsubcommunity – flow of information – automatic membership

Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa

Thank you

Visit us at: www.fara-africa.org