Soul Beat Africa
African development action with informed and engaged societies
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After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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The Soul Beat 260: The Open Knowledge Hub - Creating Opportunities for Greater Knowledge Sharing

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Issue #
260
The Soul Beat

Soul Beat Africa

The Soul Beat 260 - The Open Knowledge Hub - Creating Opportunities for Greater Knowledge Sharing
February 16 2016
From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development
In this issue of The Soul Beat:For the past two years, Soul Beat Africa has been working with the Institute for Development Studies and other partners from across the globe on an initiative called the Open Knowledge Hub (OKhub).
This newsletter intends to inform you of this initiative and to explain how this free resource can benefit organisations and institutions working in the field of development and social change.

What is the OKhub?
The OKhub is an Open Data project, which has created a platform that allows organisations - in particular, those involved in generating and collating significant amounts of development-focused knowledge - to share their knowledge more widely. These organisations share their content onto the Hub in the form of metadata (titles, URLs, abstracts, keywords), which allows the knowledge to be further reused, adapted, reconfigured, and made available on the websites and online portals of other organisations.
The result is that knowledge is more widely accessible (instead of just being available on one site for a particular audience, it can be made available on many sites and to a variety of audiences), leading to more informed policy making and practice in international development. In particular, a key objective of the project is to raise the profile of diverse perspectives on international development, so the Hub pays particular attention to content from organisations based in the global South.


Soul Beat Africa and the OKhub
Soul Beat Africa is one of the partners of this initiative, contributing content from our HIV/AIDS theme site. As a knowledge intermediary, we collate knowledge (research reports, materials, case studies) on media and communication for social change in Africa from our networks and from a wide range of sources, and make them available through the Soul Beat Africa website and theme sites. With the OKhub, all this knowledge can now be reused by other websites and portals and therefore has the potential to reach a much wider audience.
In addition to Soul Beat Africa, the Hub currently contains knowledge from 13 other organisations. Technology developed by the initiative enables you to access ALL this knowledge in one place and to use a range of tools (discussed below) to present this content - which can be configured to suit your development focus, geographic focus, and user needs - on your own websites.
Click here for more information about the Hub.


What are some of the reasons for using the Hub?
Many development-focused organisations, institutions (research, academic, media), and government departments run websites to share their own as well as other information with their networks or with a community of practice. Keeping websites up to date with new information requires resources that many organisations don't have. The OKhub can help provide this additional content at no cost.
In addition, some kinds of knowledge may fall outside your scope of work but could still be useful for your networks. Perhaps you are working with a focus on climate change in Africa but would like to make knowledge about climate change in other parts of the world available to your users. The Hub provides an easy way to supplement the knowledge already featured on your website.


How does accessing content from the OKhub work in practice?
  • 1. You can create an HTML widget. Using a few simple lines of code, you can embed a block on your site, which feeds in knowledge from the OKhub. Click here for more information and to see an example of the widget.
    Here are two examples of universities in Zimbabwe which have installed the widget on their sites:
  • 2. Specific plugins for different popular content management systems like WordPress and Drupal allow you to integrate knowledge from the Hub into your existing database of knowledge so that external OkHub knowledge is presented together with your knowledge in a seamless way. Click here for more information about these plugins.
  • 3. An Open API (application programming interface) gives access to all the underlying data so your developers can build their own applications or mix Hub data with other datasets.
    Two examples are:

    More information on these tools can be found here.


What kind of knowledge can be accessed from the Hub?
As mentioned, there are currently 13 partners/initiatives (mostly from the South or working closely with research institutions from the South) contributing knowledge to the Hub. The knowledge covers:
  • * a wide range of development issues, such as gender, climate change, health, nutrition, governance, and economic development.
  • * content sourced from organisations working across the globe covering geographic areas such as: Africa, the Caribbean, Asia (India, Philippines, Korea), Latin America, and the South Pacific.
  • * different kinds of documents, such as research and policy documents, materials and guides, and academic research.

Besides Soul Beat Africa, here are a few content contributors that include African knowledge related to a range of development issues:
  • * Eldis - covers a wide range of development issues such as governance, health, gender, and economic development;
  • * Bridge - has a global gender focus;
  • * Observ-action - a French website based in Democratic Republic of Congo that focuses on gender;
  • * OpenDocs - e-repository of development research from the Institute of Development Studies and research institutes in developing countries;
  • * HEART - a consortium of leading organisations working in international development, health, nutrition and education;
  • * International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) - focuses on evaluation research covering a range of development issues and regions.
  • * ELLA: Evidence and Lessons from Latin America - shares development lessons between Latin America and Africa with an emphasis on economic development, governance, and environmental management.

Click here for more information on all the other content partners/data sources.
In addition, if you go to the Content Explorer and just do a search for, e.g., "gender" or "agriculture" or browse the various categories, you will get a good idea of what content is available on the Hub. When creating your widget or plugin, you can then of course refine it further, tailoring it to your specific needs and geographic focus.


Can organisations share their knowledge onto the Hub?
Yes, you can. However, as content quality and metadata requirements are key to becoming content contributors, there are certain criteria that need to be met. In addition, the process of uploading your metadata onto the Hub is quite involved and requires resources on the side of the OKhub developers and the organisations submitting knowledge. These resources would need to be raised.
We hope you will consider taking advantage of this free resource. If you are interested or would like more information, please contact Anja Venth at aventh@comminit.com or Alan Stanley at info@okhub.org


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