Nairobi initiative hopes to improve information management capacity in West Africa

Participants of Nairobi based training from West Africa and their trainers

21 November 2008 – A two-week information management training course for government officials from Benin and Côte d’Ivoire was recently held in Nairobi under the auspices of the Sergio Vieira De Mello UN Library.

Participants were two staff members from Benin’s Ministry Of Urbanism, Housing, Land Reform and Coastal Erosion Prevention, and three staff members from Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Environment.

The need to improve capacity through improved access to relevant information was identified during United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Basel Convention Secretariat projects in the region on hazardous waste management at the Port of Abidjan and a capacity-building initiative in Benin.

The Nairobi training course focused on how to set up a resource centre and manage information to support government officials, researchers, academicians and civil society to access relevant information for decision-making. 

Organizers hope the trainees returned to their countries equipped with the necessary skills that would enable them to perform their information management duties effectively. 

Some of the areas covered in the training programme included: collection development and acquisition theories, cataloguing and indexing, integrated library management systems, internet search and retrieval techniques, and the marketing of resource centre services.

Staff members from the library, the UN Information Centre and UN Agency for Human Settlements (UN-HABITAT) comprised the team of trainers. 

The training course was opened by Mr. Alioune Badiane, Director, Regional Office for Africa and Arab States, and Mr. Joseph Guiebo, Senior Human Settlements Advisor, both from UN-HABITAT, as well as by Mr. Mohamed Atani, Technical Office, Online Access to Research in the Environment, from UNEP. 

The closing ceremony was attended by Mr. Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director of UNEP’s Regional Office for Africa, and Ms. Habil Angelique, from UN-HABITAT. 

In addition to receiving certificates of participation, those attending were also given donations of major publications on environment and human settlements published by UNEP and UN-HABITAT, selected based on their respective ministries' information needs.

It is hoped that more resource centers will be established in other post-war and post-disaster countries to empower these countries with information management for sustainable development.

Similar projects have already been implemented by UNEP in Iraq, Sudan and Liberia.