Natural Resource Management in West Africa Towards a knowledge management strategy

Society’s learning capacity in the field of sustainable land resource management is at stake and more emphasis on knowledge management is needed to guarantee that the accumulated knowledge is shared in such a way that the right actors have appropriate knowledge at the right time to take the best decisions. Efficient policies governing structures for national and regional knowledge management need to be formulated and the working procedures of the various actors in the field need to be defined more sharply. The question is, how can this be achieved in the current situation in West Africa, with its multitude of actors working in rural development? This book aims to help find answers to this question. For that purpose four groups active in managing knowledge on land resources in West Africa have been asked to write up their personal experiences and reflect on how they see their ‘knowledge management’ activities (even if they did not call them that at the time). Based on these contributions we discuss the question of ‘how we can build a knowledge management strategy in the region’?