PRDC: A regional forum to strengthen knowledge management in the Senegal River Valley, organized at UGB

The regional forum on the Senegal River Valley (SRW) knowledge management and dialogue platform opened this Tuesday at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, for a meeting scheduled from June 30 to July 2. The event is organized by the PRDC-SRW in partnership with Gaston Berger University and brings together a diverse range of stakeholders involved in the development of the river basin.

Gathered in the capital of the North, researchers and academics, administrative authorities, technical services, technical and financial partners, NGOs, community organizations, local authorities, actors in the sectors, the private sector, as well as representatives of people living with disabilities, women and young people, are participating in this collective reflection.

A platform for better knowledge sharing

This forum is part of the dynamic of setting up and operationalizing a regional knowledge management platform (GMP), conceived as a tool for dialogue, capitalization and dissemination of good practices in the Senegal River Valley.

The objective is multiple: to promote the sharing of experiences, to raise awareness among stakeholders of the importance of knowledge management in a context marked by the challenges of climate change, to strengthen coordination between countries and actors in the sub-region, and to improve decision-making on scientific and empirical bases.

It is also a matter of identifying priority research themes, discussing the governance of the platform, specifying its digital component and examining the modalities of its sustainability.

For Professor Lamine Diop, director of the UFR of agronomic sciences at Gaston Berger University of Saint-Louis, this platform constitutes a central tool for the coordination and production of knowledge.

According to him, it is a mechanism that "brings together several actors" and that allows "the generation and sharing of knowledge on topics such as agriculture, climate change, and resilience." The forum should thus contribute to structuring a sustainable space for collaboration between the various stakeholders in the river basin.

Present at the opening ceremony, the governor of the Saint-Louis region, Al Hassan Sall, welcomed an initiative which he considers essential to improve the effectiveness of development policies.

He emphasized the importance of capitalizing on best practices, arguing that development depends not only on infrastructure but also on knowledge management and sharing. For him, "we're not reinventing the wheel": it's more about disseminating what already works to avoid ineffective repetition and strengthen public action.

A regional dynamic centered around the river

Through this forum, stakeholders in the development of the Senegal River Valley intend to lay the foundations for a sustainable mechanism for dialogue and collaboration. The ambition is to make knowledge a central lever for resilience in the face of environmental and socio-economic challenges, particularly those related to climate change.

By bringing together science, institutions, communities and local authorities, this initiative led by the Resilience and Community Development Project of the Senegal River Valley aims to transform knowledge management into a genuine tool for shared development throughout the sub-region.