Honeyguide Foundation team members, William Joseph and Bakari Jaha attend the Legacy Foundation Briquette Producers’ Conference held on the November 14th-19th in Arusha.
Through a grant provided by the McKnight Foundation, Legacy Foundation was funded to conduct a briquette producers’ meeting/workshop, as a follow-up to the Training of Trainers that was conducted in 2009 for groups from Tanzania (Chamavita) and Uganda (Uganda United Women’s Association). The purpose of the Briquette Producers’ Workshop was to provide an opportunity to assess the impact and progress of the original TOT and to begin a process of developing a briquette producers’ network, so that lessons learned regarding briquette production and usage could begin to be shared between the countries/groups.
One of the key lessons learned from the Briquette Producers Conference was that while networking is essential to the growth of the briquetting movement it can be fraught with challenges. Like many in development work, we initially considered the issue of “developing networks” to be merely technical but as we listened to the participants- directly and inferentially – several layers were added to the issue.
Essentially, the whole notion of sharing ones own project information challenges the traditional instinct for privacy and protection of ones idea or initiative. In the western nations, we have devised the idea of “open source” and it seems to work well amongst those who essentially have full stomachs (those who are relatively high up on Maslow’s ladder and a can afford to give a bit out), or are too far removed to be negatively affected by the West’s gratuity. Even at that, however, developed countries have relied upon the foundation of a “patent and protect” system which assures the innovator some degree of protection (and of course a good income for the attorneys) when business privacy has been violated).
