Today many organisations and institutions are involved in development work in order to solve critical human needs. In other words, knowledge is applied as part of an urgent need to tackle humanitarian crisis such as HIV/AIDS, to deal with environmental disasters such as tsunami or to support people in their struggle for better livelihoods. In addition to this, knowledge is an important aspect to self expression and determination which needs to be taken into account for understanding of any development that goes beyond the narrow socio-economic perspectives (Furgerson & Cummings 2007).The effective understanding, exchange and use of relevant knowledge is of central, strategic importance to the whole process of development. In particular, the importance of knowledge about daily realities which development aim to change and the perception of such realities by the societies which they form part are key importance to development (Powell 2009)

As organisations and instititutions, understanding knowledge before knowing what a management strategy is, are of key importance to achieving a knowledge management strategy in our organisations. The Collins English Dictionary defines knowledge as “facts, feelings or experiences known by a person or group of people”.Knowledege is derived from information but its richer than information because it includes familiarity, awareness and understanding gained through experiences or study and results from making comparisons, identifying consequences and making corrections. In organisational terms, knowledge is generally viewed as “know how” or “applied action”. Today’s organisations contain a lot of knowledge however, in applying knowledge management principles and practices, knowledge is not our end but a means of making us do our work better and achieve our organisational goals and objectives

Knowledge Management(KM)  is based on the idea that an organisations most valuable resources is the knowledge of its people and thus the extent to which an organisation performs well, will depend on among other things on how effectively its people can create new knowledge, share knowledge around the organisation and use that knowledge to best effect. Many of us simply do not think in terms of managing knowledge but we all do it because each of us is a personal store of knowledge with trainings, experiences and informal networks of friends and colleagues whom we seek out when we need to solve a problem or explore any opportunity

Fundamentally Knowledge Management is about applying the collective knowledge of the entire workforce to achieve specific organisational goals. It’s about ensuring that people have the knowledge they need, where they need it, when they need it, the right knowledge, in the right place at the right time. Knowledge Management recognises that today nearly all jobs involve “knowledge work” and all staff are “knowledge workers” to some degree or another meaning that their jobs depend more on their knowledge than their manual skills. This also means that creating, sharing and using knowledge are among the most important activities of nearly every person in an organisation

Conclusively therefore an organisation’s knowledge is one of its most important assets. One of the biggest challenges within an organisation is how to manage, document, use, and share the knowledge that employees have. Institutional knowledge is frequently used ineffectively, misplaced, or lost. As a result, organisations lose time and productivity, and use additional resources to retrieve, re-use, and regenerate knowledge and information. An effective knowledge management strategy will enable an organisation to generate, codify, store, use, reuse, share, and disseminate knowledge inside and outside of the organisation This will lead to improved performance, time and resource management. Carrying out a knowledge management strategy will also enable staff to share best practices and lessons learned resulting in improved programs and services

The writer participated in a “Knowledge for Development in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges” in Windhoek Namibia 9-13 November 2009