Maarifa Centre, a product of the Council of Governors (CoG), was created in 2016 and launched in March 2017 during the 4th Annual Devolution Conference as a hub for Sharing Kenya’s Devolution Solutions. The CoG is an intergovernmental relations body established under Section 19 of the Intergovernmental Relations Act, 2012 (IGRA). One of the mandates of CoG under Section 20(b) of the IGRA is to provide a platform for ‘sharing of information on the performance of the Counties in the execution of their functions with the objective of learning and promotion of best practice, and where necessary, initiating preventive or corrective action’. It is on this basis that the Maarifa Centre was established. The Centre is anchored under the Knowledge Management (KM) Unit domiciled at the CoG.
The KM model that guides the work of the Maarifa Centre can be summarized as follows:
- Knowledge Identification & Capturing;
- Packaging (short stories, photos, videos);
- Sharing (digital platform, media, conference, peer-to-peer learning);
- Monitoring benefits of sharing;
- Adoption; and
- Pilots, scale-ups, scale-downs, peer-to-peer reviews, etc.
Maarifa Centre facilitates physical and virtual peer-to-peer (P2P) learning activities amongst Counties to promote cross-pollination of ideas and adoption of best practices and innovations with the goal that Counties will improve service delivery to citizens through the cross-learnings. To illustrate this, in August 2018, with the support of partners, Maarifa Centre convened the first Governors’ P2P learning event on Public Participation in Makueni County. Again in November 2019, Maarifa Centre organised peer-to-peer learning on Public Finance Management: Steps to a clean financial audit report for county technical directors to share experiences, lessons and best practices and explore ways of strengthening PFM, specifically in audit. Several Counties have visited Vihiga County to learn about the establishment of the Geographical Information System (GIS) Lab. Further, through a series of Compendiums of County Innovations and Best practices on Service Delivery, the Centre compiles all the success stories emerging from Counties for use at the domestic, regional, continental and global levels. The Handbook for County Governments on Knowledge Capturing and Sharing was developed by the Centre to assist Counties in institutionalizing KM, among other interventions.
Follow us on Twitter @Maarifa_Centre and share some of the best practices from your County with us.