Journal Article
© Aug 2015 Volume 13 Issue 2, Editor: Ken Grant, pp101 - 171
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Abstract
Abstract: Some 50% of the people in the world live in rural areas, often under harsh conditions and in poverty. The need for knowledge of how to improve living conditions is well documented. In response to this need, new knowledge of how to improve living
conditions in rural areas and elsewhere is continuously being developed by researchers and practitioners around the world. People in rural areas, in particular, would certainly benefit from being able to share relevant knowledge with each other, as well
as with stakeholders (e.g. researchers) and other organizations (e.g. NGOs). Central to knowledge management is the idea of knowledge sharing. This study is based on the assumption that knowledge management can support sustainable development in rural
and remote regions. It aims to present a framework for knowledge management in sustainable rural development, and an inventory of existing frameworks for that. The study is interpretive, with interviews as the primary source for the inventory of stakehol
ders, knowledge categories and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure. For the inventory of frameworks, a literature study was carried out. The result is a categorization of the stakeholders who act as producers and beneficiaries
of explicit and indigenous development knowledge. Stakeholders are local government, local population, academia, NGOs, civil society and donor agencies. Furthermore, the study presents a categorization of the development knowledge produced by the stakeho
lders together with specifications for the existing ICT infrastructure. Rural development categories found are research, funding, agriculture, ICT, gender, institutional development, local infrastructure development, and marketing & enterprise. Finally, a
compiled framework is presented, and it is based on ten existing frameworks for rural development that were found in the literature study, and the empirical findings of the Gilgit‑Baltistan case. Our proposed framework is divided in four levels where lev
el one consists of the identified stakeholders, le
Keywords: Keywords: sustainability, rural development, remote regions, framework, stakeholder, indigenous knowledge, requirement analysis, knowledge society