LIRNEasia, in partnership with the Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO), is conducting a training course on ICT regulation in Taungoo, Myanmar from September 28 to October 2, 2013. The information on this course will be posted under capacity building shortly.
Taungoo is 3.5 to 4 hours away from Yangon. Yet I considered it a good use of my time to take a break from teaching to travel to Yangon yesterday because our anchor funder IDRC had convened a roundtable of Myanmar researchers and wanted my presence. It was a well attended event. Several government institutions dealing with health research were well represented, as were non-governmental entities working on food security issues and such. The Myanmar Development Resource Institute’s Center for Economic and Social Development was perhaps the organization that had the greatest overlap with our interests.
Among the topics discussed were the need to ensure that there is demand for, and capacity to absorb, the applied development research that is conducted and that there is harmonious and balanced development of research capacity in government as well as within civil society. Because of the serendipitous timing of our course, we were able to demonstrate that there was indeed demand for evidence-based policy interventions in today’s Myanmar, with both government officials and civil society represented among the participants of the Taungoo course.
Among priority areas identified in the course of discussions were ICT applications in health service delivery, agriculture and disaster risk reduction.
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