Why we need to become better in sharing information and knowledge in global development aid?

I am reading the book ‘what’s so good about having to vote: democracy kills’ by Humphrey Hawksley. In the first 20 pages he describes an anecdote about the cacao industry and the cacao plantations in Ivory Coast (which is good for almost 50 % of cacao production). In the 1990s he was already writing about child labour on the cacao plantations. In 2001, child labour in this business got attention all over the world:

In April 2001, human rights groups reported that a tramp steamer, MV Etireno, was heading for the Ivory Coast with as many as two hundred children on board destined for forced labour on the cacao farms. The story played all around the world. Journalists headed for West-Africa and found how easy it was to gather evidence of child labour. (p. 18)

The chocolate companies buckled. They pledges to identify and eliminate the worst forms of child labour in 50 per cent of the cacao farms in West Africa by July 2005. The agreement became known as the Harkin-Engel protocol” (p. 18)

Hawksley went back to the Ivory Coast in 2005 to find out whether the cacao industry changed.

Kante (a local representative of the Canadian organisation Save the Children) and I sat under a shaded area under the outside steps coming down from the first floor. I showed him a copy of the Harkin-Engel protocol. We translated key parts of it to him, telling him that the chocolate companies had promised to end slavery. Surprise and disbelief spread across his face. 

‘I don’t know anything about this, he said’. 

‘So nobody has been here to talk to you about it?’

‘Nobody’ (p. 20)

Kante was a representative of a Canadian organisation! Still, this kind of crucial information that can make people like Kante stronger in battling child labour did not reach them. Therefore it is crucial that NGOs, research insitutions and other types of global development organisations should find ways to create and share knowledge. This is exactly what the Focuss.Info Initiative aims to do:

promoting the use of the latest information sharing and collaboration tools, technologies and skills in order to improve the exchange and access to information and knowledge in global development studies and research.