GIS Initiatives in Health Management in Malawi: Opportunities to Share Knowledge

Abstract

Knowledge is recognized as the most important resource in organisations including public organisations and its management is considered critical to organizational success. The literature suggests the development of indigenous knowledge as one of characteristics of the successful GIS implementation in developing countries. The topic of knowledge has been discussed extensively in the information system and organisation literature but much is written about why managing knowledge is important to organisations and little on how knowledge is identified, captured, shared, and used within organisations. As a contribution to ‘how’, this paper discusses opportunities of sharing knowledge in the GIS implementation in health management through some initiatives in Malawi. We can confidently say that there are a number of GIS implementation activities in the health sector in Malawi which are important for knowledge sharing but they are not utilised as expected.