A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF COMPUTING AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, ARBA MINCH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES, ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Oromo society, like many African societies, is rich in IK (Gadaa system) that is used for conflict resolution, food preparation, marriage, sheltering, and clothing in all aspects of the Ethiopian nations in general and the Oromia regional state in particular. Furthermore, Oromo Gadaa system (OGS) is a traditional governance system, which includes various assets that helps Oromo society living in different areas of Ethiopia and other nations. Among those assets Gumaa institution is one of multitude Oromo IK institutions used for conflict resolution that have been traditionally employed to settle blood feuds or compensate those who have been victimized. Despite its wider use and multidisciplinary in nature, psychosocial analysis of this IK of Gumaa in OGS is not fully utilized and preserved by the community because it is tacit knowledge and not supported by technology and there is no framework developed for this IK. Therefore, by considering this indigenousness and its importance in conflict resolution in different social activities of the community, the aim of this study introduces suitable KM approaches that can support how to manage and develop framework for IK management of Gumaa in OGS. To assess and develop a framework for the IK all the necessary data were collected from the West Arsi zone Oromo community using cluster-sampling techniques. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 26 and Prolog was used to develop a functional prototype of the proposed framework. According to this research finding, the Current Status of KM process is very low in IKM task. Hence, the desired framework and prototype was designed and developed to increase performance of IKM processes. Then, the developed prototype performance was tested and evaluated by experts and users using the standard criteria (ISO-9126) for evaluation like attractiveness, simplicity, efficiency, deliverability, portability, usability, functionality and maintainability. Based on their evaluation the results were 80%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 85%, 65%, and 50% respectively. Therefore, as the result shows, the proposed IKM framework is promising as solution for IKM processes, specifically for GUMAA in OGS conflict res