The importance of African indigenous knowledge

I recently came across two Ted Talks talking about how important traditional indigenous knowledge is for the development of Africa. Both Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu and Laiqa Walli discussed the idea that the Western world has become to define what Africa is and the ongoing cultural imperialism is washing away the remains of African traditions and ways of living. In fact, the problems related to water and food in Africa such as malnutrition, droughts and famines, seem to be the main representation the West has created of Africa and its relationship with water. However, the approach by the experts in the Global North represents a poor understanding of the water cycle-related phenomena for livelihoods in the semi-arid tropics and continues to focus only on costly technology-oriented (Falkenmark, 1990) approaches to water instead of tackling the problem directly. Moreover, something I came to a realisation recently, while writing this blog, is that the more I have read about water and food (or anything development-related) in academic writings, the more I have realised how the literature about Africa is mostly written by academics in the Global North and not by Africans. 

The indigenous knowledge systems did not develop with the arrival of Western knowledge systems. These have developed over generations through sets of experiences relating to the environments of different African societies and have been used for generations to adapt to changes in climate. These knowledge systems have been worked out through trial and error over generations and do not align with Western ideologies because it is based on scientific knowledge and that is considered more trustworthy (Eyong, 2007). The way people learn is very culture-specific because different experiences and knowledge create different social realities (Kaya, 2014) and ways of learning. That is why a lot of development projects in Africa fail and/or never fully mitigate the problem.

Today many African governments pay little attention to African traditional knowledge and idolise the Western way of thinking and this has also become a big part, especially in higher education across Africa (Okolie, 2003). Western knowledge systems lack understanding about the approaches of African knowledge and the educational structures inherited from the west are different from the cultural practices and values of African knowledge systems and therefore are not relevant to the true needs and concerns of many African societies (SDG, 2019). 

In many cases, not only in my previous blog posts but also other examples pointed out by Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu and Laiqa Walli about Tassa for example, show that African indigenous knowledge systems are vital for development to take place. It should not be the West trying to help nor Westernise Africa, but Africa guiding the West to understand African knowledge and culture, and possibly by working together even greater success in agriculture can be achieved.