Culture, Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Africa: Reviving Interconnections for Sustainable Development

Chapter 5. Leveraging Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century Africa: A Critical Dialogue

99 Chapter 5 Leveraging Sustainable Development in the Twenty-First Century Africa: A Critical Dialogue In chapter three of this book, I captured and elaborated on a considerable amount of indigenous knowledges (IKs) around the African continent. This was in a way to demonstrate the indispensability, applicability and transferability of IKs within and across societies. Yet even with all these demonstrations, the problem of how and whether IKs as well as indigenous technologies (ITs) embedded within indigenous knowledge systems (IKSs) could really be integrated for community development as independent alternative forms of knowledge or even a compliment of Western science in this age of the so-called globalisation remains topical. This question is topical in the twenty-first century given the sad history of IKSs, particularly in Africa since the dawn of colonialism. It is also topical considering the continued persistence of many problems that Western scientific knowledge (SK) alone has failed to tackle and provide solution to since it [SK] started its hegemonic monopoly as the only true knowledge the world over. In the next section, I discuss the divide between SK and IK that was created by the Western ‘modernists’, and how we can go beyond the divide in our attempt to foster sustainable development and socio-economic and political freedom in the twenty-first century Africa. 100 Rethinking the epistemological divide between [Western] Scientific Knowledge (SK) and indigenous knowledge (IK) Since colonialism, Africa has been described as a dark continent with the African people’s culture, norms and values, and indigenous knowledge labelled as savagery, superstitious, barbaric, and relegated to oblivion as irrational and unscientific. It is in view of these misrepresentations of Africa and the African people mostly by missionaries and Eurocentric scholars that Europe saw herself as a redeemer who on God’s behalf had the obligation to come and deliver Africa from this one whole night of savagery, superstition, and barbarism (see also Achebe 1958). As Kunnie (2005) puts it, European colonisation was viewed [by the colonialists] as a way of “civilising uncivilised savage Africans” in line with the “white man’s burden” of European enlightenment of redeeming the globe from barbaric self-destruction. This looking down upon Africa led the missionaries and Western colonialists to label the African people as the ‘other’ distinct from themselves [Europeans] in all respects. As such, the African indigenous knowledges which the African people believed to be embedded in their culture and acted as the source of their [Africans] ambitions and creativity as well as development were considered superstitious, despised and relegated as unscientific in the Western modernist sense of the word science. To make sure that any form of knowledge associated with the African people, practices and values was distinguished from the Western people’s form(s) of knowledge, the European bulwark of colonialism set binaries between the knowledge forms by the Africans and those by the Westerners. The words ‘indigenous knowledge’ and 101 ‘science,’ thus, were coined to distinguish the two. The former was used derogatorily to refer to any form of knowledge, practices and beliefs held by the African people. The practicability and value of those knowledge forms, practices and beliefs to those who owned and used them was never considered. On the other hand, the word ‘science’ was used to designate any form of knowledge associated with the Westerners and the global/universal. The Europeans, thus, appropriated science and claimed it unjustifiably as the unique baby of their own making. This does not mean to say that the Europeans didn’t know that Africans had their own science. Europeans only wanted to monopolise science and knowledge in general as well as to justify their claim that Africa has no history worse still science. No wonder why those scholars who argue from a Eurocentric perspective consider the word ‘indigenous knowledge’ derogatory even when used by the Africans and from the African people’s perspective. I will not pursue this discussion here as I have pursued it elsewhere except to say that I consider the word African ‘indigenous knowledge’ appropriate as long as it is used from the perspective of the African people and not from the perspective of the [former] colonialists and Eurocentric scholars. Also, I remain convinced that IK just like Western SK should be viewed as a global or universal heritage and resource as it can also be globally appreciated (Vilakazi 1999), and could be used to benefit people of other...