The Concept, Various Uses and the Need for the Reformation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in African Societies

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge is local knowledge that is unique to a given culture, acquired by local people through the accumulation of experiences, informal experiments and intimate understanding of the environment in a given culture. It is the actual knowledge of a given population that reflects its experiences based on traditions and includes more recent experiences with modern technologies. Local people, including farmers, landless laborers, women, rural artisans, and cattle herders are the custodians of indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge is dynamic, changing through indigenous mechanisms of creativity and innovativeness as well as through contact with other local and international knowledge systems. With the rapid environmental, social, economic and political changes occurring in many areas and the deaths of elderly people since there is no formal documentation, comes the danger that the indigenous knowledge they posses will be overwhelmed and lost forever. In this paper, we discuss the concept of indigenous knowledge, the various areas of using indigenous knowledge by the African societies and the need for reformation of indigenous knowledge. We also proposed six important considerations for adapting the system to modern developmental systems.