(I) Mali: Indigenous Knowledge a) -Blending the New and the Old _ ow is indigenous knowledge munities had nonetheless managed to brought out of the traditional produce a nucleus of literate people closet, into synergy with new - generally from 5 to 8 young adults. technologies and into application on These villagers were then charged by new development tasks? What are the the others with principally shadowing pedagogies" by which it is elicited, re- the marketing teams sent out to buy learned and reworked? An experience commercial crops by OACV, in order to more than two decades old from the protect against fraud, and monitoring Republic of Mali suggests some valu- tax bills and remissions. As the evalua- able lessons. tion team remarked after closer inspec- tion, the result seemed the conse- Hidden structure, hidden knowledge quence of a very accurate assessment by local people of the nature and mag- A In Mali, as in many Sub-Saharan Afri- nitude of literacy s uses in the rural en- can countries, there has been a strong vironment. Market and tax monitoring bifurcation between the customs and were important, but not frequent knowledge of traditional rural cultures enough from an individual point of view on the one hand and the systems and tojustify each person or family master- technologies of official urban society ing the new skills. Once "collectivized" on the other. and assigned to a small team of village In the late 1970s, a team of Malian residents, however, they made for criti- researchers assisted by the author con- cal and profitable work. ducted a thoroughgoing evaluation of On the strength of its assessment, functional adult literacy in the Western the evaluation team succeeded in con- and peanut-growing regions of the vincing OACV officials to approve the country. The region was then under the transfer of marketing functions - and agricultural guidance of a parastatal of a portion of the profit margin on corporation, the Operation Arachides commercial crop sales - to villages hav- et Cultures Vivrieres (Peanut and Food ing a sufficient number of new literates Crops Operation or "OACV"), which to handle the tasks. And the team was No. 25 was charged with developing produc- then responsible, during its own trip October 2000 tion and upgrading farm technology. In fact, the literacy program itself was ad- ministered under OACV tutelage and concentrated - at least in theory - on IK Notes reports periodically on Indig- the skills that rural residents needed to enous Knowledge (.K) initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is published by improve production and take increased the Africa Region's Knowledge and responsibility for credit and market op- Learning Center as part of an evolving erations. In fact, however, OACV had, IK partnership between the World up to that point, done little to transfer Bank, communities, NGOs, develop- authority and resources for local opera- Menr inSri[utions 3nd mulblateral orga- tions to communities that demon- nizations. The views expressed in this strated literate competence. article are those of the 3uthors and G § . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~should not be attributed to the World The results of the first year of evalu- -- "ation demonstrated if the Bank Group or its partners in this ini- . -tineont dthat, ieliteracy tiative. A webpage on iK is available at program had attained its full quantita- http://www.worlabank.org '.rtdr i . tive objectives in only a few localities, dprhuit hini the vast majority of participating com- 2 around rural areas at the outset of the following year's lit- Priming a social process eracy campaign, for explaining the policy change and the modalities of its application to village leaders. How are traditional culture and its store of knowledge genu- An interesting thing then transpired. During colonial inely "engaged" in development projects? A perception of times, villages throughout the Malian countryside had true interest, like the one that intervened in those discus- adopted the habit of naming a fictitious chief and set of coun- sions of the transfer of marketing functions, is obviously a key selors to meet with the French administration whenever it ingredient. But indigenous science may be trickier to flush came visiting. Contacts with the colonial administration out of cover and express than the simple perception of self- were considered, for the most part, beneath the dignity of the interest. As an Ewe proverb puts the matter, "The bird of true traditional authorities and seldom relevant to the knowledge - one person alone can never catch it." Knowl- village's lasting interests. The same pattern persisted in edge that is social in nature and culturally transmitted typi- many areasafter "flag" independence in 1960, because repre- cally comes forth in social situations, where groups of people sentatives of the modern Malian state were felt to be no less form to resolve what they perceive to be important problems foreign to traditional culture and scarcely more supportive of or to communicate wisdom across generations. its conservation and well-being. In more than one village, Methods for priming this process were developed in Mali therefore, the evaluation team began presenting the new by the same group of researchers in connection with an effort policy and its implications to a first set of local notables. As undertaken to create other uses for literacy. With World Bank soon as the village counterparts realized that a serious trans- support, the Ministry of Education sponsored in the months fer of power and resources was under discussion, however, to follow a study of new directions for nonformal basic educa- they asked to be excused and then, as if on a revolving stage, tion, premised on the notion that newly acquired literacy a second set of negotiators took their place: the real tradi- should be considered a starting point for new training rel- tional authorities. evant to rural development as much as a goal achieved. The research team devised three training sequences for newly lit- erate young adults - one on agricultural fertility, one on ac- counting systems for village enterprise, and one on the diag- nosis and prevention of prevalent infectious diseases. I K N o te s Methods for eliciting local knowledge would be of interest to: This was training with a difference, however. The researchers wished to blend outside technical knowledge in each domain Name with the insights of local culture and tradition - and to do so by involving those most aware of the latter: the elders in each Institufion community. They therefore worked out a procedure with sev- eral distinct steps: Address First, the researchers met with village authorities to ask their permission to discuss with the elders current local prob- lems and possible solutions in the area under consideration (declining soil fertility, rampant river blindness, or difficul- ties in starting local enterprise). Since communities were chosen in localities where one or another of these problems was already particularly acute, agreement was rapidly Letters, comments, and requests for publications reached in most cases. should be addressed to: During the session subsequently held with the village el- ders, the research team took care to dwell on (a) the nature Editor: IK Notes and importance of the problem, as perceived by the commu- Knowledge and Learning Center nity itself; (b) the availability of new technical methods that - Africa Region, World Bank if ited and avaiately of hope of - 1818 H Street, N.W., Room J5-055 if adapted and appropriately applied-might offer hope of ef- Washington, D.C. 20433 fective solutions; and (c) the presence of young people newly E-mail: pmohan@worldbank.org literate in Bambara who potentially had the tools and inquisi- tiveness to learn new approaches and share them with others. 3 The researchers then proposed the idea of holding in the on events that had transpired and lessons learned during the village a training workshop to analyze the problem and test day and sought reactions and suggestions from their elders new solutions. They promised, in this case, to bring study about what these results meant and where to go next. This materials, information on the new technologies and some collective reflection proved to be the ideal venue for bringing material for trying them out. And they requested that the el- out elements of traditional knowledge, comparing it to the ders sponsor the initiative and delegate the young people to "scientific" notions introduced in the training and bringing attend and report back to them on the applicability of the both to bear on the resolution of problems. new methods. Three villages ended up accepting the chal- lenge and sponsoring the training, one on each of the topics. Local knowledge of water-borne diseases Ingredients in the recipe Though all three training episodes followed this general model, actual details of the sessions differed from one loca- The key challenge was then organizing the experience so that tion to another as a function both of differences in the prob- it was notjust an opportunity for the dissemination of techni- lem situations and differences in the social context. Each ex- cal material and advanced training of the young people in- perience, though, shed new light on the methodology itself. volved, but an occasion and stimulus for the expression of re- Training on infectious diseases was conducted in the vil- lated local knowledge. To ensure this outcome, the training lage of Fasa, close to the Baloue River basin, a fertile farming sessions, which lasted two weeks each, had five closely-re- area largely abandoned over the preceding years due to the lated elements: high incidence of river blindness (onchocerciasis) and schis- tosomiasis. People in various stages of river blindness were * Technical content. Researchers served as trainers but quite evident in the village itself; and the community chose made sure that at least one highly skilled technical re- to focus on these two water-borne infections. A full census of source person was associated with each of the sessions. those affected throughout the community was carried out by The team developed the initial curriculum, based on the the trainees, who discovered that almost 25% of the popula- Bambara translation of available dissemination materi- tion carried the onchocerciasis tumor and more than a third als. of those were already in at least the incipient stages of sight * Hands-on developmental work. Each training included loss. "laboratory" work with some tools and new technologies The local knowledge of the hosts regarding the parasites of relevance to the problem. Researchers responsible for and the stages in their life cycle turned out to be consider- the infectious disease program, for example, came armed able. The technical assistant to this training - a doctor from with simple microscopes with which trainees could exam- the University of Marseille - was astounded to find that the ine samples . village elders knew things about the life cycle of the schisto- * Field inquiry or local needs assessment. Each training some parasite that he believed only to have been discovered also entailed survey of the extent and nature of the prob- in French laboratories two years previously. lem in the locality by the trainees themselves. * Comparison with indigenous knowledge. Researchers ex- Understanding soil fertility plicitly and systematically created occasions for express- ing local knowledge about the problems under study and The training session focusing on soil fertility was held in the comparing these insights with the dissemination mate- village of Suransan Tumoto, north of the town of Kita in the rial. peanut-growing regions of western Mali. The soils here had * Experimental trial and analysis. Each training was de- been depleted by successive commercial crops and the yields signed to identify issues regarding the actual trial of new had begun to plummet. After an initial study of soil chemis- methods and based on the observation of their results. try, the trainees set about their work by interviewing elders regarding the types of soil found in the village environment The critical interaction with indigenous knowledge was and the plants that had traditionally grown on each. They handled in two ways. First, during the phase of field inquiry then carefully surveyed the topography and condition of this into current practices and needs, the trainees were careful to flora around the village with the help of an agricultural tech- survey not just the problems people were encountering but nician from the national research institute and brought back also their understandings of root causes and their methods results for discussion with the entire community. for addressing the issue. Still more importantly, the evening of A comparison of agricultural extension themes on soil fer- each day was devoted to a feedback and discussion session tility with local knowledge of soil conditions and associated with village elders. At this time, the young trainees reported plant led to the decision to create an experimental farm sta- 4 tion to test different methods for improving agricultural But the key factors in mobilizing indigenous knowledge yields. Unfortunately, this particular initiative was thereafter in these experiments - or turning the "revolving stage" pic- stopped by a conservative reaction from OACV, whichjudged tured in the opening anecdote - were the middle ones in the it inadmissible to try out with local farmers types of experi- list above. They involved ways of affiliating the "repositories" mentation its own extension agents had not mastered. of that knowledge in commissioning training, then in taking part themselves in the search for solutions, all within a social Indigenous accounting systems scenario that lent itself to group reflection. The approach borrowed something from two sources - from the tradi- The training workshop on accounting and village enterprises tional African social structure, which assigns deliberative was held in the cotton-growing region of the country, where roles to the elders, management tasks to the householders crop marketing by newly literate personnel from local com- and technical ones to the young people in a manner meant to munities had opened the way to a certain amount of eco- be synergistic and complementary; and from participatory nomic diversification. The movement, though, had encoun- action research, which entails organizing learning around the tered a serious obstacle: lack of Bambara language account- tasks required to solve a problem. ing systems that would allow local staff to assume full control Under these circumstances, the comparison and interac- of crop markets and to create other enterprises with the pro- tion with "modern science" became a stimulus rather than ceeds of this activity. an inhibition to the expression of indigenous knowledge. Here, after studying accounting methods, trainees inter- Much of traditional knowledge - as of any scientific system viewed elders concerning traditional means for ensuring ac- - is fundamentally taxonomic: accumulated observation and countability and carried out a workshop to inventory and cre- organization of the different types of naturally occurring phe- ate an appropriate Bambara-language terminology for the nomena and their inter-correlations. The reservoir is rich, various steps in the process. The workshop concluded with but the lack of means to record and compare individual varia- the production and testing of an entire series of Bambara-lan- tions or test and analyze planned interventions have left the guage accounting forms and with a presentation to the as- agenda (sympathetic mastery of natural forces) incomplete. sembled community of a locally-conducted audit of its finan- The kind of training organized in Mali and described here cre- cial operations. ates an opportunity not only to express indigenous knowl- edge and bring it to bear on development problems, but also A pedagogy for expressing indigenous knowledge to fulfill its own potential for improving the human condition through comparison and collaboration with a tradition that The common denominator in all the sessions was the system- is more systematically based on the analysis of natural and atic attempt to take account of local knowledge and to bring planned variation. it to bear on the design of new solutions to the development problems in question. This was accomplished by ajudicious and creative application of long-standing adult education principles: * focus on felt needs; * start with what people already know; * associate them as teachers in the learning enterprise; * create a context for collective reflection and recall of rel- evant experiential data, * vary modes of instruction; and * follow through to actual application or resolution of problems. This article was written by Peter Easton (Florida State University) and Guy Belloncle (Universityof Tours). For more ,nfbrmation, e mail Peter Easton: easton .T'coe{.fsD, edu