Developing Indigenous Knowledge in Francophone Africa A Four-Nation Overview o 1 ~23656 H- _ | ow well is indigenous knowl- enous knowledge and to carry out edge (IK) taking hold and being first hand research-particularly in r r integrated into the develop- the agricultural zone of the Office du ment policy and practice in the Niger-on how local farmers have Francophone countries of West and adapted traditional understandings of Central Africa? Results of a World Bank crop fertility and production to the mission in early summer 2001 to four exigencies of commercial operations. of these nations-Senegal, Mali, * A center in rural Senegal gathers to- Burkina Faso and Cameroon-offer a gether over 400 traditional healers brief panorama of the current situa- to exchange methods and test the ef- tion. This note is based on contacts ficacy of their ministrations with with public and private sector counter- modern medical diagnosis. parts involved in different facets of in- * The Ministry of Culture and Art in digenous knowledge promotion and in- Burkina Faso sponsors, through its terviews that grew, in many instances, "Direction of Cultural Heritage," a from these initial contacts. The situa- series of local museums devoted to tion in each country was different-a preserving indigenous crafts and a function of its own history and the chal- program of fora on local know-how. lenges and opportunities it faces; yet * A researcher at the Natural Products there were important commonalities Research Foundation in Cameroon as well. Both are briefly explored below. has carried out, under OAU sponsor- ship, an ethno-botanic survey of tra- No. 42 ditional uses of the vast store of March 2002 An abundance of initiatives plants in that country. Much is going on in relation to indig- enous knowledge in all four countries, IK Notes reports periodically on both in the public sector and among Indigenous Knowledge (IK) initiatives non-governmental and community- in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is published munityedby the Africa Region's Knowliedge and based organizations. Activities are Learning Center as part of an evolving cropping up across multiple domains of IK partnership between the World development: health, agriculture, edu- Bank, communities, NGOs, develop- cation, natural resource management, meat institutions and multilateral T;cuaNeL , e ment organizations. The views expressed in e os cultural affairs. A few examples: this article are those of the authors * An NGO in Mali devoted to "adding and should not be attributed to the muscle to local knowledge" (muscler World Bank Group or its partners in Q_4+>o le savoir local) recruits students this initiative. A webpage on IK is e^O^ AWD9 from across West Africa to attend available at //www.worldbank.org/afr/ fominacross West dynaica to atendi ik/default.htm seminars on the dynamics of indig- 2 Indigenous knowledge now appears to be a hot topic. contributors that testing claims against field-level results is a There are sources of funding, both private and foreign aid- critical means for identifying best practice and separating the based, for studies and initiatives in this area, and it is increas- wheat from the chaff. Yet such assessment is far from the rule. ingly politically correct to endorse related efforts. Cross- There is nonetheless an increasing amount of substance in country undertakings are not uncommon. The Ministry of the domain of indigenous knowledge throughout the four Culture in Mali recently held an international colloquium of countries visited, but it remains unevenly developed in a traditional hunters and "bush chieftains" (chefs de la number of respects. brousse) from several West African countries to discuss indig- * Despite the creation of Ministries of Culture (as in Mali enous methods of natural resource preservation; and the and Burkina Faso), the preponderance of activities remains NGO PROMETRA (Promotion des medicines traditionnelles or in the NGO and voluntary sector. Cultivation of indigenous "Promotion of traditional medicine") in Senegal has joined knowledge is seldom part of the policy or practices of pu- forces with similar organizations or created branches of its bic agencies. In Senegal, for example, almost all of the own structure in twelve other African countries. It is evident experiments with traditional medicine have been carried that any further effort now envisaged in these countries must out under private auspices, and their proponents have had take careful account of what has already been initiated and of little success in interesting the mainline medical system in the lessons learned from practice to date. such initiatives. *There is also a marked divergence between what might be called the "hard" and "soft" sectors of development. Most Uneven development IK initiatives have been undertaken in social service do- mains like health, culture and education. There are some, The verv popularity of indigenous knowledge as a banner for thoug fewer, i culture Thefurthon. e moesfome thoug5h fewer, in agsriculture The further one moves from action, and funding, attracts such a variety of aspirants and the realm of social development toward engineering, fi- nance and the more technical sectors of development, the fewer people one finds who understand the role of IK or K K N o tes are ready to take it into account. Natural resource manage- would be of interest to: ment constitutes perhaps the most notable exception. * Use of African languages is in many cases closely related to Name efforts to record, develop, and incorporate local knowl- edge; but practices in this regard are conditioned by a host Instituition of other policy concerns. It is typically more difficult to adopt coherent policies promoting them in coastal coun- Address tries with hundreds of African languages than in interior or Sahelian countries with a more limited number of tongues and a few predominant linguafranca. Cameroon, for ex- ample, must deal both with official (French-English) bilin- gualism and a number of different African languages and is therefore still struggling with its policy regarding use of the latter in the educational system. Letters, comments, and requests for publications should be addressed to: Why this record of uneven progress? Dominant models of Editor: IK Notes development are difficult to change, it is true, and the more Knowledge and Learning Center technical the domain the more it is tied into international Africa Region, World Bank norms of procedure and performance. Indigenous knowledge 1818 H Street, N.W., Room J5-055 is therefore naturally a phenomenon where rhetoric and Washington, D.C. 20433 E-mail: pmohan@worldbank.org practice tend to diverge a bit: there is often a political payoff to endorsing it but a real political cost to doing something concrete about it. But there are other valid reasons for uneven development. transmitting to future generations the best that the The NGO sector provides a good laboratory for experiment- present has to offer. Proponents of this approach insist that ing with innovative approaches before trying to incorporate IK is as much a question of enabling local actors to produce the most successful or appropriate of them into public new knowledge-based both on inheritance from the past policy; it is scarcely surprising therefore that new initiatives and a clear-eyed assessment of current challenges-as it is crop up there. In a multicultural context, whose indigenous one of simply inventorying and storing up the traditions knowledge will be given prominence is a thorny question, inherited from the past. just like the issue of which African language or languages will achieve official status. There are good reasons for ad- The synthesis of these three perspectives seems to have vancing slowly with such decisions. the greatest potential for stimulating widespread respect of One result of this uneven development is of course a lack indigenous knowledge. But examples are rare, though the of coherence and coordination in the "indigenous knowledge language people use increasingly reflects a compound per- sector." Actors in one arena do not know what those in an- spective. Our interlocutors talked of "referring" or having other are doing, there are few commonly accepted standards regular "recourse" to indigenous knowledge in building new for work, and there is a good deal of competition. This is not models for development, rather than simply enshrining it. all bad, however. The multiplicity of efforts at least favors Many were sensitive, moreover, to the virtues of the third the emergence of new ideas and creates a variety of ap- approach, which makes indigenous knowledge an active pro- proaches that experience may help to winnow out. cess, rather than purely a question of anthologies and muse- ums, and ties it to an agenda of popular participation and decentralization. Recognizing different varieties of IK One result of the increasing experience with the develop- Building the missing links ment of indigenous knowledge in the four countries visited is increasing sophistication in understanding the various Where is the movement headed in these four countries? meanings and applications of IK. A group interviewed in What are the principal challenges facing its proponents? The Senegal presented perhaps the clearest analysis of the differ- biggest "missing link" in all sites visited lies in the inability ent and potentially complementary interpretations of local or insufficient opportunity to "inject" the results of IK initia- knowledge now embodied in the field. They distinguished tives into the policies and procedures that govern local de- three variant approaches: velopment, to move from gratifying forums and towards en- * Indigenous knowledge as a heritage from the past to be couraging experiments to actual changes in policy and stan- carefully conserved and respected-an approach displaying dard practice. the kind of reverence for the accumulated wisdom of previ- The situation is reflected both in the countries visited and ous generations so poignantly expressed in the famous in donor organizations such as the World Bank. Indigenous phrase from Amadou Hampate Ba, "each time an elder dies knowledge concerns, if more frequently recognized now it is as if a library had burned down." than in the past, tend to be compartmentalized in special- * Indigenous knowledge as an embodiment of a different and ized services or agencies that have this mission but have specifically African mode of thought-an African "episte- little effect on policy in the "working" sectors of develop- mology" and therefore a means for rethinking develop- ment. At the national level, there may be a ministry or ment methods in areas like health, agriculture, and natural agency devoted to culture, yet operating largely in a vacuum resource management. Proponents of this approach point without influence on practical issues of economic and social to the failure of current methodologies of development as development. In donor organizations, programs for the pro- evidence of the need for new concepts rooted in people's motion of IK may flourish but intersect little if at all with cultural heritage. those mainstream offices that determine aid policy and prac- * Indigenous knowledge as a means and processfor articulat- tice. Crossing this divide remains a major challenge. Four ing what local people know, and involving them in the cre- dimensions of activity seem particularly important: ation of the knowledge required for development, and so 4 Promoting the incorporation of indigenous knowledge Strategies must evidently be developed country by coun- into development projects through more explicit proce- try, although accompanied by ample means for cross-national duresfor involving local actors in the design of intervention exchange. The first step forward might best be a sort of "sec- methods and in tactical decision-making. In many cases, tor assessment" or etat des lieux carried out by national re- this means making participatory management and action searchers in order to inventory and compare the varied ini- research standard operating procedure in development tiatives under way in a given country and what is knowvn of enterprises. their results. This would serve as a prelude and criteria for * Systematically developing, preparing and disseminating prioritizing future efforts. Government ministries and donor tools and methods for this kind of participatory approach organizations should be a part of this scrutiny, which would to local development. entail as well an "audit" of their own policies with respect to * Making local schools a hub for the collection of indigenous local participation in development planning and utilization knowledge and a place of encounter between development of indigenous knowledge. agents and local actors in negotiating investments and ini- In all four countries, IK is manifestly a domain of increasing tiatives that include it. activity and immense potential. It is at the same time a * Designing, testing and implementing materials and meth- realm where support from donor communities can help odsfor the pre-service and in-service professional training greatly to strengthen existing efforts and "winnow" the most of development workers that initiate them to fuller usage promising initiatives from the many now under way, but of local knowledge and assist them in discovering ways to where host country policy decisions must finally govern synthesize the new and the old. norms. The mission in mid-2001 comprised the authors of this article, Peter Easton (consultant), Emmanuel Nikiema ( W44orld Bank staff, Burkina Faso Field Office), and Suzanne Essama, (World Bank staff Washington D.C.). For more information, please e-mail sessama@worldbank.org