An introduction to African Indigenous Knowledge

1. Iqtidar ul Hassan
Leadership and Policy Studies
University of Memphis
AFRICAN INDIGINOUS KNOWLEDGE

2. • Education and Learning are not recent intervention in African ethnic groups
because they are the integral part of the life.
• In traditional societies, education, learning, and training had their own specific
principles, methods, and social institutional arrangements. (Magagula &
Mazibuko, 2004; Mautle, 2001; Morolong, 1996; Ocitti, 1988)
• Principle of African indigenous education is “Botho” or “Ubuntu”, which means
“humanism of human being collectively”. (Gumede, 1996; Lange, 1997)
• The opposite of Botho is selflessness, greediness, and self-centeredness.
• Another characteristic of African indigenous education is informality, collective
learning, oral mode of instruction, and acquisition of revealed knowledge through
the processes of dreams and visions.

3. ADULT EDUCATION
• According to Briton (1996) adult education is a cultural practice with moral and
political responsibility that reaches far beyond the walls of the classroom.
• Both the African definition and the mission of Adult education seem to emphasize
the need for useful knowledge.
• According to Segall (2002) has to “enable an understanding of human experience,
enhance respect and help people to deal critically and creatively with the world in
order to change it.”

4. AFRICAN INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
• African indigenous knowledge was defined as a “locally-based knowledge that is
generated through a systematic process of observing the local environment,
experimenting with solutions and the re-adoption of previously identification
solutions to changing environmental factors.”
• African education was functionalism, its purpose was to prepare the African child
for adult life and peaceful death.
• Aims of African education are:
• To preserve the cultural heritage of the extended family, clan, and the tribe.
• To adapt members to the new generation to their physical environment and
teach them how to control and use it.
• To explain to them that their own future, and that of their community
depends on the understanding and the perpetuation of the institution, laws,
language and values inherited from the past.

5. ACQUISITION AND SHARING OF
KNOWLEDGE
• Knowledge and practices are empirical and based on continuous observation,
imitation, and continuous practice.
• Skill acquisition dominated traditional education.
• Attributes of customary education are:
• African traditional societies laid a heavy stress on informal instruction as far
as general education concerned.
• Compared to modern education, customary education in African was marked
with limited specialized training.
• It also lacked a distinct category of professionalism, such as a full-time
teacher, as every member of the society has part to play.

6. • This knowledge is imparted to the youth through a phased childhood and
adolescence. It encourages children to engage in participatory education through
ceremonies and rituals (associated with rain-making, sowing and harvesting of
crops, pregnancies, birth, name giving, twins, sickness and death, purification
rites as well as those associated with new shrines, etc.), spiritual work such as
weaving and farming, recreation work such as dancing , and intellectual training
such as storytelling and poetry.

7. MODE OF INSTRUCTION
• Informality is one of the distinguishing feature of African education.
• The acquisition of revealed knowledge through the processes of dreams and
visions.
• Emphasizing practical over theoretical modes of knowledge.

8. INITIATION SCHOOLS AS A FORM OF
INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
• Pre-colonial local education that existed was the initiation schools for adolescent
boys and girls.
• These traditional schools were separated according to gender
• Bogwera, for boys
• Bojale, for girls
• Curriculum
• The main goal was to prepare the youth for adulthood.
• The common curriculum included the following
• Physiological changes and entry into adulthood
• History of their people
• Cosmology

9. • Heir responsibilities in society, which differed according to gender
• Sex education
• Socially desirable attitudes
• The specialist curriculum for boys included hunting and fighting skills
• Curriculum for girls included matters concerning womanhood such as
child-rearing, domestic and agricultural activities, and behavior toward
men.

10. LIFE-LONG LEARNING
• The use of proverbs
• Wisdom (conventional)
• The use of dreams and visions

11. INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE TODAY
• Introduction of the western education after colonization.
• The western education has left out indigenous knowledge
• The pressure of modernization and cultural diffusion threatened indigenous
knowledge systems.
• The concept of Knowledge-based-economy is also a challenge to the indigenous
modes of learning.

12. IDEAS FOR AFRICAN INDIGENIZATION OF
ADULT EDUCATION
• Emphasize participatory instruction
• Including students learning styles in the teaching
• Acknowledge the diversity of African indigenous knowledge

13. • References
Ntseane, G. (2005). African Indigenous Knowledge: The Case of Botswana. Non-western
perspectives on learning and knowledge (pp. 113-135). Malabar, Florida: Kreiger
Publishing Company.