i Local Pathways to Global Development Marking Five Years of the World Bank Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program Indigenous Knowledge © 2004 Knowledge and Learning Group Africa Region The World Bank IK Notes reports periodically on indigenous knowledge (IK) initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa and occasionally on such initiatives outside the Region. It is published by the Africa Region’s Knowledge and Learning Group as part of an evolving IK partnership between the World Bank, communities, NGOs, development institutions, and multilateral organizations. For information, please e-mail: ik-info@worldbank.org. The Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program can be found on the web at http://worldbank.org/afr/ik/default.htm The views and opinions expressed within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the World Bank or any of its affiliated organizations. iii Contents PART ONE: LEAD ARTICLES 1. Indigenous Knowledge—a Local Pathway to Global Development 1 2. Indigenous Capacity Enhancement: Developing Community Knowledge 4 3. Education and Indigenous Knowledge 9 4. Women’s Indigenous Knowledge: Building Bridges Between the Traditional and the Modern 13 5. Indigenous Responses to AIDS in Africa 18 6. Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods: Local Knowledge Innovations in Development 24 7. Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Resource Management 30 8. Indigenous Knowledge and Science and Technology: Conflict, Contradiction or Concurrence? 34 9. Indigenous Approaches to Conflict Resolution in Africa 39 10. Indigenous Knowledge: The Way Forward 45 References 56 Authors of the Lead Articles 61 PART TWO: IK NOTES IK Notes Summaries 66 The IK Notes 1. Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Overview 72 2. Zimbabwe: Sustainable Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Agriculture 76 3. Senegalese Women Remake their Culture 78 4. Ghana: From“ Sacrilege ” to Sustainability—Reforestation and Organic Farming 81 5. Burkina Faso: Literacy for the “Little Ones” in Nomgana 84 6. Senegal: Village Bankers: The Experience of Fandène 87 7. Ghana: Literacy and Local Governance in a Rural Community 90 8. Nurturing the Environment on Senegal’s West Coast 93 9. Mali: The Development of an Agricultural Union: Increasing Levels of Local Empowerment 95 10. Indigenous Healing of War-Affected Children in Africa 98 11. Education and Koranic Literacy in West Africa 102 12. Mali: Cultural Resources and Maternal Health 107 Foreword vii Preface ix Acknowledgments x Acronyms and Abbreviations xi iv 13. Sahelian Languages, Indigenous Knowledge and Self-Management 110 14. Grassroots Dissemination of Research in Africa: Collecting and Connecting 114 15. Health: Indigenous Knowledge, Equitable Benefits 117 16. Senegal: Grassroots Democracy in Action 121 17. Regional Planning, Local Visions: Participatory Futuring in West Africa 124 18. Participatory Management and Local Culture: Proverbs and Paradigms 128 19. Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights 132 20. Reinventing Apprenticeship and Rites of Passage 135 21. Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program: Two Years Down the Road 139 22. Indigenous Knowledge Goes to School: Potential and Perils of Community Education in the Western Sahel 142 23. Seeds of Life: Women and Agricultural Biodiversity in Africa 146 24. Strengthening Traditional Technical Knowledge: the Sugar Cane Wine Example 149 25. Mali: Indigenous Knowledge—Blending the New and the Old 152 26. Traditional Medicine and AIDS 156 27. Uganda: Information Technology and Rural Development: The Nakaseke Multi-Purpose Telecenter 158 28. Indigenous Knowledge and Local Power: Negotiating Change in West Africa 161 29. West African Languages: Medium and Message 164 30. Ghana and Zambia: Indigenous Knowledge and HIV/AIDS 168 31. Malicounda-Bambara: the Sequel 171 32. African Traditional Healers: The Economics of Healing 175 33. Repairing the Ravages of War in Mozambique 178 34. Tanzania: Communicating Local Farming Knowledge 181 35. Ethiopia: Traditional Medicine and the Bridge to Better Health 184 36. Eritrea: The Process of Capturing Indigenous Knowledge 187 37. HIV/AIDS: Traditional Healers, Community Self-assessment, and Empowerment 190 38. Senegal: Indigenous Language and Literature as a Non-profit Business 193 39. Burkina Faso: Integrating Indigenous and Scientific Rainfall Forecasting 197 40. Maternal Health Care in Rural Uganda 201 41. Eritrea: Eliminating a Harmful Traditional Practice 204 42. Developing Indigenous Knowledge in Francophone Africa 206 43. Rural Seed Fairs in Southern Tanzania 209 44. Uganda: The Contribution of Indigenous Vegetables to Household Food Security 212 45. India: Using Indigenous Knowledge to Raise Agricultural Productivity 215 46. The Role of Myths and Rites in Managing Natural Resources along the Mozambican Shoreline 219 47. Using the Indigenous Knowledge of Jatropha 222 48. Ethiopia: Potential of Traditional Social Insurance for Supporting Health Care 226 49. Farmer Experimenters: Self-developed Technology 229 50. Eritrea: Collective Responsibility for War Orphans 233 51. Traditional Medicine in Tanga Today 235 52. A Qualitative Understanding of Local Traditional Knowledge and Medicinal Plant Use 238 53. The Economics of African Indigenous Knowledge 242 v 54. Traditional Medicine Practice in Contemporary Uganda 245 55. Indigenous Knowledge: the East Africa-South Asia Learning Exchange 248 56. Ghana: Kanye Ndu Bowi: An Indigenous Philosophical Context for Conflict Management 252 57. Cultural Rights for Zimbabwe’s Sui Generis Legislation 255 58. Grassroots Women’s Approach to Capacity Building 259 59. Adzina: An Indigenous System of Trial by Jury on the Ghana-Togo Border 263 60. Institutional Constraints in Promoting IK: Community Access to Social Networks and Formal Institutions 266 vii n 1996, we articulated a vision for the World Bank to become a “Knowledge Bank” that intermediates ideas as well as financial resources. At the First Glo- bal Knowledge Conference in Toronto in 1997, po- litical leaders and civil society representatives from developing countries endorsed this vision. They called upon the World Bank not only to provide its own know- how, gained through more than 50 years of development experience, but to equally learn from the practices of communities so as to leverage the best in global and local knowledge systems. The World Bank has responded to this challenge. We recognize that knowledge is not the exclusive domain of technologically advanced societies. We need to give a new meaning to empowering poor people and helping to give them voice—not as recipients of knowledge, but as con- tributors and protagonists of their own development. In 1998, we launched the Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program to help learn from community- based knowledge systems and development practices, and to incorporate them into Bank-supported programs. A core activity was the publication and dissemination of a series of IK Notes, where development practitioners re- port on successful local solutions for local development problems. The present publication, marking half a decade of the IK program, is a collection of 60 such narratives. Thematic lead articles introduce the cases, synthesizing the lessons learned and discussing the impact indigenous knowledge can make on our development efforts and on helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Foreword The cases presented here demonstrate how communi- ties and local practitioners use indigenous knowledge sys- tems and practices to help increase their crop yields, educate their children, reduce suffering from HIV/AIDS, decrease infant and maternal mortality, heal the impact of conflict, learn from each other, and empower them- selves. The cases also suggest that the communities are quite willing, indeed eager, to combine global knowledge and modern technology with their indigenous knowledge and institutions to obtain better results. Traditional Birth Attendants in the Iganga District of Uganda, for example, use modern walkie-talkies to refer critical cases to the public health system, thus contributing to reduc- ing maternal mortality substantially, one of the MDGs. I am confident that this collection of successful grassroots community experiences will prove to be a valu- able resource in improving our understanding of how communities empower themselves to manage their own development in the larger context of globalization. Build- ing on such practices and helping scale up the more suc- cessful ones is critical to ensuring results. It will also enrich the development process, making it more equi- table and sustainable. James D. Wolfensohn President The World Bank I ix his publication is the five-year-milestone of the Indigenous Knowledge for Development Pro- gram in the Africa Region of the World Bank. The main goal of the program is to learn from the knowledge embedded in the practices of local communities. A core activity of the program is the publi- cation of the IK Notes—a monthly periodical that appears in print and online in English, French and, occasionally, in Portuguese, Swahili, and Wolof. We present here 60 of the IK Notes, in which development practitioners de- scribe how successful indigenous practices enrich the de- velopment process. We learn, for example, how communities have applied their traditional judicial system to reduce or prevent con- flict in Ghana, how rural women in India have empow- ered themselves by developing their own capacity, how youth in Senegal have improved their skills and competi- tiveness, how cooperating with traditional healers in- creases the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS projects, and how communities in Uganda combine traditional and modern knowledge to help reduce maternal mortality. In addition, this publication includes several new the- matic articles by leaders, scholars, and development prac- titioners that synthesize the lessons from the various themes of the Notes and discuss the conditions that make the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into develop- ment work successful. And, as His Excellency, the Presi- dent of Tanzania concludes in his introduction to this publication, the most important condition is that deci- sion-makers and development partners must be ready to learn from communities and to help them shape their own development agenda. The World Bank has contributed to this process by helping clients enhance their capacity to develop their in- digenous knowledge base and by creating more opportu- Preface nities for local communities to be involved in develop- ment. In Uganda, for example, the Bank has supported the development of a national strategy that incorporates indigenous knowledge into the country’s poverty reduc- tion program. In Ethiopia, the Bank is supporting the de- velopment of medicinal plants for the domestic market. The Bank also brokered cooperation for the scientific validation of traditional medicinal practices between lo- cal research organizations, NGOs, practitioners, and the global scientific community. The Bank has also integrated indigenous knowledge into Bank-supported programs to obtain better results. In a number of West African countries, programs to com- bat HIV/AIDS include regular consultations with the tra- ditional healers. In Burkina Faso, the Bank is helping to promote a traditional water harvesting and soil conserva- tion technology throughout the country. Bank-supported social protection projects in Malawi, Tanzania, and Northern Uganda build on community-based institutions for local management of the projects. Over the past five years we have learned a lot about the efficacy and sustainability of indigenous practices in de- velopment. We also see a growing pattern of integration of indigenous practices in development programs for im- proved development results. With this new compilation of IK Notes and related thematic lead articles we offer the development community a collection of good practices and ideas that can help in designing programs that em- power communities through the validation and use of in- digenous knowledge systems. Callisto E. Madavo Vice President Africa Region T x Local Pathways to Global Development This publication is the result of an international partnership by a network of promoters, practitioners, and protagonists of indigenous knowledge. The editors wish to record their gratitude to all the contributors. For over five years, the authors of the IK Notes have taken the time and effort to share their experiences, impressions, and lessons learned. The editors trust that they will extend our thanks to those who are the source of the knowledge discussed here: the communi- ties, women farmers, traditional healers, birth atten- dants, village elders, herdsmen, and many others. The editors wish to express their profound gratitude to His Excellency, The President of the United Repub- lic of Tanzania, Benjamin W. Mkapa, who has been kind enough to author the introduction to this publi- cation and whose central message we have adopted in our title: local pathways to global development. The authors of the lead articles have patiently en- dured the editors’ proposals for amendments in for- mat, style, and diction. We thank them for engaging us in a fruitful discussion on context and content—up to the very last minute. The editors further wish to thank the team members of the Indigenous Knowledge for Development Pro- gram and other World Bank staff, who provided useful commentary and contributions. On behalf of the Africa Region’s IK Program for De- velopment, the editors wish to express their gratitude to the President of the World Bank, James D. Wolfensohn, and the Vice President of the Africa Re- gion, Callisto E. Madavo. The Foreword and Preface to this commemorative publication are symbolic of their vision, which helped to promote the recognition of in- digenous knowledge as being critical to the develop- ment process. This publication would not have been possible without their support and guidance. Any errors of this publication remain the responsi- bilities of the editors. Reinhard Woytek Preeti Shroff-Mehta Prasad C. Mohan [...]... teachers and students to humbly learn from these cases They are not blueprints or recipes or shortcuts to development, nor do they seek to romanticize indigenous knowledge or traditions or suggest that global knowledge is irrelevant Rather, they show that, indigenous and global knowledge working together in a democratic, self-determined way is the best combination to foster sustainable development It remains... contribution to achieving sustainable outcomes in development Therefore, there is a need to make sustained and focused efforts towards facilitating the incorporation of women’s knowledge into broader development efforts To enable women to maximize their IK contribution to the development process, national governments and development partners need to go beyond gender-balanced participation of women in development. .. also on subjects of their own choice, such as local diseases and treatments for humans and farm animals.19 As is the case in Senegal, the empowerment of women through education in India has allowed them to address cultural obstacles to their own development Local Pathways to Global Development 16 Leveraging women’s indigenous knowledge: a challenge for development agents The series of factual accounts... contribute to global solutions Indigenous knowledge has contributed to building solidarity in communities affected by globalization and shielded them against some of its negative impacts There is not one of the Millennium Development Goals to whose achievement indigenous knowledge cannot contribute The sixty cases contained in this publication successfully underline the crucial role indigenous knowledge. .. numbers of participants, but of contributors to a development solution; and • Recognition, through a commitment by governments and development partners to direct specific research towards IK of women; to identify, document, and appropriately disseminate women’s IK; to help strengthen existing women’s knowledge networks; and to provide fora for the exchange of knowledge between women and the formal sciences... agricultural extension services.9 This case illustrates how a traditional top-down extension service can be transformed into an enabling institution for the development of local capacity Local Pathways to Global Development 8 hancement, assist communities directly by providing opportunities to demonstrate their innovativeness, and act as brokers to help exchange experiences across communities, countries, and... beginning to discover that women have acquired a substantial stock of husbandry and ethno-veterinary knowledge that complements existing scientific knowledge Contributing to global goals Research on indigenous knowledge has highlighted the ways in which women have developed effective strategies to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) In the Tanga Region of Tanzania, for instance, a local. .. healthcare to millions of Africans, it has helped communities in Mozambique to manage their coastal natural resources, and it has helped to build partnerships between the weak and the strong in Ghana to share wealth Sixty persuasive arguments and yet we find it difficult to convince so many scientists, politicians, development experts and administrators to systematically use indigenous knowledge in the development. .. neglected the knowledge that women and men, families and communities had developed themselves for centuries The sixty cases presented in this collection of IK Notes demonstrate that indigenous knowledge (IK) is a resource that can help to solve local problems, a resource to help grow more and better food, to maintain healthy lives, to share 1 2 wealth, to prevent conflict, to manage local affairs,... mechanism that enables communities to engage in such knowledge exchange Innovative literacy efforts documented in the IK Notes show that instruction in the local language and the use of local language teaching materials (which often emphasizes local context through story-telling, local history, or literature) tend to be more successful in achieving higher literacy rates The use of local language is not only . i Local Pathways to Global Development Marking Five Years of the World Bank Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program Indigenous Knowledge © 2004 Knowledge. ARTICLES 1. Indigenous Knowledge a Local Pathway to Global Development 1 2. Indigenous Capacity Enhancement: Developing Community Knowledge 4 3. Education and Indigenous