AIKRN Policy Brief

Overview

This policy brief explores how African Knowledge Systems (AIKS) can impact the practical realities of the African people and contribute to the socio-economic development of Africa. It argues that the relevance of AIKS should not be limited to the realm of epistemology as it can be used to guide the way of life and practices of Africans. The brief proposes that we must move beyond the myopic view that AIKS is just an alternative form of knowledge to enable us to acknowledge that it is an entire system that comprises knowledge, beliefs, practices, concepts, and value systems that can better improve lives and contribute to development in Africa.

Executive Summary

The embrace of AIKS as an epistemological frame has and continues to garner increased attention in academia, policy and community circles. Indigenous Knowledge Systems have been ignored for a long time due to the dominance of the Western-centric knowledge framework. Thereby translating into the adoption of a Western lens of knowledge and practice across different contexts. African scholars have decried the superiority of the Western lens and the adoption of this lens for understanding Africa (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). Others have argued that it is important to move beyond reaction to action, that is, embracing Indigenous Knowledge Systems as a means of knowledge and practice (Olaitan and Oloruntoba 2023a). These different perspectives have led to the attention that Indigenous Knowledge Systems is garnering. However, this attention is limited to understanding AIKS as an epistemological frame that can underpin the ways of knowing. Chikaire et al. (2012) contend that there has been a significant rise in understanding the contribution that Indigenous knowledge can make to authentic participatory sustainable development approaches. This growing interest is evident in the various initiatives undertaken within communities, where they are documenting their knowledge for integration into their educational systems and for strategic planning in national organisations. Understanding the contribution that AIKS can make to development requires the acknowledgement of its transformative impact beyond knowledge. This is also in consideration that AIKS has many benefits for improving governance, medicine, technology, entrepreneurship etc.  The myopic view of AIKS  as alternative knowledge will only restrict it to a knowledge system, whereas it has numerous useful practices that can be applied to the African context. We must recognise the relevance of AIKS beyond just being an alternative means of knowledge production. Therefore, this brief argues that discussions on adopting AIKS must not be limited to the realm of epistemology as it can be used to guide the way of life and practices of the African people.

The interactions in this document centred on engaged scholarship and approach using a community-based Participatory Action Research (PAR) process to support the Indigenous people, in their thoughts and words’ towards ‘taking their rightful place in contemporary society. Engaged Scholarship concepts entail the integration of education with community development toward social transformation (Beaulieu, Breton & Brousselle, 2018). This concept postulates that educational outcomes become more meaningful and relevant when scholars direct their energies not solely toward an academic community, but also consider pressing public shared problems (De Lange, 2012; da Cruz, 2018). The emphasis is on commitments and power-sharing through which marginalized voices can be elevated, and this is critical in Africa and Canada wherein, to date, Indigenous people continue to face marginalization and exploitation

MISSION FOCUS: IIN (Indigenous Information Network (IIN)) is committed to enhancing and maintaining the capacity of indigenous peoples to protect their rights and participate in development. It works with information dissemination and networking, research, socio-economic empowerment, human rights, cultural and environmental conservation, children and youth empowerment, gender mainstreaming and HIV/AIDS and related health problems.

Background: There is no universally agreed definition of Indigenous Peoples, hence, remains an issue of global contestation. However, a preliminary working definition provided by the United Nations Working Group and African Development Bank Group on Indigenous Populations defined Indigenous communities, peoples, and nations as culturally distinct groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original peoples (United Nations (UN), 2007; African Development Bank Group, 2016). In other words, Indigenous peoples are inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures. They have unique ways of relating to people and the environment. At present, the Indigenous people form non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as people, following their cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems. Similarly, they have retained social, cultural, economic and political characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live.

This brief argues that African women are not duly represented in eminist thought due to the elevation of Eurocentric knowledge system that continues to ignore/disregard African experience in knowledge production. The brief proposes an embrace of African Indigenous Knowledge System (AIKS) as a system of knowledge to ensure the recentering of African women in feminist thought and their increased representation in the public realm. Tshishonga (2019) defines
AIKS as a system of knowledge grounded on indigenous knowledge and local knowledge, experiences, cultural and historical heritage of Africa.

This policy brief on Indigenous youth contends that the state system needs to effectively take action to restructure governance organs at diverse levels of society to create Batwa youth employment. This is essentially in order to engage these Indigenous youth into the available local socio-economic opportunities in the state system. Current data, illustrate generally low rate of youth employment at the global, regional and national levels, especially in Africa. The problem of unemployment among the youth of the Batwa Indigenous community in Uganda is even more dire. This Policy brief emphasizes the role of the state and its partners such as the UN and the local voluntary sector in general, in designing and implementing employment strategies to promote decent work for Indigenous youths. With an emphasis on the governance mechanisms to support Batwa youth entrepreneurship, a call to highlight their Indigenous knowledge, aspirations, context, experiences, and resource base at the local state level; is underlined. The brief, overall, proposes context-relevant policyinterventions for transformation of governance mechanisms that foster Indigenous youth employment opportunities. From the resource conservation perspective, the brief further calls upon the government to close the gaps in the governance instruments responsible for Indigenous youth failure to access employment opportunities for expanding the sustainable resource management frontier.

There is a network shaped by organized relations between different regions of the world which construct the relationship between knowledge-producers and knowledge consumers: the global knowledge production system. Main actors within this network are academic and non-academic, which include university faculty , researchers/scientists, research funders, and publishing companies. For much of modern history, the European empire was at the center of this power structure, through which non- Western, indigenous knowledge systems, including the ability reproduce traditional knowledges were effectively suppressed. Today, members of the academic communityfrom the Global South are denouncing the asymmetric paradigm that is the global knowledge production system in which they are overly gated and underrepresented by the lack of epistemic freedom experienced in academia. Global South scholars and researchers emphasize the need to enable what Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018) refers to as epistemic freedom – described as “the right to think, theorize, i n t e r p r e t t h e w o r l d , d e v e l o p o w n methodologies and write from where one is located and unencumbered by Eurocentrism” (3). This brief argues that epistemic alternatives within academia and other communities are necessary catalysts for any African development strategies. To date, the global knowledge production system continues to be Western under the guise of objective empiricism; the higher education system contains inherent influences of Western forms of knowledge, contributing considerably to the destruction of traditional modes of knowing (Schubert 2011) and further delays in development. Under these conditions, the appeal to democratize epistemologically is informed by the value added of traditional knowledges. To that end the global knowledge production system needs to be rethought in inclusive terms that elevates the voices and perspectives of the othered and marginalized (Cochrane and Oloruntoba 2021).