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Indigenous Knowledge System and Development in Africa: The Imperative of decolonization
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).
