Indigenous Knowledge System: The Need for Reform and the Way Forward

Abstract

Indigenous knowledge is local knowledge that is unique to a given culture acquired by local people
through the accumulation of experiences, informal experiments, and intimate understanding of the
environment in a given culture. It is the actual knowledge of a given population that reflects the
experiences based on traditions and includes more recent experiences with modern technologies. Local
people, including farmers, landless laborers, women, rural artisans, and cattle-rearers, are the custodians
of indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge is dynamic, changing through indigenous
mechanisms of creativity and innovativeness as well as through contact with other local and international
knowledge systems. With the rapid environmental, social, economic and political changes occurring in
many areas and the deaths of elderly people since there is no formal documentation, comes the danger
that the indigenous knowledge they posses will be overwhelmed and lost forever. In this paper, we
discuss the concept of indigenous knowledge, the various areas of using indigenous knowledge by the
African societies, the need for reformation of indigenous knowledge. We also proposed six important
considerations for moving forward.