EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Indigenous Knowledge and Public Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

Munyaradzi Mawere ()

Africa Spectrum, 2015, vol. 50, issue 2, 57-71

Abstract: The discourse on indigenous knowledge has incited a debate of epic proportions across the world over the years. In Africa, especially in the sub-Saharan region, while the so-called indigenous communities have always found value in their own local forms of knowledge, the colonial administration and its associates viewed indigenous knowledge as unscientific, illogical, anti-development, and/or ungodly. The status and importance of indigenous knowledge has changed in the wake of the landmark 1997 Global Knowledge Conference in Toronto, which emphasised the urgent need to learn, preserve, and exchange indigenous knowledge. Yet, even with this burgeoning interest and surging call, little has been done, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, to guarantee the maximum exploitation of indigenous knowledge for the common good. In view of this realisation, this paper discusses how indigenous knowledge can and should both act as a tool for promoting the teaching/learning process in Africa’s public education and address the inexorably enigmatic amalgam of complex problems and cataclysms haunting the world.

Keywords: education; learning; cultural heritage; social values; language (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/859 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:afjour:v:50:y:2015:i:2:p:57-71

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/afrika-spectrum

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Africa Spectrum from Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andreas Mehler ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:gig:afjour:v:50:y:2015:i:2:p:57-71