Africa's Indigenous Knowledge: Essential Ingredient for Digital Technology

Introduction

Indigenous knowledge and technology are integral parts of the culture and history of a local community. Learning from local communities about indigenous science and technology is crucial because it enriches a society's development process and progress. Understanding how people and societies acquire and use knowledge is essential for improving people’s lives, especially those of the poorest (The World Bank 1998). Indigenous knowledge refers to knowledge systems unique to a given culture (Ellen & Harris, 1996). Tharakan (2017) argued that indigenous knowledge is differentiated from the modern and international scientific knowledge systems. The current universities and institutions of learning are built on indigenous knowledge. The roots of today’s social sciences, science, and technology rest on indigenous knowledge as it informs scientific research conducted in different institutions of higher learning, such as universities and research institutions (Tharakan, 2017). Therefore, indigenous knowledge can be seen as a component of society and part of humanity's scientific and technological advancements, which generates knowledge that cannot be achieved orally but is gained through a rigorous academic investigation. This means that academic investigation, whether science, social science, or technology, is based on and inspired by Indigenous knowledge. Unfortunately, due to existing coloniality forces that brought about Western education based on Western indigenous knowledge, Africa’s indigenous knowledge has been overlooked, despised, and dismissed from science and technology.

The current science curriculum represents Western worldviews and indigenous knowledge, which is unknown by Africans, who seldom forget social activity in the real-life environment and alienate scholars from their roots (De Beer & Whitlock, 2009). This abandonment of African indigenous knowledge and adoption of Western education based on Western indigenous knowledge impacts the imbalances in societies where cultural values and local wisdom are abandoned. It also propagates mentally enslaved scholars who are Western-minded, spreading the interest of the Western world instead of Africans. Aikenhead and Ogawa (2007) noted that any education on the continent not informed by Africa’s indigenous knowledge would prevent the non-indigenous community (Aikenhead & Ogawa, 2007). This implies that Africa has left its primary roots of education, which would inspire the continent’s contributions to education, and adopted a Western form that limits its possibility of producing any contributions to the world of science and technology.

This chapter aims to assess the role of Africa’s indigenous knowledge as an ingredient for digital technology advancement and growth. The chapter is concerned with assessing Africa’s indigenous knowledge and the factors and forces that inhibited the growth of Africa’s indigenous knowledge to promote digital technology in Africa. The issue that this chapter is raising is the need to consider the indigenous perspective in digital technology and understand the factors that have prevented Africa’s contributions to the wave of digital technology. The indigenous perspective on digital technology has been direly overlooked and under-researched hitherto. To achieve this aim, the chapter is divided into six main sections. The first section defines and conceptualizes indigenous knowledge and explains the types and characteristics of indigenous knowledge. The second section assesses the significance of indigenous knowledge and the process of knowledge acquisition and transfer. The third section explains the nexus between indigenous knowledge and technology and the place indigenous knowledge has in advancing appropriate technology for sustainable development. The fourth section investigates the effects of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and coloniality on indigenous knowledge. The fifth section investigates the factors that make the inherited colonial education in Africa during this era of coloniality serve as a destructive force of indigenous knowledge. This paves the way to understanding the need to decolonize indigenous knowledge to enable the world to see Africa’s contributions to digital technology. The sixth section consists of the chapter’s concluding remarks.