Indigenous Knowledge Discourses in Africa: At the Intersection of Culture, Politics, and Information Science

Background

Since around the 1980s, the aspect of indigenous knowledge (IK) has attracted the attention of information scientists, cultural experts as well as politicians among others. Indeed, as Mapira and Mazambara (2013, p.90) explained, the post-colonial era has witnessed a growing interest in the restoration of what they call “lost or dying IKS in Africa.” To cite the World Bank (2002, p. 1), “indigenous knowledge now appears to be a hot topic” In fact, IK, because of its ability to cut across disciplines, has been described by Ngulube and Onyancha (2011, p. 130) as being “cross-disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary.” Thus, it depicts some kind of “a holistic way of life that may not be compartmentalised into one or two disciplines.” (Ngulube and Onyancha, 2011, p. 130). This has seen the mushrooming of literature, on the subject matter in Africa, from the afore-mentioned disciplines and others, with each discipline witnessing a specific “discourse”. Thus, there has been an emerging bias towards this IK in Africa, with almost some kind of a consensus on the presumed importance of this knowledge. To cite Viriri (2009):