AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT: THE
RELEVANCE AND
IMPLICATIONS OF INDIGENOUSNESS
George J. Sefa Dei
Department of Sociology
OISE, University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Paper delivered at the Learned Societies' meeting
of the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development
(CASID), Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, May 31 - June
2, 1996
ABSTRACT
Locating _indigenousness_ in the application of the cultural
resource knowledge base of local peoples, this paper critically
explores alternative ways of presenting the discourse and practice
of _African development_. The paper examines the relevance and
implications of indigenous knowledge; that is, knowledge associated
with longterm occupancy of a place, for the process and
objective of development in _postcolonial_ Africa. The author
calls for locally-defined development; that is, development that
reflects the lived realities, and the cultural and political goals
and aspirations of African peoples. It is a form of development
rooted in indigenous peoples' sense of moral and spiritual values,
and the connections between the social and natural worlds.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper, I examine indigenous cultural knowledge of
African peoples as a counter-hegemonic knowledge to the conventional
discourse on _African development_. My interest lies in the examination
of African cultural resource knowledge as a form of epistemological
recuperation for local peoples. It does not require any great
sense of intellectual imagination or a stretched theoretical understanding
of social reality to declare that _international development,_
as is conventionally practised, has met with disappointment in
Africa. The euphoria of _international development_ is fast wearing
thin, at least in the minds of many local peoples. The development
obituary is about to be written, if not already composed (Sachs,
1992). The valorization of international development is justifiably
replaced with pillorization. So-called _development_ has come
at a high human, ecological, political and ethical cost to Africans,
literally putting to shame any assumption of innocence in the
conventional development agenda and practice. _Development,_ with
an emphasis on _materialization/materialism,_ has been uneven,
uncertain and inequitable. Any economic gains have been spurious
at best and channelled to the already wealthy segments of society.
Meanwhile, the social, spiritual, emotional and psychological
aspects of development remain largely unaddressed.
What has been institutionalized as _development_ is economically
unjustified (e.g., rising income and wealth disparities among
local peoples), ecologically unsound (e.g., the problem of ecocide),
and socially and morally bankrupt (e.g., economic agreements that
work for a small minority of corporate capital interests). A striking
feature of African urban social life is a disturbing spiritual
and cultural decadence in the midst of political and economic
disintegration in the face of an encroachment of global finance
capital. The African poor are repeatedly being told to tighten
their belts. But how can the poor tighten their belts when people
do not have the luxury of a belt in the first place? Unfortunately,
if these remarks appear to be a pessimistic rendition of African
development it is indeed a situation that cannot be lost on the
critical observer of the contemporary African scene.
It is no exaggeration to say that the cultural resource base and
knowledge of local peoples have been the least analyzed for their
contributions to African development (see also Matowanyika, 1990;
Warren, Slikkerveer and Brokensha, 1995). This paper calls for
a shift in the development paradigm to examine what the indigenous
African cultural knowledge base can offer in terms of an alternative
approach to African development. Enthusing an alternative, African-centred
development1 is bound to raise an array of complex
and contentious theoretical, methodological and policy issues.
In this discussion, I locate _indigenousness_ in the context of
the application of the local cultural resource information in
developing a genuinely African-centred development. My discursive
practice is to extend analytical debates about _development_ by
implicating the African indigenousness in both the objective and
practice of social development. I argue for an alternative approach
to African development, one which is anchored in a retrieval,
revitalization or restoration of the indigenous African sense
of shared, sustainable social values. It is contended that African
peoples have to reclaim or reappropriate their cultural resource
knowledge in order to appreciate the power of collective responsibility
for social development.
Indigenousness may be defined as knowledge consciousness arising
locally and in association with long-term occupancy of a place.
Indigenousness refers to the traditional2 norms and
social values, as well as mental constructs which guide, organize
and regulate African ways of living and making sense of their
world. Indigenous knowledge differs from conventional knowledge
because of an absence of colonial and imperial imposition. The
notion of _indigenousness_ highlights the power relations and
dynamics embedded in the production, interrogation, validation
and dissemination of global knowledge about _international development_.
It also recognizes the multiple and collective origins of knowledge
and affirms that the interpretation or analysis of social reality
is subject to different and sometimes oppositional perspectives.
There are different ways to think about and conceptualize the
processes of knowledge production. What constitutes _valid_ theoretical
and empirical knowledge in development practice has today become
a point of contention for many. Local peoples are forcefully articulating
their concerns about the historical denigration and manipulation
of the traditional cultural values of African peoples. They have
asked why Euro-American values and norms are privileged in the
development process without an acknowledgement of the value of
indigenous African knowledge (see also Fals-Borda and Rahman,
1991, writing in a different context). In the process of questioning
hitherto taken-for-granted assumptions about _development_, many
indigenous and local peoples are attempting to reclaim and reinvigorate
their marginalized knowledges. They are challenging common-sense
views about _international development_. They are unpacking the
institutional ideologies that tend to obscure and distort their
social realities. The social vibrancy, political and cultural
revival being exhibited, particularly in certain rural communities,
provide a base for launching such criticisms.
Elsewhere, (Dei, 1993a) I have presented my thoughts about some
of the theoretical and methodological issues concerning African
development. I have argued that it is immoral for us to continue
to articulate a _development agenda_ in terms relevant to global
capital and transnational corporate interest, at the same time
that the daily needs of local peoples are not being met. Current
processes of economic, political and cultural globalization have
resulted in a crisis of knowledge about society, the crisis manifest
in the contradictions and tensions of a competitive knowledge
economy, the internationalization of labour, and the concomitant
struggles over power-sharing among social groups. Globalization
has also accelerated the flow of cultures across geographical,
political, and cultural borders. The commodification of knowledge
and culture across space and time has implications far beyond
a maintenance of the integrity of local cultural production. As
Ahmad (1995) shows, the developing world has to vigorously confront
current insidious attempts at cultural, economic, and political
recolonization.
An alternative approach to _African development_ must deal with
the dilemmas and contradictions of globalization such as the devaluation
and fragmentation of traditional values and beliefs, the erosion
of spirituality, and the distortions in local, regional and national
economies. There is some urgency for an appropriate social theory
of development - a theory of development well-rooted in indigenous
African worldviews. An approach to development must reclaim and
tap local peoples' world views in order to identify, generate
and articulate new visions of social transformation. An understanding
of local experiences provides the requisite building blocks for
developing strategies for social and economic change.
For the idea of _development_ to have any credibility at all,
it must speak to the social, cultural, economic, political, spiritual
and cosmological aspects of local peoples' lives, as well as to
their specific needs and aspirations. Debates about "development"
must be situated in appropriate social contexts that provide practical
and social meaning to the actors as subjects, rather than as objects
of development discourse. This is a critical perspective on development
that argues that local communities should own and control the
solutions to their own problems (see also Kankwenda, 1994). It
is a critique of the North's approach to development in the South
and also of the sub-text that shapes conventional development
practice (see also Heron, 1996). This critical perspective also
recognizes that real and effective local community control (over
the development process) is possible only if the development agenda
seeks to centre indigenous knowledge systems in the search for
solutions to human problems. This means articulating an alternative
conception and praxis of development, one which does not reproduce
the existing total local dependency on external (expert) advice,
knowledge and resource. Local input must be from the grassroots
and should tap the diverse views, opinions, resources and interests
manifested in the cultural values and norms of local communities.
African Indigenousness
To discuss the African indigenousness, it is important to
acknowledge the ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as the
historical contingencies and specificities of African peoples.
I am also aware of the fact that some common elements in African
indigenous knowledge systems can be found in diverse or variant
forms among indigenous peoples in other parts of the world (see
also Dia, 1991). Furthermore, indigenous knowledge systems and
traditions contain sites and sources of cultural disempowerment
for certain groups in society (e.g., women and ethnic/cultural
minorities)[Machila, 1992: 18]. Cultural resource knowledge is
not frozen in time and space. While I focus on some common underlying
socio-cultural themes and values (see also Machila, 1992: 16),
I also recognize that the actual practices associated with these
social values may differ across space and time.
Understanding the social, natural, cultural, spiritual, individual
and collective components of development requires an interrogation
of Africa's "...traditional knowledge and know-how, those
which have precisely maintained our societies throughout the ages...."
(Gueye, 1995: 10). The indigenous past is informative. The African
past provides positive (solutionoriented) lessons about
sustainable traditions of group mutuality, spirituality, selfhelp,
communal bonding and social responsibility that can be appropriated
to aid the search for an alternative approach to development.
The African past speaks to sustainable traditions and social values
that can be recovered and reconstituted for social development.
Indigenousness does not engender ignorance or _backwardness._
On the contrary, it provides avenues for creativity and resourcefulness
on the part of local peoples. As argued elsewhere (Dei, 1994a),
the indigenous African sense of being human speaks about the wholeness
of relationships, compassion, hospitality and generosity, in a
world today which is fragmented, polarized and is destructive
of people. The African humanness as a value system speaks to the
importance of relating to, rather than mastery over nature and
the environment. Many indigenous African cultural traditions emphasize
and reward individual sensibilities and social consciousness.
The indigenous African civilization was not simply a matter of
technological advancement. It was one of social responsibility.
Indigenous African social values privilege communal solidarity.
Traditional social groupings, such as lineages, clans, age sets
and grades, acted as corporate bodies, protecting the integrity
of critical resources (e.g., land) which could not be divided
without being destroyed. At times, such social groupings acted
as a work force for tasks requiring larger labour pools than individual
families could provide. The groups provided social comfort, identity
and a sense of belonging to a community, particularly in times
of stress and hardship. One function of such bodies was educating
the youth, particularly the inculcation of communal values and
a sense of collective commitment. Similarly, traditions of
mutuality were exhibited by many indigenous forms of mutual
self-help groups. Such indigenous self-help institutions included
self-loaning bodies (credit associations) such as upatu
among the Chagga of Tanzania (Bendera 1991:126-127), susu
among the Akan of Ghana (Goody 1962), and the esusu
among the Yoruba of Nigeria (Bascom 1952), and Krio of Sierra
Leone. There were also the labour partnerships among many West
African societies (e.g., nnoboa among the Akan of
Ghana), a collective self-help group of age-mates and friends
who assisted each other in farming, trading and marketing activities.
In contemporary Africa, traces of such voluntary social groupings
(serving as credit associations), continue to enhance community
members' limited economic resources for undertaking individual
projects or activities.
The indigenous African epistemological construct is that the rights
of citizenship have matching obligations and responsibilities
to the community in which one resides. This is the essence of
collective responsibility. As Mbiti (1982) pointed out,
Africans, historically, have been socialized to define themselves
by their social obligations to the wider community. The responsibility
of citizenry included providing communal forms of labour at any
time when called upon by the traditional polity (e.g., road construction),
as well as making compulsory financial and non-financial contributions
to assist bereaved families in burying the dead. Death, burial,
and bereavement are community affairs, and the close examination
of the conduct of traditional funeral ceremonies illustrates both
collective responsibility and information-sharing within traditional
communities (see Rattray 1927, for Asante of Ghana; Herskovits
1967:352-402, for Fon of Benin; Skinner 1964:49-59 for Mossi of
Burkina Faso; and Bascom 1969:65-69 for Yoruba of Nigeria).
In the indigenous African world view, the mere accumulation of
individual property/wealth did not necessarily accord status and
prestige. For the wealthy to be accorded community reverence,
social prestige and status, she or he must share such wealth with
the rest of community (see Dei 1992; Dia, 1991: 11). Wealthy individuals
who want name and status recognition have to demonstrate their
social consciousness and responsibility by contributing to the
society's welfare. The indigenous African view is that the individual
is supported by the family and the family by the
community. The family is all of one's kinsfolk while
the community is an identification with both kin and non-kin.
As O'Manique and Dotse (1991) point out, Africans reject the Hobbesian
image of the competitive, isolated individual, living in fear
of others and protected from them by the state or community. Thus,
the concept of individual makes sense only within
the concept of community (see also Karp 1986; Gyekye
1987; Mudimbe 1988). Individual identity emerges from communion
with others (Osagie 1980). To the African indigenousness, the
dichotomy is not between the individual and community,
but between the competitive individual isolated
from his/her community and the co-operative individual
enriched by the community.
The African indigenousness cultivates respect for the authority
of elderly persons (gerontocracy) for their wisdom, knowledge
of community affairs and _closeness_ to the ancestors (notion
of spirituality). Many African people believe old age comes
with wisdom and an understanding of the world. It was the duty
of the aged to instruct the youth (in a socially responsible manner)
and the latter's duty to respect the knowledge of the elders (see
Boateng 1980:111-8; Mbiti 1982:197). The African world view centred
around an intimate understanding and appreciation of the relationship
between humans, society and nature. Indigenous African cultures
spiritualize the Universe and endow the forces that threatened
people with supernatural powers (see Mbiti 1982; Peek 1991). Historically,
this served to give moral and spiritual grounding to the African
person. Humans as social learners, and knowledge production is
the outcome of a dynamic, interactive and reflexive process involving
individuals, social groups and nature.
A Ghanaian Case Study
In one contemporary Ghanaian village, there is evidence of
how local people are utilizing their traditional cultural resource
knowledge to empower themselves and to address economic hardships.
I provide this case study to illustrate how a community is able
to rely on its social values and norms to deal with problems of
development. The town of Ayirebi is situated in the forest zones
of southeastern Ghana, about 45 km from Akyem Oda and nearly 180
km north of the Ghanaian capital, Accra. The town was the subject
of a longitudinal research project that began in 1982-83 with
the examination of the adaptive responses of the peasant farmers
to seasonal food supply cycles and other socioenvironmental stressors
of drought, bush fires and population pressure in the early 1980s
(see Dei 1986).
In the early 1980s, the people of Ayirebi responded and adapted
to domestic economic hardships by using their endogenous understandings
of the intricate relationships between social and natural forces,
as well as the interplay between domestic and international market
pressures. There was a heavy reliance on the local environment
to supply household needs as many households had to make do with
the absence of imported food and other economic items. A detailed
examination of the underlying basis for the apparent success of
the local community to deal with the socio-environmental and economic
crisis in 1982 and 1983, for example, showed that the assertion
of local self-sufficiency in food and other basic economic requirements
of the people can be expressed at four levels.
First, there was a strong and viable subsistence farming economy
that showed a great diversity of cropping on the part of the local
farmers. Farming practices, such as mixed and sequential cropping,
crop rotation and the use of local fertilisers (local manure and
wood ashes), were part of the cultivation strategies designed
to ensure that at least household food supply was maintained during
periods of drought and food shortages. Additional food processing
methods were devised for local staples (e.g., cassava) in order
to sustain household food supply. Many households also experimented
with semi-wood foods (e.g., wild yams) for cultivation purposes
(see Dei, 1986, 1988).3
Secondly, many local households adopted hitherto little-used
subsistence practices such as hunting and gathering of wild forest
resources to supplement agricultural production. Bush animal protein
and wild food plants were collected for household use and for
sale at the local markets for income. The ability to fall back
on wild forest products was, and still is, an important asset
in African rural economies. Women, in particular, were observed
using the surrounding environment to supplement household food
supply. Forest products, such as snails, crabs, mushrooms and
kola nuts were collected, together with edible and non-edible
wild products, such as roots, fibres, leaves, bark, fruits, seeds,
nuts, insects, molluscs, honey, sap and syrup (see Dei, 1986).
These activities were not new economic inventions. However, what
was remarkable, from the point of dealing with village economic
hardship and ecological stress, was the intensity with which forest
products were exploited to satisfy household needs. In the absence
of imported soap and sugar, local households experimented with
local products (e.g., using oil palm and wood ash to make local
soap, and honey for sugar).
Thirdly, there was a pragmatic dependence on the local market
and/or cash economy, including a resurgence of traditional handicrafts.
Women farmers sold their produce after meeting basic household
needs and then utilized their earnings to pay for their children's
education (e.g., fees, stationery, uniforms) and also to buy medication.
Young men were engaged in basket weaving, adults in woodworking,
raphia/bamboo making and other handicrafts to fetch additional
income for both personal and household use. Many local farmers
resisted attempts by government forces to sell their farm produce
at ridiculously low (control) prices at urban markets. Those farmers
who sold their produce through official channels ensured that
they received imported scarce items such as soap, tinned foods,
toiletries, medicine and textile clothing rather than hard cash.
Lastly, there was a rebuilding and maintenance of strong social
relations among town members. Community members redoubled their
efforts to help needy individuals and households, as was evident
when town migrants to Nigeria returned home after being deported
from Nigeria in the early 1980s. Community leaders placed at the
disposal of some households stool land for farming purposes. There
was a strong sense of identification and connectedness to the
community and several economic exchanges took place among family
and community members, as well as between adjacent communities
(see Dei, 1986). Town members also relied on remittances from
family and close relatives in the cities and urban centres in
exchange for local farm produce. Furthermore, individual farmers
banded together to form farming co-operatives. During the drought
of the early 1980s and through the 1990s, the local women were
noted to be relying on long-established traditions of community
solidarity to establish credit associations, working on traditional
principles of group mutuality to help relieve the economic pain
of households.
On the whole, research observations in the 1980s revealed that
perhaps conclusions reached about the state of African economies,
based solely on studies of the cities and their immediate surroundings,
did not always give a true and accurate picture of the health
of the local economy. As Posnansky (1984) pointed out, there is
the lesson that the major economic changes taking place in much
of Africa, at least in the early 1980s, tended to have relatively
much less "...long-term deleterious effects on rural areas
than they do on the urban and peri-urban areas with their expensive,
import-dependent social-service infrastructure...."(p. 2163).
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were follow-up studies
to ascertain the degree and extent to which coping strategies
were sustained long after the drought and severe national economic
contraction of the early 1980s. Research documented the local
responses to current state policies to revive the local economy
through the promotion of cash cropping and an export-led development
strategy. Although many of the economic activities and coping
strategies observed in the early 1980s have stayed with the local
people, in the late 1980s and early 1990s some households were
observed to rely on individual rather than community and group
solutions to social and economic problems (Dei, 1992). However,
the shared sense of community belongingness and individual identification
with the social and natural environments is still very much in
place. Households are still living the contradictions and paradoxes
of competing, and sometimes conflicting, interests between local,
national and international forces. This is particularly exemplified
in the current pressures that national and international market
forces are placing on the community. For the community, one recourse
to maintaining their social well-being is to develop a fit between
some of the social and traditional values of community membership
and the associated individual and social responsibilities of citizenship.
Dei (1993b) has discussed community upholding of traditions of
sustainable forestry. The study of local traditions of forest
resource use reveals the community's understanding of the linkage
between indigenous cultural knowledge and _sustainable development_.
Implications for African Development
The examination of African cultural resource information reveals
a body of knowledge about community values, definitions of collective
responsibility and social security arrangements, as well as practices
of communal governance and health provision that are useful for
developing social and ecological sustainability. In the remaining
half of this discussion I will briefly touch on five significant
and interrelated lessons of African indigenousness to further
the cause of new and transformed development. The African indigenousness
constitutes a body of generated, shared and applied knowledge
for thoughtful and responsible action among local peoples.
Firstly, development must take into account local understandings
of the workings of culture, society, and nature. Devising an African-centred
development would require knowledge of African realities and conditionalities.
There is an inseparable relation between the material and the
spiritual worlds of African peoples. As Gueye (1995) notes, there
is a specific cultural understanding in African communities that
is "....centred around a particular conception of the world
which assigns the human being a specific role, around a certain
representation of time and space which structures mentalities
and behaviours...." (p. 11). Such knowledge is central to
effective development practice. Development must be informed by
local understandings of the complex linkages between natural,
spiritual, social, cultural, political, and economic forces of
society. Local peoples are agents in the construction of their
own knowledge.
Social development is a project about social and ecological unity
of peoples and their habitats. Social unity entails mutual respect
and justice for all. Ecological unity is ensuring responsible
usage of land and natural resources in the interest of sustainability.
African cosmology view humans as part of nature. Therefore, any
development approach that affects natural environmental resources
is bound to have consequences for social relations. An emancipative
approach to development should be able to build on the ability
of local peoples to generate and apply their own knowledges and
cultural and social histories. This means an understanding of
local conceptions of lived realities and how daily human experiences
are sustained by community and individual networks and ties, political
and ecological associations and other social support systems.
Secondly, the emotional and spiritual well-being of the individual
and the social group is the bedrock of any development process.
Social transformation is only possible if it proceeds from a development
of the inner self and spiritual values. A genuinely human-centred
approach to development should examine African philosophies in
terms of _person_, _personhood_, _self_, _individual_, _community_,
_environment_, _values_ and _spirituality_. Development is a complex
relational process building on the African humanness and social
responsibility, as well as communal and spiritual values. For
example, the understanding of philosophical assumptions underlying
local conceptions of land and material resource could provide
significant lessons for developing strategies to promote natural
and human resource management. There is a need for the development
process in Africa to address diverse political, moral, spiritual
and ethical concerns and to redefine both individual and corporate
responsibilities to family, community, nation and global citizenry.
Development must engender a spiritual awakening but not in the
sense of subscription to a particular high moral order. An effective
development framework is built on strong spiritual values oriented
to the satisfaction of the needs, interests and aspirations of
all peoples. There is lacking a sense of global moral outrage
at the corporate rape of local wealth and resources in Africa.
I am referring in particular to immoral and unethical dimensions
of corporate pursuance of economic profits with little regard
for the development of the African humanity and spirituality.
Development must be human-centred, culturally affirming, and should
seek to centre local group interests vis-à-vis private
and corporate (transnational) interests.
Thirdly, development is a _socialization of knowledge_. The notion
of _development_ must be invoked in the name of the common good.
For example, an alternative approach to genuine development in
Africa must reassess existing definitions of property and individual
ownership or rights to social goods and services. The colonial
and post-colonial imposition of _Western-style_ property rights
continues to be a critical challenge facing African development,
as governments and civil societies attempt to find a fit between
the values of indigenousness and modernity. In an era of Africa's
full integration into the global capital market, the philosophy
of individual ownership and privatization has served to govern
the state's new approach to communal/national property [commons]
and definitions of obligations. The commodification and privatization
of social knowledge and wealth have served to alienate and disenfranchise
many Africans. Development must seek to appropriate long-standing
traditions of mutuality and sustainability to meet local needs
and aspirations.
Fourthly, social development means matching individual rights
of group membership with corresponding social responsibilities.
This is democratic development and has implications for social
justice and political democracy in contemporary Africa. Those
accorded the right and privilege to lead and govern have a responsibility
to deliver to the people, otherwise leaders lose their legitimacy
and credibility. The allocation and use of political power in
communities must promote sustainable forms of local representation,
accountability, transparency and good governance. Unfortunately,
this is the dilemma and paradox of the modern state in Africa,
as national governments shed their responsibilities to their citizenry
while succumbing to the whims and caprices of the international
financial community. The redefinition of state obligations and
responsibilities to a large citizenry continues to have deleterious
consequences for the least advantaged in society (e.g., women,
ethnic minorities and children). The commitment to privatization
and private property rights has led to a neglect of the provision
of social service infrastructures. By allowing private, and transnational
corporate greed to dictate what should constitute social development,
the emphasis now is on rights, rather than responsibilities. While
customary relations to property and social goods ensured elements
of social differentiation among groups, individuals and communities,
such differentiation was not as marked as is evident today. In
the African indigenousness, ownership of property is an abstract
phenomenon. Property is not a _thing_ but a relation between peoples.
Property entails rights and responsibilities and embedded in the
idea of property is the shared notion of what is right for the
community and the common good.
Lastly, the idea of _linkages/connections_, powerfully entrenched
in indigenousness, speak to the importance of mutual interdependence.
This linkage extends beyond the local community. There is a need
to connect issues locally, nationally and internationally. Locally,
the issues of poverty cut across class, gender, racial and ethnic
lines. Internationally, social development concerns of Africans
in the Continent and those in the Diaspora converge a great deal.
Similarly, the South and the North are inextricably linked in
many ways, least of which is asymmetrical power relations. There
is a broad spectrum of converging interests around social and
economic development issues. Therefore, progressive social movements
in the North must continually collaborate with forces in the South
who are engaged in similar struggles over social and corporate
injustice and the yoke of colonialism and [foreign] domination.
These movements must find workable grounds to address common problems.
For example, we cannot deal with the cancer of global racism if
the related issues of structural economic poverty, capitalist
patriarchy and sexual exploitation are not simultaneously addressed.
CONCLUSION
The key question is whether _development_ can happen at the
level of ideas alone. Thoughts, ideas and ideals are conditioned
by material relations of production. Human agency is a consequence
of material and ideological understanding of the social and natural
worlds. The eventual success of African governments' efforts to
address the complexity of economic problems and issues facing
their societies will depend to a great extent on how the nation
state and the international development community are prepared
to learn from, and to tap into, the creativity and resourcefulness
of diverse local groups. As part of any process of national economic
reconstruction, development practitioners will have to examine
the accumulated knowledge and the varied strategies utilized by
local women, for example, to survive periods of economic expansion
and contraction. These provide important lessons in the search
for local development alternatives. Development ought to focus
on knowledge appropriate to local conditions. The processes and
principles that local peoples have for years utilized to interpret,
explain and understand their social and natural worlds is valuable
for effective development. We need to critically examine conventional
development knowledge for what it includes and for what it leaves
out (see also Kithinji, 1996). Within African contexts, there
is a paradox and contradiction in the development process: on
the one hand is the continuing transnational/corporate appropriation
of local knowledge at the same time as Africa experiences a negation
and erasure of its cultural forms of knowledge representation
(see also Rugumayo, 1992: 13).
As it stands now, conventional approaches to _development_ have
not helped local peoples to articulate their daily experiences
to the outside world (Kankwenda, 1994). As I have argued elsewhere
(Dei, 1994b), there is a disturbing failure to recognize that
local peoples do theorize in their communities as part of community
life, that they not only articulate, but also, interpret their
experiences. Local peoples have culturally constructed ways of
reflecting on their daily lives. They can give their own accounts
of what is happening to them and what their needs are, as well
as what they are doing, can do, and intend to do about these issues.
In the African scene, there are countless examples of so-called
development projects that continually undermined local peoples'
abilities to control their own lives. These programs have made
local peoples objects of exploitative patriarchal economic systems.
Local peoples, for the most part, conceptualized _development_
in the sense of belonging to a community and connecting with other
people in a way that makes possible the satisfaction of mutual
interests.
Development practitioners and experts should be able to tease
out the specific nature of the linkage between indigenous knowledge
and local community participation in the development process.
We must involve local peoples in all stages of the conception,
planning, implementation and evaluation of development activities.
Local knowledge systems contain invaluable explications of the
workings of ecosystems, and the sustainability of ecologically
sound economic production strategies.
A basic challenge is for development theoreticians and practitioners
to complement the search for general solutions to human problems,
with some local specificities. To talk about local specificities
is to speak about the African indigenousness. The integration
of localized, empirical research with theoretical, generalized
studies demands that international development researchers begin
to accord some importance, not only to country-specific research,
but also to research studies that explore local-level understanding
and perceptions of human problems and local strategies to problem-solving.
While community or locality studies by themselves are insufficient
to offer a comprehensive understanding of society, they nevertheless
provide relevant data needed to ground our theoretical discussions
of international development in the everyday lived experiences
of people. Such studies provide opportunities for well-meaning
development practitioners to hear what people at the grassroots
have to say, what their everyday experiences are, and how they
make sense of their worlds.
NOTES
1. By African-centred development, I am referring
to _development_ adapted to the African condition. This means
the African sense of understanding _development_, by appropriating
the process and objective of development to ensure that locally
defined needs and aspirations are possible and sustainable through
self-actualization.
2. In the context of this discussion I use the terms _traditional_
and _indigenous_ interchangeably. As pointed elsewhere, (Dei,
1993b), the term _traditional_ denotes a continuity of cultural
values from past experiences that shape the present, e.g, how
indigenous peoples have accommodated their new form of post-colonial
experience. African scholars like Muteshi (1996) make a distinction
between the _traditional_ and the _indigenous_ when arguing that
the _indigenous_ past offers a means of staking out a position
as an African that is outside of the identity that has been, and
continues to be, constructed in Western/Euro-American ideology.
In the broader sense of this paper, _indigenous_ is defined as
arising locally, primarily from long-term residents in a given
community (see also Fals Borda, 1980; Warren, Slikkerveer and
Brokensha, 1995).
3. Local communities in Africa have knowledge of local varieties
of food crops, wild plants and food planting cycles that can be
harnessed to assist in the formulation of alternative development.
The sustainability of these local economic practices has stood
the test of time (see Bean, 1992 in another context). For example,
local farmers in Sierra Leone have intimate knowledge of planting
requirements and yield of local rice varieties. Such knowledge
is invaluable in any plan to increase rice production and needs
to be taken into account if a change in rice variety is to be
advocated (see also Richards, 1985 in another context).
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