Page 80 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 6

MY AFRIKA

growth is expected to drop from Traditional knowledge systems
3.2% to 1.8% which is also likely of indigenous and local com-
to increase the number of people As Africans, we are now munities have been of immense
without food in Africa. In another called upon to revive the value over millennia. They
report by the World Bank, it has soils and restore the basis have filled the breadbasket
been pointed out that agricultur- that has fed the world, provid-
al production in Africa is likely of human survival through ed medicines that have healed

to contract between 2.6% in an a new system of produc- the world, and provided for the
optimistic scenario and up to tion, nurturing, and caring sustainable management of
7% if there are trade blockages. resources, including biodiver-
Food imports would decline sub- if we are to survive the sity. In short, these knowledge
stantially (as much as 25% or as consequences of the pres- systems have fed, clothed, and
little as 13%) due to a combina- ent exploitative system. healed the world. They may yet
tion of higher transaction costs hold the key to dealing with the
and reduced domestic demand. risks posed by pandemics such
Overall, the World Bank report inate risks of contraction that as the current COVID-19 that is
further predicted that Africa is led to a rapid drop in mid-2015 inducing indiscriminate fear and
likely to lose between $37 billion in the number of cases of infec- ripping communities across the
and $79 billion in output losses tion. More importantly, Richards world. Today indigenous knowl-
within 2020 alone. notes that the in areas like rural edge systems are in danger of
Liberia where communities that being marginalized, given the
African Indigenous had experienced earlier viral failure of the modern economy
hemorrhagic outbreaks simi- to sustain all life forms. My at-
Knowledge Systems
lar to Ebola, for example, the tempt to re-assert the values of
As Africans, in order for us to
Lassa fever, most Africans sur- indigenous knowledge systems
circumvent the on-going glob-
al health crisis, we must begin vived because of the indigenous and agricology is therefore an
knowledge they had used during attempt to overcome the failures
to transform our understanding
past epidemics. of modernity and global capital-
and appreciation of the role and
Another Swedish scholar, Mats ism.
value that our indigenous knowl-
Utas, who has studied how com-
edge systems has played in the
past and can still play in this pro- munities in the three countries Agriculture
mostly affected by Ebola, name-
cess. We must simply embrace One fundamental way to re-
ly Liberia, Guinea and Sierra
the values of our traditions. think the current global eco-
Leone – all of whom had among
nomic system is by focusing
the weakest health systems in on agriculture. This is because
Coping with Ebola the world - has also concluded agriculture has always been a
As a way of example, during the that these communities over- fundamental economy on which
Ebola epidemic in West Africa came the epidemic through the humanity has survived through-
in 2014-2015, it was a compass use of indigenous knowledge out the centuries. However, the
of epidemiological knowledge system. Professor Utas has re- modern system of industrial
drawn from indigenous knowl- cently opined that those com- economic management under
edge among ordinary people munities are more likely to fare capitalism has undermined the
that played an important part in better than others as the corona- vitality of the soils on which ag-
containing the epidemic in 2015. virus pandemic spreads across ricultural production and human,
In a new book by anthropolo- Africa. This, Utas argues is be- plant and animal have depend-
gist Paul Richards ‘Ebola: How cause those communities un- ed on. As Africans, we are now
a People’s Science Helped End derstand how to use traditional called upon to revive the soils
an Epidemic’, Ebola is consid- knowledge system of palliative and restore the basis of human
ered a disease of poverty than a care, rehydration therapy, and survival through a new system
disease of ignorance. Richards other essential and functioning of production, nurturing, and
describes in detail how the use traditional nursing models that caring if we are to survive the
of indigenous knowledge among are helpful in limiting the spread consequences of the present
ordinary people helped to elim- of the virus. exploitative system. This system

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