A Survey on Indigenous Knowledge Systems Databases for African Traditional Medicines

Abstract

This study aimed at surveying the constructed Indigenous knowledge systems databases for African Traditional medicine; learning their diversity features, common challenges and develops the missing information when constructing indigenous knowledge system for Tanzanian Traditional Medicine. According to the research presented by different scholars, there are more than 10 databases for African traditional plants medicine. The translation of biodiversity towards the new therapy has been a challenge towards creating the database for traditional medicine in Africa. This has led to most of the available database lack enough information on ethnopharmacological data. The effort towards the introduction of bioinformatics in most of the undergraduate circular gives the best direction towards developments of computational in pharmaceutical fields. By concluding, the development of global data in a single indigenous knowledge system may be impossible in view of the culture and biodiversity differences; efforts have to be given to specific regional areas and African museum should act as a center to link all indigenous knowledge systems. The need of using the collaborative approach for defining a common standard in medicinal plant database for knowledge sharing and scientific advancement is inevitable in developing a unified indigenous knowledge systems Database for African Traditional Medicine.