Indigenous Knowledge Discourses in Africa

Abstract

Since around the 1980s, the aspect of indigenous knowledge (IK) has attracted the attention of a number of experts, including culturists, politicians and information scientists. This has seen the mushrooming of literature on the subject matter from the afore-mentioned practitioners and specialists, with each discipline witnessing a certain “discourse”. This has also witnessed almost everyone in these disciplines glorifying African IK. Against this background, this chapter discusses the IK discourses in Africa, highlighting some of the significant trends and relationships among practitioners and scholars in the fields of culture, politics and information science that are driven by shared philosophies of IK. This paper is theoretical in nature and draws from the literature on IK to explain and demonstrate what the author calls the “IK discourses and “IK frenzy”, and explains the point of intersection by culturists, politicians and information science practitioners.