Silver and Gold We Have None But What We Have, We Give Unto Thee: Indigenous African Counselling and the Rest of the World

Abstract

This paper examines the complimentary roles and functions of African indigenous counselling in relationship with non-African forms of counselling. This paper is premised on the view that all forms of counselling, whether African or Western, stand to gain a lot from one another via collaboration and the cross fertilization of ideas. This paper examines the counselling and therapeutic contents of African language, African indigenous education, African indigenous counselling and social practices using the Yoruba culture of Western Nigeria as a reference point. Furthermore, the paper practically examines how the traditional therapeutic resources of African language, African traditional education and African indigenous counselling practices could complement non-African counselling culture. The paper advocates for the evolution of a somewhat global orientation to professional helping. This is possible if counselling practitioners from different cultural orientations develop interest in learning how different counselling cultures could complement one another. This orientation may contribute to mutual self-renewal and self-refinement for all forms of counselling. This paper primarily intends to promote the culture of sharing ideas, practices and concepts from different cultural orientations so that we may develop the mentality of a universal approach to employing counselling strategies to solve humanity's problems.