Africa

Kenya’s push to promote traditional food is good for nutrition and cultural heritage
By: Patrick Maundu
The Conversation
February 22, 2022
Key words: Kenya, intangible cultural heritage, traditional foods, safeguarding foodways and traditional foods, nutritional value, cultural value, indigenous foods, species conservation
https://theconversation.com/kenyas-push-to-promote-traditional-food-is-good-for-nutrition-and-cultural-heritage-176384
When Kenyan communities began losing healthy tradition foods, the potential consequences were dire. Traditional food is tied to cultural heritage and everything that comes with it. Big efforts towards safeguarding and promoting Kenyan traditional foods to put these foods back into popular use worked. Kenya garnered recognition and was selected for UNESCO’s Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. Watch a video of Patrick conducting an interview here: https://ich.unesco.org/en/BSP/success-story-of-promoting-traditional-foods-and-safeguarding-traditional-foodways-in-kenya-01409

Africa’s nomadic herders help, not harm, land and planet – U.N.
By: Thin Lei Win
Thomson Reuters Foundation News
Sep. 22, 2018
Key words: land ownership, boundary crossing, ancestral lands, organic farms and animal products, carbon, soil health
http://news.trust.org/item/20180922182934-lvlet/
Despite common perceptions that pastoral land use harms environments, African pastoralists use organic methods and their practices keep carbon in soils. Tensions with farmers can be fraught but “alliance farming” methods encourage farmers and pastoralists to work together and use the same lands in ways that increase crop yields and improve cattle health.

Indigenous traditional knowledge revival helps conserve great apes
By: Giovanni Ortolani
Jan. 20, 2017
Mongabay
Keywords: Great apes, community forestry, endangered species, traditional medicine, rainforests, wildlife conservation
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/indigenous-traditional-knowledge-revival-helps-conserve-great-apes/
African great apes are endangered due to hunting and habitat loss. Researchers use film to revive taboos against hunting at-risk species. Advocates and researchers also stress the importance to restoring forest management to Indigenous peoples. Successful implementations of these ideas are examined.

A Comparison of Traditional Plant Knowledge between Students and Herders in Northern Kenya.
By: Brett L. Bruyere, Jonathan Trimarco, & Saruni Lemunes
Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 12:48
2016
https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-016-0121-z
The Samburu region of northern Kenya is undergoing significant change, driven by factors including greater value on formal education, improvements in infrastructure and development, a shift from community to private ownership of land, increased sedentary lifestyles and global climate change. One outcome of these changes are an increasingly greater likelihood for adolescent boys to be enrolled in school rather than herding livestock on behalf of the family in a landscape shared with numerous native vegetation and wildlife species. This study compared identification and knowledge of native plant species between boys enrolled in school with boys of similar age but primary responsibility as herders, called moran.

Utilization of Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Vegetable Production in Ekiti State: Implications for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Nigeria
By: Emmanuel O. Bamigboye
Agriculture & Forestry, 62(1):91-97
2016
Key words: Farmer, Hazard, Pests and Diseases and Agricultural Development, Nigeria
https://www.proquest.com/openview/36f34391b731d536fafca01335e318ac/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1446337
Vegetable production is often faced with some challenges that borders on pests and diseases infestation and low yield. Therefore, this study explores indigenous knowledge system (IKS) approaches in vegetable production under tropical conditions.

Seeing Through Fishers’ Lenses: Exploring Marine Ecological Changes within Mafia Island Marine Park, Tanzania
By: Victoria H. Moshy, Ian Bryceson
SAGE Vol. 6, issue 2
2016
Key words: TEK integration, resource monitoring, mutual enrichment / exchange, adaptive management, social-ecological systems
https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016641716
While TEK is increasingly being included in western science, Bryceson and colleagues suggest that traditional knowledge is being adapted into a scientific perspective. They maintain traditional knowledge should retain its originality and remain recognizable as a separate and parallel source of knowledge even after publication, rather than being translated into a western science perspective. The authors use this as a foundation to explore the traditional knowledge of the local fishing population living in Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP). Whereas the majority of the scientific research has pointed to fishing trends as the main driving factor of ecological change and marine resource availability, local fishermen are able to identify proximal sources as well as the overarching factors contributing to change over time.

Exploring farmers’ local knowledge and perceptions of soil fertility and management in the Ashanti Region of Ghana
By: Evans L. K. Dawoe, J. Quashie-Sam, Marney Isaac, Samuel K. Oppong
Geoderma 179-180
2012
Keywords: West Africa, Ghana, Ashanti Region, indigenous (local) knowledge, soils, ferric lixisols, local soil knowledge (LSK), scientific soil knowledge (SSK), soil fertility processes, participatory and collaborative approaches, ethno-scientific knowledge, sustained agro-ecosystem productivity
https://iks.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/exploring%20farmers%20knowledge.pdf
Soil analysis plays a major role in sustainable farming techniques. Indigenous, or local, farmers’ knowledge of soil is rich in understanding of processes necessary for maintaining sustainable land management practices. Collaboration between local farmers and researchers leads to the development of a method for integrating LSK and SSK. These two systems combined into one strengthen each other and lead to better land management practices.

Expert and Generalist Local Knowledge about Land-Cover Change on South Africa’s Wild Coast: Can Local Ecological Knowledge Add Value to Science?
By: N. Chalmers, and C. Fabricius
Ecology and Society, 12(1): 10
2007
Key words: Ecosystem change, ecosystem planning, cooperative land management, forest cover encroachment, local experts
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/42763854_Expert_and_Generalist_Local_Knowledge_about_Land-cover_Change_on_South_Africas_Wild_Coast_Can_Local_Ecological_Knowledge_Add_Value_to_Science
For land managers of Africa’s Wild Coast, the increasing forest and woodland cover over the last thirty years has been a subject of scientific study. The authors sought the perspective of indigenous populations of Nqabara in order to determine if local ecological knowledge would be a benefit to understanding the changes in ground cover. 11 community-suggested ecological experts and 40 elder members of randomly selected traditional households were selected to interview. While ecological knowledge among the randomly selected elder community members was unevenly distributed and sometimes inaccurate, all the experts proved to have a nuanced understanding of ecological relationships and were able to identify six major contributing factors in the expansion of forest regions. Furthermore, local experts were able to offer a historic perspective that included a qualitative understanding of social-ecological relationships and feedback loops at multiple scales—all of which was previously unknown to western scientists.

Developing Forest Management Plans with High-Tech Tools and Traditional Knowledge in Zambia
By: Cecilia Polansky, and John Heermans
Journal of Forestry
2004
Key words: forest management, forest resources, forestry research, natural resource management, technology transfer, Zambia
https://academic.oup.com/jof/article/102/5/46/4613194
The Cooperative League of the United States of America's Natural Resource Management Program is a pilot program in Zambia to use existing technology to map results from interviews with traditional farmers.

Indigenous African knowledge systems: local traditions of sustainable forestry
By: George J.S. Dei
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
1993
Key words: ecological stability, social responsibility, interrelationships, Ghana
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9493.1994.tb00222.x
This study of traditional African cultures aims to apply lessons learned to modern rural society. In addition, it draws attention to the importance of the forestry practices of traditional Ghana society in how it supports sustainable land management models.