Learning from African knowledge & innovations

Different countries are at different stages of economic growth and development, but these stages have little to do with the growth of local knowledge systems. Recently held conference of science and technology ministers and secretaries from over 40 countries debated, among other things, about mutual learning that can empower local communities.

The arrogance that prevents us from learning from lesser people in our country comes in the way of learning from less economically-developed countries as well. Honey Bee Network has tried to dilute this resistance for over a quarter century now.

This was evident when ministers from Zimbabwe and Mozambique got into an agreement with National Innovation Foundation to take help of HBN to trigger grassroot innovation movement in their countries. Delegates from Ethiopia, Botswana, Tanzania, Tunisia and Egypt among others also were very keen to join forces. One message which I stressed was the importance of learning that India will imbibe in the process.

Let me illustrate. SRISTI, about 10 years ago, helped International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome organise an international contest for grassroot innovations in 70 countries of the world. The top award went to Auta Gravetas, a farmer from Uganda who discovered that lantana camara leaves can extend shelf life of sweet potato slices. He made this observation in a sweet potato field bordered by lantana leaves. Potatoes close to these leaves, unlike other potatoes in the field, didn't have pests in them. This discovery helped survive a large number of people in the region who could not afford maize or paddy.

The shelf-life of these slices was directly linked to the food self-provisioning. Auta put lantana camara leaves between layers of dried slices of sweet potato and stored them for future use. He could extend the shelf-life and food self-provisioning by almost a month and half or more. The weed became a resource. This first prize, given at Global Knowledge Conference in Malaysia, 2002 created a benchmark of excellence in a field where formal institutions had not been able to develop such a low cost solution to a popular problem. Neither lantana camara was indigenous nor had the knowledge been transferred by one generation to another over centuries. The way of knowing was traditional - by observing an odd phenomenon, discriminating, abstracting, hypothesising, testing and developing a robust rule or technology.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF), with Honey Bee Network, has scouted scores of other uses of this plant which was introduced as an ornamental plant by British colonial rulers in India and Africa more than 100 years ago. Use of lantana camara as a pesticide for controlling pests resistant to chemical pesticides in cotton can be a very powerful solution across the world. The constraint can become an opportunity.

The knowledge developed by an individual and/or by a community over a long period of time or in recent past at grassroot-level is something that we need to learn from.

The institutional context of such knowledge becomes evident when a farmer like Auta is able to experiment, a district agriculture officer recognises and submits this merit to an international competition and SRISTI is able to identify its potential, and thus contribute to its recognition by IFAD.  When further work is not done on this technology by Ugandan scientists or international agencies, it shows how unwilling formal institutional system still is. Therefore, the challenge is not to just learn, but make layers of institutions at different levels for others to learn. Indian people can and will imbibe much, if not more than what our African brothers and sisters will. The development has to become a two-way street.

The author is a professor at IIMA