African Knowledge Resource Management and The Making Of African Agro-Ecological Philosophy

Abstract

Nature has endowed humanity as the supreme force, the most powerful and dominant among all created beings. This power makes the lower beings subservient to humanity though, it is only intended to be beneficent in the advancement of the common good of all created beings. In traditional communities however, there is palpable threat to existential conditions of life on earth due to mismanagement of the created resources. Humanity has not only acquiesced a scientific technology whose laws are far removed from the known system of nature with no self-limiting principle in terms of size, speed and violence to nature and humanity. In today's techno-polis, the machine has replaced human ingenuity and degraded the environment and resources necessary for agrarian practices and harmonious living. This paper argues that African Indigenous Knowledge Resource (AIKR) also known as Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is strategic in salvaging the technologically abused environment. That through indigenous stewardship method (ISM), knowledge resource is harvested by the indigenous peoples of Africa in a painstaking process that spans hundreds of years through direct experience and contact with the environment. The paper concludes that in seeking the whole from the units of the earth resources, strategic management of indigenous knowledge resource in agriculture will surely achieve food security and improved nutrition and economic status of its indigenous communities. The paper recommends that African agrarians should focus more on creating long term processes that allow for the implications of different approaches to knowledge in relation to stewardship and management of land resources.