Indigenous Knowledge: A Catalyst of Sustainable Development or Manifestation of Anachronism and Pseudoscience in Sub-Saharan Africa

The current textual analysis, which comes against the backdrop of the unmistakable denigration of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in some quarters of the Sub-Saharan societies, discusses the centrality of Indigenous Knowledge to sustainable development in the region in question. The article, therefore, interrogates African Indigenous Knowledge Systems through the lens of decolonial ideals, critical consciousness, and the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy. In its interdisciplinary approach, this discussion is anchored in and informed by Gade’s theory of ‘narratives of return’ as well as by the Sankofa principle —notions that look into the past for solutions to the socio-economic problems vexing Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) within the postcolonial dispensation. The current inquiry observes the primacy of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems mainly in the fields of education, medicine, mathematics, agriculture, environmental conservation, maintenance of a clean environment, and biodiversity preservation. Although African Indigenous Knowledge Systems are sometimes indicted for being anachronistic and viewed in some quarters of African society as manifestations of pseudoscience, they remain the key to unlocking the door that has prevented the masses from accessing mathematics, science, and engineering. Thus, African Indigenous Knowledge Systems are neither anachronistic nor pseudoscience but a sine qua non for sustainable socio-economic development in SSA in general and Zimbabwe in particular. However, this does not warrant the wholesale removal of Western Knowledge Systems from the local socio-economic development spheres. The current reflection, therefore, recommends the hybridization of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Western Knowledge Systems for sustainable socio-economic development in SSA.