IN the last episode we argued that African knowledge is African science and is equivalent to Western science that is taught in schools and colleges.
African science is learnt on the job as it were, as people grapple with the various challenges of life.
Hunting science and technology is learnt through practice, as older and more experienced members of society pass on their skills and knowledge to the younger and less experienced.
The science of food processing is quite elaborate and in African society mostly women have the gender role to pursue the relevant technologies passing the science on to the girl children.
On the other hand, certain categories of African science are under the guardianship of men while in others there is no gender bias.
In agriculture different crops in different environments require specialised science (knowledge) and technologies for successful production to ensure food security.
Thus African agricultural science for the most part has been forcibly expunged from common practice by misguided and ignorant white extension agents bent on denigrating all things African and bringing the African under their control.
One crop perplot; straight rows says murimisi/umlimisi!
For example, African science says you grow several crops on the same land, a practice termed ‘intercropping’.
The whiteman through the agricultural demonstrators (varimisi, madhomeni/abalimisi) enforced mono-cropping.
Such a practice leads to rapid build-up of pests and diseases as there will be a large area planted to the same crop.
In intercropping pests of a particular crop do not readily locate their target; so their numbers remain low.
Most of the target plants are not readily ‘seen’ by the pest or the disease-causing agent.
In some cases one or other of the crops in the intercrop may produce a smell that is offensive to the pest, thereby reducing infestation.
Onions are one example.
These African pest management sciences were environmentally friendly.
The whiteman’s science of using chemical pesticides has caused many problems.
These include pests developing resistance that require higher dose of pesticides, further polluting the environment.
The chemical pesticides have killed millions of non-target species resulting in reduction of bio-diversity as many species have become extinct due to the whiteman’s science.
Bees are one example of useful insects that have been destroyed by pesticides.
Growing only one crop in a field (mono-cropping) has also resulted in the propagation of fewer and fewer favoured crop varieties while others which have useful traits, have been abandoned and become extinct.
Starchy diets mainly composed of sadza and a very limited range of relishes are partly a result of the forced abandonment of the African scientific practice of relying on a highly diverse diet: millets, sorghum, insects, game meat, fish, vegetables of a wide variety!
Both in churches and at school, the whiteman made a laughing stock of those who preferred to eat an African diets.
Today the educated Africans are lumbering under a high burden of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.
They are paying the price of abandoning African dietary science: using a variety of natural foods that western science now endorses.
Excuse the comparison, but Tony Blair and George Bush murdered Saddam Husseinof Iraq for crimes he did not commit and now apologise for the ‘mistake’.
Europe and America yesterday rejected African science!
Today they come to embrace it through the backdoor calling it indigenous knowledge!
Any apology?
Most unlikely!
Africans beware: your ancestors discovered valuable sciences and technologies despised by whitemen as ‘indigenous knowledge’.
‘Ndiyo sainzi yacho iyoyo’!
Use it and build on it; do not despise it!
African science has stood the test of thousands of years!
It is the truth that the whiteman calls ‘indigenous knowledge’.
If you are not careful, they will take your science and use it and even sell it to you at very high prices.
Or is that not already happening?
African food insecurity has largely been a result of substituting non-sustainable European science for sustainable African agricultural science practices!
The colonising political agenda was to demonise all things African and impoverish the colonised blacks by banishing their productive sciences as backward, inferior or downright superstition and black magic.
The stigmatisation of African scientific knowledge and practices resulted in the erosion of the productive base of African communities as the Africans were forced to abandon the wisdom of their forefathers and found themselves with few working technologies accepted by the white colonisers.
Thus Western agricultural sciences and practices have caused environmental damage and proved to be unsustainable.
Where then is the superiority of Western science with regard to environmental quality?
While African science has stressed harmony with nature, Western science has caused disharmony and environmental pollution!
Instead of working with, it has worked against nature.
The results are there for all to see.
Some examples will illustrate the above point.
Use of the mouldboard plough in tilling the soil is part of Western agricultural science practice.
African science on the other hand called for minimum tillage just to bury the seeds for ease of germination e.g. digging holes where moisture can also pond.
It is now an undisputed fact that ploughing destroys soil structure resulting in the formation of plough pans, loss of soil fertility and land degradation.
Ploughed soils rapidly lose their organic matter which is a rich source of nutrients as well as water-holding capacity.
Soils with high organic matter do not easily get washed away.
So we see that ploughing, one of the major Western agricultural science practices brought in by the whiteman, results in loss of soil fertility, land degradation and eventually desertification!
The Western scientists have recently come to realise that African science practices of minimum tillage are sustainable.
The European Union (EU) even had the cheek to launch the so-called Conservation Farming Programme for East and Southern Africa.
They sent their agents to collect and write up the African science dubbed ‘conservation farming’ and then presented it as whiteman’s wisdom.
In this conservation farming programme the EU put in millions of dollars and made it look like a program to assist the vulnerable.
They came to teach the African farmers what they have known all the time: that you should disturb the soil as little as possible when growing crops to ensure environmentally sustainable production.
And that you should intercrop so that you control pests!
Also that you should put mulch on the soil to reduce evaporation of moisture and that you should sow your seeds in holes where water will pond.
African governments even thanked the EU for coming up with an ‘excellent agricultural science practice’, conservation agriculture.
African science being sold back to its original owners, the Africans.
This is a clear case of clever birds using other birds’ feathers to build their own nests.
We Africans discovered our own science, invented our own wheels too!
Science is multi-dimensional.
Let us recognise those achievements and use them to enhance our development.
The struggle for economic liberation continues!