Traditional medicine refers to the ways that existed of protecting and restoring health before the arrival of modern medicine (World Health Organization - WHO 1996). It has also been defined as the sum total of all knowledge and practices used in the prevention, diagnosis, and elimination of...

In Sri Lanka, ayurveda (a holistic system of medicine and health care which originated in India-in Sanskrit, "Ayu" means " life' and "veda" means " the knowledge of ") and the traditional system of health care have been systematically used for over two thousand years to treat illnesses. When...

Malawi, a landlocked country in southern, central Africa, depends on its natural resources, especially the agriculture sector, to meet the demands of a population of about 11 million people. The country has developed a remarkable fishing industry, keeping in mind that about 20 percent of the...

The gendered nature of Indigenous Knowledge - IK - is often overlooked, marginalized or neglected. While the differences may tend to be more subtle in industrial countries, the same cannot be said of developing countries. Information, especially IK-related information, tends to be viewed,...

Maternal and infant mortality remains very high in Mali, despite the technical, organizational and financial efforts made by the Ministry of Health and donors during the last ten years. The data available from the three EDS are eloquent in this respect: infant mortality, which was 108 (EDS I,...

Traditional Knowledge systems are the essence of the social capital of the poor and the source of their survival strategies. Rooted in tradition, TK is also contemporary knowledge, defined by its inherently dynamic nature. It is constantly evolving as individual and community responses to the...

In recent years, many international development agencies and non-government organizations have renewed their efforts to provide and promote indigenous knowledge orientation in development planning and practice. These efforts emphasize local knowledge systems and practices as valuable resources...

In a recent article in this series, the author discussed the indigenous principles that undergird the maintenance of social control among Buems of Buem-Kator on the Ghana side of the Ghana-Togo border in the Buem Traditional Area in the Jasikan District in the Volta Region of Ghana. The current...

Malatiben Chaudhari is a female farmer in Gujarat, India who has struggled with her life in a challenging rural environment and disenfranchised community. In the face of these constraints, she has built and improved indigenous capacity to create efficient and profitable livestock enterprises,...

Throughout two decades of development activity, reports on the "crisis" of desertification, food scarcity, and economic inefficiency have been challenged by local counter-narratives which show local people uniquely engaging in their environment in ways that deny the relevance of economic...