Experts from across divides have called for greater reliance on indigenous knowledge systems as a viable path to achieving sustainable development in Africa.
They made the appeal at the 2025 NGO Dialogue, themed “Unlocking the Power of Indigenous Knowledge-Building for Sustainable Development in Africa”, hosted by Spaces for Change (S4C) West Africa as part of the Africa Social Impact Summit (ASIS) 2025 in Lagos.
Executive Director of Spaces for Change, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, underscored the urgent need to decolonise knowledge production and empower African communities to create, own, and apply data that reflect their realities.
Her words: “Indigenous knowledge systems are not being harnessed enough to solve the problems we face or speed up development in Africa. We need to lay a lot of emphasis on the importance of providing resources for African researchers, for African institutions, to begin to rely on and trust our own data, tell our own stories, and use that information to better our communities.”
She warned that reliance on external data and validation had undermined locally-driven solutions, citing how ancient African methods like building homes on stilts or the use of natural medicinal herbs, have withstood the test of time, but now dismissed in favour of imported ideas.
“There are proven indigenous practices that are sustainable, functional, and effective, yet they are being replaced without any comparative analysis. We need to trust what has worked in our context,” the ED stated.
Ibezim-Ohaeri also questioned the lopsided flow of global research funding, noting that foreign institutions often receive multimillion-dollar grants to conduct studies in African communities, while local organisations struggle to attract support.
Adding his voice to the conversation, the Executive Director of Africa Polling Institute, Prof. Bell Ihua, submitted that the continent’s limited investment in research and capacity-building had hampered homegrown knowledge production.
“We lack institutional structures to capture and manage local knowledge. Even the best researchers on the continent are underpaid or underfunded, while grant-winning capabilities like proposal writing remain largely underdeveloped,” he said.
He emphasised that research must be treated as a serious tool for development. Also speaking, a member of the Imo State House of Assembly representing Mbaitoli constituency, Innocent Ikpamezie, stated that the disconnect between policy and research stems largely from a lack of confidence in locally-sourced knowledge.
