ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu - Indigenous knowledge expert
Working across disciplines, Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu explores homegrown and grassroots approaches to the sustainable advancement of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why you should listen

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu is convinced of the ability of Africans to transform the continent by acknowledging the significance of its indigenous knowledge in all fields of human endeavor. A researcher, fiction and non-fiction writer, public intellectual and teacher, Ezeanya-Esiobu has published several research papers on aspects of Africa's indigenous knowledge. She has also been commissioned to conduct indigenous knowledge-based research by the International Development Research Center Canada, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research,(UNU-WIDER) United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and The Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), among others. 

Ezeanya-Esiobu is the author of the historical fiction book Before We Set Sail. In its manuscript form, Before We Set Sail was one of six shortlisted out of over 250 submissions, made to the Penguin Publishers Award for African Writing in 2010. Following her TEDGlobal 2017 talk, Ezeanya-Esiobu shared an alphabet book series she had written for her daughter: Dr. Chika's ABC for the African Child (2017).

Ezeanya-Esiobu has lived and worked in four countries across three continents, and through her travels she has learned to value integrity, dignity, respect for self and others ... to be open to knowledge, to be happy and to smile a lot with her heart. Her lifetime passion is to contribute to efforts that would see to the unleashing of the suppressed creative and innovative energies buried deep in the hearts and minds of all Africans. She blogs at chikaforafrica.com.

More profile about the speaker
Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu | Speaker | TED.com
TEDGlobal 2017

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu: How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress

Filmed:
1,241,889 views

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu wants to see Africans unleash their suppressed creative and innovative energies by acknowledging the significance of their indigenous, authentic knowledge. In this powerful talk, she shares examples of untapped, traditional African knowledge in agriculture and policy-making, calling on Africans to make progress by validating and dignifying their reality.
- Indigenous knowledge expert
Working across disciplines, Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu explores homegrown and grassroots approaches to the sustainable advancement of Sub-Saharan Africa. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:13
Some months back,
I was visiting this East African city,
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and we were stuck in traffic.
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And this vendor suddenly
approaches my window
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with a half-opened alphabet sheet.
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I took a quick look at the alphabet sheet,
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and I thought of my daughter,
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how it would be nice
to spread it on the floor
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and just play all over it with her
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while getting her to learn the alphabet.
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So the traffic moved a bit,
and I quickly grabbed a copy,
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and we moved on.
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When I had time to fully open
the alphabet sheet
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and take a more detailed look at it,
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I knew I was not going to use that
to teach my daughter.
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I regretted my purchase.
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Why so?
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Looking at the alphabet sheet
reminded me of the fact
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that not much has changed
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in the education curricula in Africa.
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Some decades back, I was taught
out of a similar alphabet sheet.
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01:13
And because of that,
I struggled for years.
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I struggled to reconcile my reality
with the formal education I received
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in school, in the schools I attended.
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I had identity crises.
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I looked down on my reality.
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I looked at my ancestry,
I looked at my lineage with disrespect.
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I had very little patience
for what my life had to offer around me.
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Why?
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"A is for apple."
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"A is for apple."
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"A is for apple" is for that child
in that part of the world
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where apples grow out;
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who has an apple in her lunch bag;
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who goes to the grocery store
with her mom and sees red,
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green, yellow -- apples
of all shapes and colors and sizes.
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And so, introducing
education to this child
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with an alphabet sheet like this
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fulfills one of the major
functions of education,
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which is to introduce the learner
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to an appreciation
of the learner's environment
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and a curiosity to explore more
in order to add value.
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In my own case,
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when and where I grew up in Africa,
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apple was an exotic fruit.
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Two or three times a year,
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I could get some yellowish apples
with brown dots, you know,
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signifying thousands of miles traveled --
warehouses, sorting --
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to get to me.
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I grew up in the city
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to very financially comfortable parents,
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so it was my dignified reality,
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exactly the same way
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cassava fufu or ugali
would not regularly feature
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in an American, Chinese or Indian diet,
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apples didn't count as part of my reality.
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So what this did to me,
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introducing education to me
with "A is for apple,"
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made education an abstraction.
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It made it something out of my reach --
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a foreign concept,
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a phenomenon for which I would have
to constantly and perpetually seek
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the validation of those it belonged to
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for me to make progress
within it and with it.
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That was tough for a child;
it would be tough for anyone.
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As I grew up and I advanced academically,
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my reality was further separated
from my education.
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In history, I was taught
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that the Scottish explorer Mungo Park
discovered the Niger River.
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And so it bothered me.
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My great-great-grandparents grew up
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quite close to the edge
of the Niger River.
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(Laughter)
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And it took someone to travel
thousands of miles from Europe
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to discover a river
right under their nose?
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(Laughter)
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No!
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(Applause and cheers)
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What did they do with their time?
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(Laughter)
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Playing board games, roasting fresh yams,
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fighting tribal wars?
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I mean, I just knew my education
was preparing me to go somewhere else
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and practice and give to another
environment that it belonged to.
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It was not for my environment,
where and when I grew up.
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And this continued.
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This philosophy undergirded my studies
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all through the time I studied in Africa.
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It took a lot of experiences
and some studies
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for me to begin to have
a change of mindset.
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I will share a couple
of the remarkable ones with us.
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I was in the United States
in Washington, DC
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studying towards my doctorate,
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and I got this consultancy position
with the World Bank Africa Region.
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And so I remember one day,
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my boss -- we were having
a conversation on some project,
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and he mentioned a particular
World Bank project,
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a large-scale irrigation project
that cost millions of dollars
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in Niger Republic
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that was faltering sustainably.
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He said this project
wasn't so sustainable,
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and it bothered those
that instituted the whole package.
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But then he mentioned
a particular project,
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a particular traditional irrigation method
that was hugely successful
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in the same Niger Republic
where the World Bank project was failing.
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And that got me thinking.
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So I did further research,
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and I found out about Tassa.
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Tassa is a traditional irrigation method
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where 20- to 30-centimeter-wide
and 20- to 30-centimeter-deep holes
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are dug across a field to be cultivated.
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Then, a small dam is constructed
around the field,
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and then crops are planted
across the surface area.
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What happens is that when rain falls,
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the holes are able to store the water
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and appropriate it to the extent
that the plant needs the water.
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The plant can only assimilate
as much water as needed
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until harvest time.
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Niger is 75 percent scorched desert,
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so this is something
that is a life-or-death situation,
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and it has been used for centuries.
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In an experiment that was conducted,
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two similar plots of land
were used in the experiment,
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and one plot of land
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did not have the Tassa technique on it.
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Similar plots.
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The other one had Tassa technique
constructed on it.
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Then similar grains of millet
also were planted on both plots.
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During harvest time,
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the plot of land without Tassa technique
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yielded 11 kilograms
of millet per hectare.
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The plot of land with Tassa technique
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yielded 553 kilograms
of millet per hectare.
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(Applause)
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I looked at the research,
and I looked at myself.
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I said, "I studied
agriculture for 12 years,
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from primary to Senior Six,
as we say in East Africa,
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SS3 in West Africa or 12th grade.
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No one ever taught me
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of any form of traditional
African knowledge of cultivation --
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of harvesting, of anything --
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that will work in modern times
and actually succeed,
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where something imported from the West
would struggle to succeed.
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That was when I knew the challenge,
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the challenge of Africa's curricula,
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And I thus began my quest
to dedicate my life, concern my life work,
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to studying, conducting research
on Africa's own knowledge system
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and being able to advocate
for its mainstreaming
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in education, in research, policy
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across sectors and industries.
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Another conversation
and experience I had at the bank
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I guess made me take that final decision
of where I was going to go,
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even though it wasn't the most lucrative
research to go into,
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but it was just about what I believed in.
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And so one day, my boss said
that he likes to go to Africa
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to negotiate World Bank loans
and to work on World Bank projects.
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And I was intrigued. I asked him why.
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He said, "Oh, when I go to Africa,
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it's so easy.
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I just write up my loan documents
and my project proposal in Washington, DC,
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I go to Africa, and they all
just get signed.
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I get the best deal, and I'm back to base.
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My bosses are happy with me."
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But then he said,
"I hate going to Asia or ..."
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and he mentioned a particular country,
Asia and some of these countries.
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"They keep me for this, trying
to get the best deal for their countries.
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They get the best deal.
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They tell me, 'Oh,
that clause will not work for us
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in our environment.
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It's not our reality.
It's just so Western.'
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And they tell me, 'Oh,
we have enough experts
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to take care of this.
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You don't have enough experts.
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We know our aim.'
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And they just keep going
through all these things.
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By the time they finish,
yes, they get the best deal,
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but I'm so exhausted and I don't get
the best deal for the bank,
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and we're in business."
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"Really?" I thought in my head, "OK."
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I was privileged to sit in on
a loan negotiating session
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in an African country.
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So I would do these consultancy
positions during summer,
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you know, since I was a doctoral student.
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And then I traveled with the team,
with the World Bank team,
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as more like someone to help out
with organizational matters.
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But I sat in during
the negotiating session.
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I had mostly Euro-Americans, you know,
with me from Washington, DC.
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And I looked across the table
at my African brothers and sisters.
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I could see intimidation on their faces.
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They didn't believe
they had anything to offer
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the great-great-grandchildren
of Mungo Park --
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the owners of "apple" in "A is for apple."
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They just sat and watched:
"Oh, just give us, let us sign.
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You own the knowledge. You know it all.
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Just, where do we sign?
Show us, let us sign."
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They had no voice.
They didn't believe in themselves.
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Excuse me.
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And so,
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I have been doing this for a decade.
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I have been conducting research
on Africa's knowledge system,
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original, authentic,
traditional knowledge.
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In the few cases where this
has been implemented in Africa,
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there has been remarkable
successes recorded.
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I think of Gacaca.
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Gacaca is Rwanda's traditional
judicial system
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that was used after the genocide.
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In 1994, when the genocide ended,
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Rwanda's national court system
was in shambles:
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no judges, no lawyers to try
hundreds of thousands of genocide cases.
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11:26
So the government of Rwanda
came up with this idea
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to resuscitate a traditional
judicial system known as Gacaca.
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Gacaca is a community-based
judicial system,
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where community members come together
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to elect men and women of proven integrity
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to try cases of crimes committed
within these communities.
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So by the time Gacaca concluded
its trial of genocide cases in 2012,
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12,000 community-based courts
had tried approximately 1.2 million cases.
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That's a record.
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(Applause)
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Most importantly is that Gacaca emphasized
Rwanda's traditional philosophy
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of reconciliation and reintegration,
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as against the whole
punitive and banishment idea
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that undergirds present-day Western style.
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And not to compare, but just to say
that it really emphasized
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Rwanda's traditional method of philosophy.
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And so it was Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,
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former president of Tanzania --
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(Applause)
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who said that you cannot develop people.
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People will have to develop themselves.
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I agree with Mwalimu.
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I am convinced
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that Africa's further transformation,
Africa's advancement,
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rests simply in the acknowledgment,
validation and mainstreaming
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of Africa's own traditional, authentic,
original, indigenous knowledge
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in education, in research,
in policy making and across sectors.
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This is not going to be easy for Africa.
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It is not going to be easy for a people
used to being told how to think,
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what to do, how to go about it,
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a people long subjected
to the intellectual guidance
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and direction of others,
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be they the colonial masters,
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aid industry or international news media.
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But it is a task that we have to do
to make progress.
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I am strengthened by the words
of Joseph Shabalala,
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founder of the South African choral group
Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
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He said that the task ahead of us
can never, ever be greater
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than the power within us.
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We can do it.
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We can unlearn looking down on ourselves.
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We can learn to place value
on our reality and our knowledge.
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Thank you.
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(Swahili) Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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Thank you. Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu - Indigenous knowledge expert
Working across disciplines, Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu explores homegrown and grassroots approaches to the sustainable advancement of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Why you should listen

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu is convinced of the ability of Africans to transform the continent by acknowledging the significance of its indigenous knowledge in all fields of human endeavor. A researcher, fiction and non-fiction writer, public intellectual and teacher, Ezeanya-Esiobu has published several research papers on aspects of Africa's indigenous knowledge. She has also been commissioned to conduct indigenous knowledge-based research by the International Development Research Center Canada, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research,(UNU-WIDER) United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and The Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), among others. 

Ezeanya-Esiobu is the author of the historical fiction book Before We Set Sail. In its manuscript form, Before We Set Sail was one of six shortlisted out of over 250 submissions, made to the Penguin Publishers Award for African Writing in 2010. Following her TEDGlobal 2017 talk, Ezeanya-Esiobu shared an alphabet book series she had written for her daughter: Dr. Chika's ABC for the African Child (2017).

Ezeanya-Esiobu has lived and worked in four countries across three continents, and through her travels she has learned to value integrity, dignity, respect for self and others ... to be open to knowledge, to be happy and to smile a lot with her heart. Her lifetime passion is to contribute to efforts that would see to the unleashing of the suppressed creative and innovative energies buried deep in the hearts and minds of all Africans. She blogs at chikaforafrica.com.

More profile about the speaker
Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu | Speaker | TED.com