Editorial

Abstract

The papers in this special edition contribute to our understanding of African indigenous knowledge systems in mental health, African literature, and education. They also point towards an urgent need to engage critically with the knowledge-power matrix (Quijano 2007) and to introduce new epistemologies and worldviews into our curricula. This calls for an inclusive paradigm that not only recognizes the Other, with whom one needs to engage with on an equal basis (Nabudere 2011), but also the understanding that there are diverse ways to the market place, as Olawole (1997) teaches us. We hereby conclude by calling for an interdisciplinary approach towards the study of African indigenous knowledge systems, as it is evident that AIKS cannot be meaningfully pursued while one is located within one discipline. African universities and African communities in general have a major role to play in developing AIKS so that it becomes part and parcel of global world knowledge. Although AIKS is part of the global dialogue on what constitutes international knowledge, in the first instance, it needs to be salvaged from marginalization, so that it can enter the dialogue about universal knowledge, as an equal partner

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