marcus garvey pan african university - Blackherbals.com

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic 

Volume 8, Issue 7 NEWSLETTER August 2013 

MPAU – COMMUNITY SITES OF KNOWLEDGE, UGANDA 

MPAU - MARCUS GARVEY 

PAN-AFRICAN UNIVERSITY 

By Professor Babuuzibwa Luutu 

Vice Chancellor, MPAU 

African Universities are challenged to play a decisive 

role to retrieve Africa from its present predicament of 

being the world’s most devastated continent. This 

implies the need for decolonizing approaches to 

knowledge generation and the establishment of 

decolonized universities to play this rejuvenating role 

alongside African communities. To do so, however, such 

universities must draw their inspiration from the rich 

African heritage embedded in the African peoples’ 

cultures and philosophies as well as their institutions 

which they have created over the centuries, and add on 

new experiences that take into account the demands of 

their contemporary situation. There is an enormous 

epistemological and cultural gap in African higher 

education, learning and research between African elites 

and the majority of Africans, many of which are 

marginalized by the imposed political, economic and 

educational systems. 

The Marcus Garvey Pan-African Institute and its offshoot, 

the Marcus Garvey Pan African University, was 

established precisely to draw deeply on the cultural and 

civilization heritage of African peoples and to work with 

them to revitalize, reclaim and apply African indigenous 

knowledge and wisdom systems for the meaningful 

betterment of African peoples and global humanity. 

Continued on page 2 

I NSIDE T HIS I SSUE 

2 MPAU- Marcus Garvey Pan African University 

3 Afrikan Spirituality – Pan Africanism and Religion 

4 Feature –Nile Valley Civilization and the Spread of African 

Culture 

10 Feature – How Africans Led Humanity in Civilization 

12 Feature – MPAI/MPAU – A Work in Progress 

15The Impact of Marcus Garvey 

16 Feature – Urgency of the Pan-Africanism Ideal in 21 st C 

20 Feature - Towards an Africology of Knowledge Production 

24 Feature – Applied Afrikology, Restorative Practices, Mt Elgon 

45 Feature - Pan-African Indigenous Herbal Medicine 

62 Feature – African Traditional Herbal Research Centre/Clinic 

66 Marcus Garvey Quotes 

What is the African Traditional 

Herbal Research Clinic? 

We can make you healthy and wise 

Nakato Lewis 

Blackherbals at the Source of the Nile, UG Ltd. 

The African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic located 

in Ntinda, Uganda is a modern clinic facility 

established to create a model space whereby 

indigenous herbal practitioners and healers can upgrade 

and update their skills through training and certification 

and respond to common diseases using African healing 

methods and traditions in a modern clinical 

environment. 

Traditional healers are the major health labor resource 

in Africa as a whole. In Uganda, indigenous traditional 

healers are the only source of health services for the 

majority of the population. An estimated 80% of the 

population receives its health education and health care 

from practitioners of traditional medicine. They are 

knowledgeable of the culture, the local languages and 

local traditions. Our purpose is to raise public 

awareness and understanding on the value of African 

traditional herbal medicine and other healing practices 

in today’s world. 

The Clinic is open and operational. Some of the 

services we offer are African herbal medicine, 

reflexology, acupressure, hot and cold hydrotherapy, 

body massage, herbal tonics, patient counseling, blood 

pressure checks, urine testing (sugar), and nutritional 

profiles. We believe in spirit, mind and body. Spiritual 

counseling upon request. 

Visit us also at www.Blackherbals.com 

Hours: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday thru Friday 

Saturday by Appointment, Sundays – Closed 

1- Traditional African Clinic – August 2013

Cont’d from page 1 – MPAU - MARCUS GARVEY PAN- 

AFRICAN UNIVERSITY 

Why Pan-African, Why Marcus Garvey? 

The university is designated as a ‘Pan-Afrikan’ 

institution in recognition of the continuing efforts by 

African people to create an African nation expressed in 

the need to establish the United States of Africa. 

However the concept of ‘pan-Africanism’ has 

undergone several understandings followed by 

different schools and ideological orientations. 

Two understandings of Pan-Africanism stand out in 

the course of the struggles for leadership of Africans in 

the Diaspora: that propounded by the African- 

American scholar W. W. Du Bois and the African- 

Jamaican mass mobiliser, largely self-taught Marcus 

Garvey. Du Bois advocated securing the right of 

Africans to participate in governments in their 

respective countries and later for self-rule. Garvey on 

the other hand, advocated the uniting of all Africans 

the world over, to establish a bridgehead on the 

continent of Africa from which to fight colonialism 

and weld the whole of Africa into a united nation. 

The decision to name the University after Marcus 

Garvey is a celebration of his devotion to making 

African people not only self-governing but more 

importantly as a united nation. Garvey believed in the 

power of the ordinary people to organize themselves 

into a powerful force, which could achieve African 

regeneration. He advocated the need for Africans to 

organize and not agonize and encouraged them to 

educate themselves in every way, arguing that no one 

had the monopoly of learning. His philosophy on 

education can be summed up as follows: 

“To be learned in all that is worthwhile knowing. Not 

to be crammed with the subject matter of the book or 

the philosophy of the class room, but to store away in 

your head such facts as you need for the daily 

application of life, so that you may (be) the better in 

all things understanding your fellowmen, and interpret 

(of) your relationship to your Creator. You can be 

educated in soul, vision and feeling, as well as in mind. 

To see your enemy and know him is a part of the 

complete education of man; to spiritually regulate 

one's self is another form of the higher education that 

fits man for a nobler place in life, and still, to 

approach your brother by the feeling of your own 

humanity, is an education that softens the ills of the 

world and makes us kind indeed. Many a man was 

educated outside the school room. It is something you 

let out, not completely take in. You are part of it, for it 

is natural; it is dormant simply because you will not 

develop it, but God creates every man with it knowingly or 

unknowingly to him who possesses it - that's the 

difference. Develop yours and you become as great and 

full of knowledge as the other fellow without even entering 

the classroom.” 

Marcus Garvey’s philosophy and opinions are one of the 

rich heritages of the African people that have inspired 

MPAU to provide the students, adult learners and the 

communities with an interactive space both on campus and 

CSoKs where they can learn, research, discuss and expand 

on their existing knowledge and, with their teachers and 

indigenous knowledge experts in the community deepen it. 

Such a process will enable them to carry out theoretical 

formulations and reflections in an inter-disciplinary, 

plural-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary as well as 

comparative manner. The ultimate objective will be to 

generate knowledge not only for its own sake but for the 

sake of utilizing it in society by doing and acting to 

transform their lives through interaction with the wider 

world and humanity in the process of African recovery 

and rebirth. 

For a Pan-Afrikan University to emerge and set a new path 

in the search for knowledge and truth it must first and 

foremost be built on a sound cultural and spiritual basis 

that highlights those aspects of African spiritual life that 

have enabled the African people to survive as a human 

community throughout the centuries. It should, as 

Chancellor Williams, reminds us, go beyond European 

classical humanism with its social class, socio-economic 

and geographical limitations based on Greece and the 

Athenian City-State, which was based on a system of 

slavery. Pan-African humanism must, according to him, 

lead to an “enlarged humanities” and recapture that 

original meaning of humanity found in Africa, which 

Western scholars, beginning with Plato, in their hollow 

and lopsided search for material progress, abandoned. 

To make a break with this past, the Pan-Afrikan 

University must abandon the present African political and 

economic elites’ mindsets, which have tended to look at 

their village compatriots as ignorant and illiterate people. 

In response, the African people in the villages have also 

tended to look at these elites as ‘Mzungu (European) 

minded.’ Hostility exists between the two camps and there 

is no trust between them since relationships between them 

is based on the colonial system of Top-Down 

communication in which there is very little dialogue and 

understanding between them. 

This “Top-Down” approach also informs the 

“development” strategies and programmes, which are 

dictated by the external economic interests, which are 

passed to the “ignorant masses” for implementation for 



AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY 

Pan Africanism and Religion 

By Rammonaseswa Lucas Molomo 

The term ‘religion’ refers to a system of spiritual beliefs 

found amongst individuals or groups of individuals. Properly 

understood religion is a personal relation of the individual to 

the Supreme Being. This presupposes that every human being 

does conceive of the existence of a supreme being who is 

behind all creation and is in control of life and death. It is 

such belief and acknowledgement that is called religion. The 

forms of acknowledgement differ widely from place to place. 

The said Supreme Being is called by different names in 

different places. Even the methods of communing with such 

Supreme Being differ from place to place. I wish I could say 

how this being looks like in the inward eye of each beholder. 

I cannot, I do not know. 

Africans have developed unique systems of spiritual beliefs. 

The spiritual systems are a product of many millennia of 

historical experiences, of social interaction with natural 

environments, of communion with spiritual deities, of 

experimentation with the primordial forces of the universe. 

All these things have merged and blended in to a sacred or 

divine culture that explains controls and regulates all 

existence. This is a clear infestation of the existence and 

presence of the Supreme Being (God, Allah, and Buddha) in 

the day to day life of every individual. It is evident from this 

that African religious system is a complex and integrated 

whole which is larger than the sum of its parts. A brief outline 

of its basic structure brings out its complexity and 

pervasiveness. 

Structure of African Religion: 

4. Belief in the existence of a supreme being who is the 

creator of the universe. 

5. He is called by different names in different places and 

languages 

6. Believed to be somewhere high in the sky and 

contactable only through the agency of the ancestral 

spirits, spiritual deities. 

7. Believed to control and regulate all existence including 

life and death, health and wellness, rain and good harvest, 

procreation and good fortune, general success and 

happiness. 

8. Believed to communicate with human beings, again via 

-------------------------- 

Managing Editor: Nakato Lewis 

Publisher: Kiwanuka R.G.Lewis 

Published monthly and freely by BHSN for the ATHR Clinic 

http://www.blackherbals.com/athrc_newsletters.htm 

The traditional shrine as a symbol of our cultural history 

the agency of the ancestral spirits who deliver 

messages in different ways, e.g. calamities to 

express his displeasure or good fortune to 

express his satisfaction. 

1. Responses to these communications are 

presented in the form of offerings through the 

same channels, the ancestral spirits, e.g. 

libations; blood or body parts of some animal, 

performing a ritual prescribed by a doctor 

(Sangoma, Nyanga) etc. 

2. Sometimes geographical features in the 

environment e.g. mountains, rivers, forests are 

regarded as habitats of ancestral spirits and may 

not be approached unless specific procedures 

have been observed. 

3. Shrines are sacred places were appeasement 

offerings and sacrifices are presented-violation 

against their sanctity is sacrilege and offenders 

receive condign punishment. 

What, then, is the link or relationship between 

religion, at any rate, African religion, and Pan 

Africanism, as was noted earlier on, is a happier life 

for all in an independent and united Africa. This 

presupposes material prosperity. Man’s primary 

needs are material needs: food, shelter, clothing and 

health wellness. The second and equally primary 

need is spiritual balance: a feeling of being under 

the protection of a superior power or of being in a 

state, of being blessed and safe. Together the 

material and spiritual well-being make for 

happiness and peace of mind and good 

neighbourliness. This is how Mangaliso Sobukwe, 

founder president of the Pan Africanist Congress of 

Azania, summed it; 

To Live in Harmony with His fellow Man, Man 

must Recognise the Primacy of the Material 

and Spiritual Interests of his Fellow Man. 





FEATURED ARTICLES 

The Nile Valley Civilization and the 

Spread of African Culture 

By Yosef ben-Jochannan 

When we speak of the Nile Valley, of course we are 

talking about 4,100 miles of civilization, or the 

beginning of the birth of what is today called 

civilization. I can go to one case of literature in 

particular which will identify the Africans as the 

beginners of the civilization to which I refer. And since 

I am not foreign to the works of Africans in Egypt, 

otherwise called Egyptians, I think that should be 

satisfactory proof. This proof is housed in the London 

Museum that is holding artifacts of Egypt. In that 

museum you will find a document called the Papyrus of 

Hunifer. At least you should find it there. It was there 

when Sir E. A. Wallace Budge used it in his translation 

as part of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the 

Papyrus of Hunifer. 

It was there at that time, a copy of which is in the 

library of Syracuse University in New York, and I 

quote from the hieratic writing, "We came from the 

beginning of the Nile where God Hapi dwells, at the 

foothills of The Mountains of the Moon." "We," 

meaning the Egyptians, as stated, came from the 

beginning of the Nile. Where is "the beginning of the 

Nile?" The farthest point of the beginning of the Nile is 

in Uganda; this is the White Nile. Another point is in 

Ethiopia. The Blue Nile and White Nile meet in 

Khartoum; and the other side of Khartoum is the 

Omdurman Republic of Sudan. From there it flows 

from the south down north. And there it meets with the 

Atbara River in Atbara, Sudan. Then it flows 

completely through Sudan (Ta-Nehisi, Ta-Zeti or Ta- 

Seti, as it was called), part of that ancient empire which 

was one time adjacent to the nation called Meroe or 

Merowe. From that, into the southern part of what the 

Romans called "Nubia," and parallel on the Nile, part 

of which the Greeks called "Egypticus"; the English 

called it "Egypt" and the Jews in their mythology called 

it "Mizrain" which the current Arabs called 

Mizr/Mizrair. Thus it ends in the Sea of Sais, also 

called the Great Sea, today's Mediterranean Sea. 

When we say thus, we want to make certain that Hapi is 

still God of the Nile, shown as a hermaphrodite having 

the breasts of a woman and the penis of a man. God 

Hapi is always shown tying two symbols of the "Two 

Lands," Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, during Dynastic 

Periods, or from the beginning of the Dynastic Periods. 

The lotus flower is the symbol of the south, and the 

papyrus plant, the symbol of the north. 

But we need to go back beyond Egypt. I used "Egypt" as 

a starting point, in that of all the ancient civilizations in 

the world, Egypt has more ancient documents and other 

artifacts than any other civilization one could speak of. 

So when you hear them talking about "Sumer" and 

"Babylon," and all those other places, theoretically, they 

can't show you the artifacts. Thus my position is, first 

hand information is the best proof; and I can show you 

the bones and other remains of Zinjanthropus Boisei 

about 1.8 million years ago. But no one can show me the 

bones and remains of Adam and Eve, et al. 

So I have the proof and you have the belief. If you want 

to see it you can go to the Croydon National Museum in 

Nairobi, Kenya; there, you'll see the Bones 

Zinjanthropus Boisei. If you want to see the remains of 

"Lucy," you can go to the national Museum associated 

with the University of Addis Ababa. Of course, there are 

a host of other human fossils that existed thousands of 

years ago all over Africa; but you can't find one "Adam" 

or one "Eve" in any part of Asia. 

But we have to go beyond that. We can look at the 

artifacts before writing came into being. We will then be 

in archaeological finds along the Nile. Also you would 

find that there were two groups of Africans; one called 

"Hutu," and one called "Twa." The Twa and Hutu take 

us back into at least 400,000 B.C.E. (Before the 

Common "Christian" Era) in terms of artifacts. The most 

ancient of these artifacts, one of the most important in 

Egypt, is called the "Ankh," which the Christians 



Continued from page 4 – The Nile Valley Civilization and 

the Spread of African Culture 

adopted and called the "Crux Ansata" or "Ansata 

Cross." The Ankh was there amongst these people, 

equally the "Crook" and "Flail." All of these symbols 

came down to us from the Twa and Hutu. You know 

the Twa by British anthropologists who called them 

"pygmies." There is no such thing in Africa known as 

a "pygmy," much less "pygmies." But the people call 

themselves Twa and Hutu, so that's what they are. 

If we look at the southern tip of Africa, a place called 

"Monomotapa," before the first Europeans came there 

with the Portuguese in 1486, C.E./A.D. (Christian 

Eera), a man called Captian Bartholomew Diaz, and 

subsequently another European and his group came, 

one called Captain Vasco da Gama, who came there 

ten years later in 1496; when they came to that part of 

Africa they met another group of people there as well, 

which they called "Kaffirs." Now this is a long time 

before the Boers came there in 1652. When the Boers 

came those Africans may have gone to the moon on 

vacation (or there they "didn't meet any natives" 

[Africans] so they say. But one thing is certain, that 

Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama had already 

left records showing that when they arrived there at 

Monomotapa the Khaffirs [Africans], including the 

small ones (Khoi-Khoi, and Khalaharis) (remember I 

didn't say "Bushmen" or "Hottentots," that's nonsense, 

the racist names given them by the British and Dutch 

Boers), were already there. 

So with all of these people that were found in this area 

we could go back at least 35,000 to 40,000 years to 

another group of people who left their writings and 

their pictures. Those people are called Grimaldi. The 

Grimaldi were there in the southern tip of Africa and 

traveled up the entire western coast, then came to the 

northwestern coast of Africa, and crossed into Spain. 

Not only in Spain, but all the way up to Austria; it was 

found that the Grimaldi had traveled and left their 

drawings in caves all along the way. In the Museum 

of Natural History, New York City, New York, you can see 

Grimaldi paintings going back to at least 35,000 years ago. 

I remind you that it is only about 31,000 years before Adam 

and Eve! It is very important you realize that, the next time 

you talk about Adam and Eve. So we are told that there is 

an Adam and Eve that started the world, but that is a 

"Jewish world" and I'm talking about before Abraham, the 

first Jew. 

The country that I am talking about now goes back to a 

period called the Sibellian Period. Sibellian I brings us to a 

period where you will find hieratic writings, the type that 

no one in modern times has been able to decipher. Sibellian 

II existed about 25,000 years before the birth of Jesus-the 

Christ. Sibillian III would bring us to about 10,000 B.C.E., 

in which we now have the Stellar Calendar that I spoke 

about, and the pre-dynastic period will be considered from 

the same, 10,000 to 6,000 B.C.E., and that is the point when 

High Priest Manetho, in about 227 or 226 B.C.E., attempted 

to present for the Greeks, who had imposed upon him to 

write a kind of chronological history of the Nile Valley. 

Europeans, instead of saying what Manetho said in his 

chronology of the history of the Nile Valley, forget to say it 

was at the end of the Nile Valley he addressed. For 

example, the "First Cataract," i.e., an obstruction in the 

Nile River, is at a place called the City of Aswan, when in 

fact it is the last; the "Sixth Cataract" is in fact Aswan, 

Upper (or Southern) Egypt. 

This is important to understand, because Egypt, which most 

of us deal with and forget the rest of the Nile Valley, is not 

at the beginning of the Nile Valley high cultures, but the 

end. High culture came down the Nile; but if you go on the 

Nile you will always hear about the "pyramids of Egypt." 

Yes, they are the "world's largest"; they will blow your 

mind, so to speak, but they are not the first pyramids of 

Africa; they are the last. There are thirty-two pyramids in 

Sudan, none in Ethiopia, and seventy-two in Egypt. What 

happened is that as the Africans became much more 

competent in engineering, etc., they increased the size of 

their pyramids in sophistication; thus at the end of the Nile 

you could see different forms and the colossal pyramids, 

the largest being one by Pharaoh Khufu, whom Herodotus 

called Cheops, and that would be one of the pyramids built 

in the 4 th Dynasty. The first of the pyramids of Egypt being 

that by Imhotep, for his Pharaoh Djoser/Sertor ("Zozer"), 

the third pharaoh of the Third Dynasty. The architect was 

the multi-genus, Imhotep, who introduced to mankind the 

first structure ever built out of stone, and with joints 

without mortar of any other binding materials. 

Now you could understand if I said that the pyramids in 

Sudan ore older than the pyramids in Egypt, and I 

simultaneously say that Imhotep built the first stone 

structure known by man, it would seem to be a 





contradiction. It is not a contradiction, because those in 

Sudan were built by two methods. There were some 

pyramids called silt pyramids, and the second method 

was mud-brick pyramids. Not the type of "bricks made 

of mud and straw" mentioned in the Hebrew Holy 

Torah, specifically the Book of Exodus. That has to be 

made clear. How did the silt pyramids come about? 

That type of pyramid came about due to the Inundation 

Period of the Nile River. This was the period when the 

Nile River overflowed its banks bringing down the silt 

from the highlands of Ethiopia and Uganda, and from 

the Mountain of the Moon, which the people of Kenya 

called Kilimanjaro. 

It is in this perspective that we are talking about Africa 

as a people. Because, all of that period of time we are 

talking about, you can go there now and see the 

artifacts in museums all over Europe and the United 

States of America. I'm not speaking to you 

chronologically, because I am using my recall; let us 

go back to the event that took place; and as I thought 

about this, something about medicine came to my 

mind, I remember going to the double Temple of 

Haroeris and Sobek; Haroeris represented by the 

Cobra Snake and Sobek represented by the Nile 

Crocodile. In that temple at the rear, you will find 

drawings of medical instruments going back to the 

time of Imhotep. That will bring us to about 285 

B.C.E. to the construction of the Double Temple which 

was during Greek rule. Most of the medical 

instruments you see there are the exact dimension, the 

time of Imhotep. That will bring us to about 285 

B.C.E. to the construction of the Double Temple which 

was during Greek rule. Most of the medical 

instruments you see there are the exact dimension, the 

exact styles and shapes still used in medical operation 

theaters today. You could see all kinds of symbols 

relating to the use of incense; you could also find the 

beginnings of the aspect of the calendars (the dating 

process for the farmers) the same the Coptic farmers 

still use, the 13-monts calendar, twelve months of 

thirty days each, and one month of five days. The same 

one the Ethiopian government still uses, officially; that 

calendar still a means of telling time to date. When we 

go to the Temple of the Goddess Het-Heru (Hathor) at 

a place called Dendara, we see the beginnings of what 

is called the Zodiac. The French stole the original, and 

in carrying it to France, in hot pursuit by the Arabs of 

Egypt, they dropped it in the River Nile. Yet a 

Frenchman said he remembered everything, and 

he produced a whole new one within two weeks. So if 

you read Revelations, like this false Zodiac, it has 

nothing to do with St. John, but in fact Bishop Athanasius. 

This is the same thing. How could the French remember the 

stolen Egyptian Zodiac so well? It was rectangular, but 

what they remembered is circular. Thus it is the French who 

made the Zodiac they placed in the Temple of Goddess Het- 

Heru for tourist these days, and the tourist guides will tell 

you that is the French one. So! 

You can see that even in those early times we were dealing 

with astronomy, and Europeans have not gone one inch 

further than those Africans along the Nile. What you have 

to remember, however, is that the Papyrus of Hunefer deals 

with the Africans who came down the Nile, who were 

already using this type of thing: and we must wonder since 

we don't have the day-to-day, or enough artifacts to put 

them together to see the transition. Why is it that the 

Yorubas of West Africa have the same structure of the deity 

system as the Nile Valley? I don't remember much because 

the Yorubas in their own folklore speak of having come 

from the Nile Valley; so you can stop wondering right 

there, since it is from their earliest teachings in their 

folklores. 

When we go down the Nile and look at the engineering, and 

our engineering goes not only to the building of the 

pyramids by Imhotep, this multi-genius, but equally to the 

time of Senwosret II, with the division of the Nile water; 

equally to stop the rush of water. That would put us right 

back to 2,200 Before the Common "Christian" Era (B.C.E.). 

The use of navigation and navigational instruments by 

using the sun and the stars as navigational tools—we have 

the best record of that going back even before Pharaoh 

Necho II, who saw the navigation of the entire continent 

and had a map of Africa in almost the common shape it is; 

and that dates to ca 600 B.C.E. Whereas Herodotus, who 

came to Egypt in 457 B.C.E., and Erastosthenes, who came 

there between 274–194 B.C.E., used maps which were 

rectangular in shape. They reflected the end of Africa being 

where the Sahara is, the southern end of the Sahara, 

meaning that they had no concept of Africa from about 

Ethiopia south to Monomotapa, now called the Republic of 

South Africa. It is important to note that England played a 

major role in most of the distortion that we are talking 

about. 

Then we come again to another part that we are talking 

about, that is, agriculture, before we even come to writing. 

At the gathering state, when man observes the seed 

germinating, and out of that came the religious conflict, 

which other men are to later follow, comes out of one of the 

most secret symbols of the religiosity of Egypt and other 

parts of Africa. We are now talking about the dung beetle, 

and the observation of the African along the Nile with 

respect to the dung beetle, otherwise called the Scarab. 





The dung beetle hibernates, goes into the manure of a 

donkey, horse and the cow, only animals with grass 

manure. And that beetle remains in there for twentyeight 

days; you know that particular beetle died in your 

mind. And when the beetle finally comes out, what 

better symbol will you have than the resurrection? 

The beetle played the same part in the religion of the 

Egyptians that spread to other parts of Africa, and 

subsequently into Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and so 

on. Thus the beetle became the symbol of resurrection. 

Of course the religion itself had started then. Just 

imagine you've got to go back 1000 years and see your 

woman giving birth to a baby. I hope I did not frighten 

most of you fellows about childbirth; because if you 

had some experience of seeing a baby being born, you 

would be less quick to abandon your child. As you are 

standing there and this baby comes from the woman's 

organ. You witness this, while the pelvic region is 

expanding about four or five inches in diameter for the 

head to pass through, and you are there. You can't 

perceive that you have anything to do with this 

100,000 or 5,000 years ago. Witnessing the birth of 

that baby sets you thinking. You immediately start to 

transcend your mind, and you also start to attribute this 

to something beyond. Thus you start to believe. You 

start to wonder' why is it here? Where did it come 

from? And where is it going? Because you are now 

experiencing birth! But your experience is coming 

from a woman. Thus you start to pray and the woman 

becomes your Goddess, your first deity. She becomes 

Goddess Nut, the goddess of the sky; and you become 

God Geb, the god of the earth. You suddenly see the 

sun in all of this and you realize that when the sun 

came the light came; and when the sun went, the light 

went; when the moon came you saw a moon in there 

and you don't see any light because the light is not 

shining on it. So you see there is a God, at least there is 

the major attribute of God because you realize when 

that doesn't happen, the crops and the vegetation don't 

come. 

You also realize that the sun and the moon make the 

river rise, and the Africans regarding these factors 

created the science of astronomy and astrology. 

Astrology, having nothing to do with your love life. 

Astronomy is the chart of the scientific data of the 

movement of the planets and the sun and so forth, to 

the movement of each other. Astrology is a physical 

relationship of astronomy, the water rising at the high 

tide and that is what the ancients spoke about and the 

division of the two disciplines. 

It was the Greeks like Plato, Aristotle and others who came 

and learned. In those days the students would come and 

read for their education. There were no books to take home, 

there were no publishing houses like now. You had only 

one book and most of the subjects were taught orally. 

Certain instructions were given toe to toe, shoulder to 

shoulder, mouth to ear. I will go no further than that. Some 

of you here may know how that was done and under what 

conditions. The English adopted it and called it 

Freemasonry. Sir Albert Churchward's book, Signs and 

Symbols of Primordial Man, is a corner stone of 

Freemasonry. Churchward was a big man in England. 

Besides being a physician, he was also one of those who 

made English Freemasonry what it is today. So in another 

adaptation, the British took twenty-two tablets from Egypt, 

brought them here and set up what they called 

"Freemasonry." Of course, the Americans followed suit. 

These Africans had moved along the entire continent. You 

see, we are treating the Egyptians today as if the Egyptians 

had a barrier that stopped them from going to other parts of 

Africa. So we say the Egyptians were of a special race, and 

they had nothing to do with the other Africans. Can you 

imagine the Thames River at this side stopping the people 

from the other side from contact with this side, especially 

when a man standing over there saw a woman here bathing 

naked; do you think that that river would stop him? Do you 

think that the Alps stopped a German from going to see an 

Italian woman? What makes you think that the little river or 

a little bit of sand would stop a man from seeing a woman 

naked over there in Africa? I'm using these common 

symbols so that you can appreciate what I mean. So it isn't 

because when you go to Egypt you will notice that the 

ancient Egyptians are shown by the artist as the ancient 

Nubians or Ethiopians or anybody else, except when you 

are talking about the conquerors. In most of these museums 

they purposely bring you the statues of the Greeks, of the 

Romans, of the Persians, the Assyrians, and the Hyksos. 

They don't bring you any of the Africans. So when they 

can't help it, and they need to bring you one that you call a 

typical African like Pharaoh Mentuhotep III, it is important 

to Egypt that they have to show him. What they did was to 

make his nose flat, so you can’t tell the difference. 

Thus once in a while, but when they couldn't do it, what 

they did say, was: "Well, Negroes came into Egypt in the 

Eighteenth Dynasty." Now it couldn't be, because the 

Portuguese hadn't created Negroes until the seventeenth 

century, C.E., but how come the Negroes created by the 

Portuguese have a place they called Negroland, which was 

in fact the Songhai Empire? In the map you could see 

where Negroland was, and so how do you get the "Negroes 

and Negroland" way back in the Eighteenth Dynasty? The 

Eighteenth Dynasty has such figures as Akhenaton, or 





Amenhotep IV, and his father, whom the Greeks called 

Amenhotep III; in the West you would call him 

Amenophis III. The civilization in Africa did not 

spread only from along the Nile, but it spread into your 

own writings, documents, and belief system right here 

in England. 

I now go back to the Etruscans, who later became the 

Romans; the people of Pyrrhus, who later became the 

Greeks, because Pyrrhus was what later became 

Greece. But we don't have these people until they 

came from the island of the Mediterranean or the Great 

Sea. At the time when they left, the Egyptians were the 

colonizers of other Africans in Egypt. Setting up the 

first educational system for the people of Pyrrhus, 

where the borders of Libus (now Libya) and Egypt 

meet; a little enclave which later became Africa. It is 

there that the educational system for the Greeks 

occurred, and from there the Africans moved the 

system to a place called the city of Elea. It is there that 

the Greeks would come. This is after they left the 

Greek peninsula, go to the Italian peninsula where they 

would meet others to come over to Libus, because they 

couldn't come the other way as they were going 

illegally, sneaking out! Remember, the period of time 

of which we are speaking, there is no writing in Greece 

yet. Until Homer there is no writing in Greece. No 

record you could deal with. Whatever they learned, 

came from outside, came from Egypt, came from 

Babylonia. The Babylonian writings are part of this 

origin of Greece as well as the writings from at least 

4100 B.C.E., the First Dynastic period, and this is not 

when writing started along the Nile. This is the First 

Dynasty, when Egypt reorganized herself from under 

two men. The war between the north, headed by King 

Scorpion, and the south headed by King Narmer, and 

that will bring us to about 4100 B.C.E. when Narmer 

started United or Dynastic Egypt. 

So the pre-dynastic period was the period of the 

introduction of religion, of mathematics and science, 

engineering, law, medicine and so forth. The period of 

documentation also started then to some extent in the 

First Dynasty. The period of belief in "One God" really 

did not start with Akhnaten, that is, when somebody 

said there must be only "One God." But the period of 

absorbing "One God" didn't start then, because it is 

that period in 4100 B.C.E., when Narmer, after 

defeating Scorpion, the leader of the North, decided 

that the deity of the North, God Amen (which you say 

at the end of every prayer, you are still praying to the 

African God Amen), be put together with his own deity 

of the South, God Ra. But they didn't notice that he 

made "One God' out of the two, God Amen-Ra. He used 

them in that respect. But the people fell into civil war and 

there was division again. From that union, God Amen-Ra 

became God Ptah, and the Goddess of Justice became 

Maat. Justice, shown as a scale which is the same symbol 

now used in the United States for justice, except that there 

is no justice in the United States, because one scale is up, 

the other is down, and that is not justice; that is "just this"! 

Justice is when both scales are on the same level, and so the 

African in America who asks for justice is being foolish. 

The symbol says you will never get it; you'll get "just this"! 

Before these symbols came the laws on morality and 

human behavior, the Admonitions to Goddess Maat— 

Goddess of Justice and Law. There were forty-two 

Admonitions to Goddess Maat forming the foundation of 

justice. Then there are the teachings of Amen-em-eope one 

thousand years before Solomon stole them, some of which 

he plagiarized word for word, and others he paraphrased, 

which are now called the Proverbs of Solomon. And yet if 

we could have stopped there we would have done enough. 

But it wasn't the last of it, so to speak. Because we came 

down with jurisprudence, the basis of law attached to the 

deity which we are teaching now as jurisprudence. And 

there is a thing in the African jurisprudence that a harborer 

should not get away from the penalty of the thief. 

During the earliest time of the Kingdom of Ethiopia, King 

Uri, the first King of Ethiopia had spoken about, "justice 

isn't based upon strength, but on morality of the condition 

of the event." This now interprets as "the stronger should 

not mistreat the weaker"; and this is supposed to be 

something said by Plato, just like the nonsense we hear that 

"the Greeks had democracy." The Greeks have never 

democracy. They never had one in the past and they don't 

have it now. When they were supposed to have had 

democracy in Greece no more than five percent of the 

people had anything you could call democracy. When you 

look at that, you find it was from this background going 

back to the time of Amen-em-eope that theses fundamental 

laws came from, you could see why those laws spread from 

North Africa and into Numidia, which is today called 

Tunisia. 

It is at Numidia then that Augustine's family, continuing the 

practice of the Manichean religion, carried it into Rome 

later in the Christian Era. When he left his education in 

Khart-Haddas or Carthage, it is that same teaching from the 

Manicheans that Augustine carried into Rome. Ambrose, 

the greatest Christian scholar in all of Europe, became 

stunned. But when this twenty-nine-year-old boy arrived 

and spoke to Ambrose about his education in Carthage, 

Ambrose said, "Man, you're heavy." And Augustine 

took over. It was the same teachings that Guido the Monk, 

who went to Spain in the time of the Moors, had taught at 



Continued from page 8– The Nile Valley Civilization and 


the University of Salamanca which they had 

established. And it was the same Manichean concept 

that made Augustine write against the Stoics. 

Augustine wrote the fundamental principle that was to 

govern modern Christianity in its morality, when he 

presented them with a book called On Christian 

Doctrine. He had previously written the Holy City of 

God. If you want to check Augustine to see if he was 

an indigenous African read his Confessions. There he 

will tell you who he was. 

When Islam came it was supposed to bring something 

new, but I ask "what did it bring new?" Because Islam 

was supposed to have started with an African woman 

by the name Hagar, according to Islamic literature. 

Hagar was from Egypt, and Abraham was from Asia— 

the City of Ur in Chaldea. At the time of Abraham's 

birth a group of African people, called Elamites, were 

ruling. Before Abraham, the sacred river of India has 

been named after General Ganges, an African who 

came from Ethiopia. The River Ganges still carries the 

name of General Ganges. And I notice in India they 

haven't given up the symbolic worship of the cow, 

which represents the Worship of Goddess Het-Heru, 

Hathor, the "Golden Calf" of the Jews. They also 

haven't given up the obelisk that still stays there, which 

the Hindus copied. Again came an Englishman by the 

name of Sir Geoffrey Higgins, who published a twovolume 

work in 1836, and in Volume One in 

particular, he is speaking about all the deities of the 

past being "black," but said: "I can't accept that they 

could have come from even Egypt, they must have 

come from India." He couldn't accept it! 

Out of that religion of the Nile Valley came the 

Religion of Ngail in Kenya from the same river base. 

And as the situation changed you had the Amazulu 

going for it, because the Zimbabwe river is still there. 

The people who were originally there were kicked off 

their land by the British, and equally by the Germans. 

When the German Dr. Carl Peters came there, the 

struggle between the Germans and the English for 

Tanganyika was going strong; both sides killed off the 

people around that area who spoke the local Rowzi 

language. So when you talk about Zimbabwe, don't 

think about the nation alone. 

Zimbabwe also means a metropolis of buildings equal 

in design to the pyramids' cone shape. When the 

sunlight coming in strikes the altar, the altar shines 

because of the sunlight. They had a mixture of gold 

and silver, the exact thing as what happens when you 

are down at the rock-hewn Temple of Rameses II, 

which is on November 22 nd , when the sun comes in past the 

doors. It also happens in February. This shows the 

commonality of the African culture throughout Africa. 

And lastly, just remember that when you see the Ashantis, 

the Yorubas, and all the other African people, they were not 

always where they are now. Arab and European slavery 

made the African migrate from one part of the African 

world to the other; that is why you can see in Akan culture 

as written by the African writer Dr. J. B. Danquah, the 

people with the same hair-cut, and the same beads and 

jewelry system as Queen Nefertari (the wife of Pharaoh 

Rameses II in the Nineteenth Dynasty), and Queen Nefertiti 

(the wife of Pharaoh Akhnaton in the Eighteen Dynasty). It 

is too much to speak about it, really. 

If you had known this when you were much younger, you 

too over there, you would have wanted a nation; for you too 

would have realized that if you have a golden toilet in 

another man's house (nation) you have got nothing. It is 

only when you have your own house (nation) that you can 

demand anything, because you don't even need to demand 

anything, you do it. It is only when you have your own 

nation that you can decide the value and the judgment of 

beauty. If I was ruling England and you came to run for a 

beauty contest, you could be disqualified even before you 

came. You're talking about racism; why not? This isn't your 

country. You cannot run for a beauty contest in a white 

man's country. You don't see any Europeans winning any 

beauty contest in China, Japan or India; but the funny thing 

is that they come and win one in Nigeria. As a matter of 

fact Miss Trinidad was a white girl. Miss Barbados also a 

white girl, and Miss Jamaica was a white girl, all of them in 

a Black country. And this is what I'm saying. You can call 

it racist, but you know I'm telling the truth. 

What I hope I have done is to make you understand the 

necessity for further research; but more than all, the 

necessity to talk to your child. When your physician tells 

you that you are pregnant that's when you start teaching 

your child. Talk to the child at the time of birth. This is 

when his and/or her education starts, before he/she gets out 

of school, and before you and I die. 

(A lecture delivered for the Minority Ethnic Unit of the Greater 

London Council, London, England, March 6–8, 1986. It was 

addressed mainly to the African community in London 

consisting of African people from the Caribbean and African 

people from Africa.) 

Professor Yosef Alfredo Antonio ben-Jochannan was born on 

December 31, 1918 in Ethiopia to a Puerto Rican woman, Julia 

Matta and an Ethiopian man, Kriston ben-Jochannan. Ben- 

Jochannan is the author of 49 books, primarily on ancient Nile 

Valley civilizations and their impact on Western cultures. 

http://blackherbals.com/nile_valley_civilization.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 





HOW AFRICANS LED HUMANITY IN CIVILIZATION 

First let as deal with the origin of the name Africa. It is 

now settled that human beings evolved in Africa. The 

theory put forward by Dr. Leakey, based on the age of 

fossils discovered in this region, was amplified by Dr. 

Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese nuclear physicist who 

devoted his lifetime (1923-1985) to scholarship. Dr. 

Diop, exploiting his rich knowledge of nuclear physics 

and chemistry, established that among the human 

beings there is a clear genetic sequence defining racial 

characteristics. African genes are the most diverse and 

original, indicative of precedence in appearance on 

earth among humanity. European genes are mutant in 

nature, suggesting mutation of Africans after they 

crossed from the African continent to the Eurasia land 

mass. The mutation was due to changes in climate and 

environment. 

Intermarriages between whites and blacks resulted into 

Arabs, Jews another Semites. This is inferred from 

hybrid nature of their genes, showing interbreeding 

between Africans and Europeans. Other groups such as 

Chinese and Japanese show characteristics indicative of 

further interbreeding from earlier groups. Hence there 

is only one unigenic, linear emergence of human 

beings, from black to white, to brown to yellow. 

The earlier theory of polygenic evolution has been 

disproved. There are no human beings on earth who do 

not fall within the aforesaid evolutionary sequence. The 

disgraced polygenic theory of evolution held that 

whites, blacks, browns and yellows arose from different 

sources and are different types of beings. It was racist 

in nature and sought to project some human beings as 

special and superior to others. 

After human beings acquired tools and developed the 

capacity to tame and harness nature, some of them 

settled along the Nile valley. More than 10,000 years 

ago the Africans inhabiting the Nile Valley had 

developed agriculture- wheat, barley, millet, lentils, 

beans, peas, onions, cabbages, lettuces, grapes, figs and 

pomegranates were grown. Flax for linen cloth and 

papyrus for paper making were important plants in the 

By Justice Patrick Tabaro 

Chair, MPAU, University Council 

Nile valley, especially in Egypt (The March of 

Civilization, F.G.T. 1950). 

With civilization came humankind’s capacity to move in 

defiance of wild beasts and nature generally. By 4230 

BC, Egyptians had invented the calendar based on 

annual revolution of the earth around the sun and epochs 

were counted with the appearance of the star Sirius, 

which is visible only once in 1,460 years. When it 

appeared, year one began and after 1,460 years the 

epoch would close and counting, with the first year 

would begin again. The black people of Dogon of Mali 

retain this memory to this day. They have never forgot 

or lost their system of writing, astronomy, philosophy or 

mathematics inherited from the ancient Egyptians. 

Egypt comes from Aigyptos, which is Greek for land of 

black people. The Egyptians called themselves Khemite, 

which also means Black. 

In subsequent contributions it will be show how the 

black character of Egypt changed to its present state. 

The inventors of the calendar, which is basically what is 

in use today, were also the builders of the pyramids 

from which structures such as temples, libraries, 

observatories for study of the stars (astronomy). From 

the pyramids you can calculate the distance from the sun 

to the earth, get proof that the perimeter at the base was 

a comparison with the revolution the planet Venus 

makes around the sun and the engineers had knowledge 

of cardinal points of the earth. 

We are not engaging in fairy tales. 

10- Traditional African Clinic – August 2013 

From the features of the pharaohs and fossils of the 

human beings of the time and from literature etc, the 

civilization of the Great Pyramids (about 3,00 BC) was 

Bantu in character (Cheikh Anta Diop, 1991 (1981) 

English translation). Cheikh Anta Diop regards his 

language, Wolof, as Semi-Bantu in essence. It is spoken 

by 95% of the Senegalese people and retains remarkable 

similarities with ancient Egyptians (ibid). The Mashona 

people of Zimbabwe who built the cities that now lie in 

ruins known to the history as Zimbabwe are Bantu. 

Continued on page 11

Continued from page 10 – How Africans Led Humanity in 

Civilization 

The similarities in culture and language of the people of 

Africa are a result of the commonality of civilization in 

the Nile valley in the past. 

From the interior of Africa some communities moved in 

all directions –southwards, northwards, eastwards and 

westwards. Among the people who settled on the 

Mediterranean coast were the Afri (sometimes spelt 

Afer)- Ivan Van Sertima 1992, Editor. During Roman 

times the area these people occupied in Tunisia and 

neighboring territories was known as Afriqia (from Afr.) 

The Roman governor or conqueror of the province thus 

became Africanus - conqueror of Africa. Africanus was 

named after Africa and not the other way round. Students 

of literature will note in Caesar and Cleopatra by 

Bernard Shaw that the ruler or conqueror of Britain could 

be referred to as Britainicus. 

According to information which we have interacted with 

this year, evidence covered by the New Scientist 

magazine indicates that Egyptian capacity to read and 

write extended to earlier than 5,000 BC, as opposed to 

invention of the earliest calendar available in 4,230 BC. 

However, this does not change the anteriority of the black 

civilization to any other in the world. The spread of 

African civilization to Asia, Europe, and pre-Columbian 

America because of its significance must be covered in a 

separate article. Above all, Greek classical civilization 

(650-300 BC) from which European claim mastery of 

knowledge is too recent. The philosophers and 

mathematicians, scientists, etc such as Thales and 

Aristole, the end point of the scale (650-300BC), are 

shown never to have known more than the wisdom or 

science of the Egyptian. The Greeks of the time 

especially Herodotus, who lived at that time and wrote 

the history of the time described the Egyptians of the 

period as having wooly hair, and dark in complexion-- 

typical Africans. He (Herodotus) made it clear that 

Greeks borrowed their ideas from the Egyptians. 

Herodotus was one of the most prominent intellectuals of 

the time. 

The Epoch-making scholarship of recent times in Europe 

typified by Isaac Newton, Copernicus, John Dalton, etc 

was based on heavily borrowed from Egyptian 

knowledge systems. What about the burning of the Great 

Library at Alexandria, which had been established by 

Egyptians? 

What about Memphite theology (750 BC) which many 

authoritative scholars believe is the basis of all modern 

science and philosophy? Ancient Egyptians made no 

distinction between science and religion. The Memphite 

Theology was authored by a black Pharaoh called 

Shabaka. 

Incidentally the Egyptian empire probably extended, at its 

zenith, from Ethiopia to the Atlantic Ocean (Chancellor 

Williams, 1991). Ethiopia in Greek means land of sunburnt 

people- land of blacks. I have started an article 

entitled “The Ethnicity of Bafumbira and British 

Conquest of South Western Uganda-Kisoro Today 

(2005)’’ that the Batusi entered this region from Ethiopia 

- land of black people through Acholi, before Asian and 

Europeans invaders turned it brown in the northern parts. 

Some of the blackest Africans I have seen in Kisoro 

District (my birthplace) are Batusi or the Bahima of 

Ankole. At the time of colonization the ruling dynasties 

were Batusi in Rwanda (which then encompassed Kisoro) 

and Bahima in Ankole. 

The state of law and order was impressive and so John 

Speke posulated that no African was capable of 

possessing such administrative acumen, and hence the 

Batusi and Bahima were not Africans, but Hamites-- 

aclear affront to the Africans people. Once it becomes 

clear to scholarship and the ordinary reader that the 

founders of the Egyptian civilization from which 

European civilization was built, had melanin in their 

bodies to the same level as blacks do south of the Sahara 

and that Africans owe their blackness to melanin, it will 

be unnecessary to quarrel with John Speke and other 

racist authors--the Africans will reclaim their glorious 

past and put racial theories where they belong-- to the 

dustbin of history. It is melanin and hence blackness that 

identifies Africans from other people. The Batusi or the 

Bahima, did not acquire their melanin/blackness from the 

sky. They inherited it from their black ancestors. 

Once it is established that Africa’s misery is not genetic, 

but is due to cultural, socio-economic factors and that 

Africans led humanity in civilization until recently, then 

ideas can be exchanged without self-doubt on the part of 

Africans, or racial condescension on the part of 

Europeans and their kin. John Speke who put forward his 

racial theory in 1860s should have been aware that 1801 

Count Volney, the famous French scholar who was in 

Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, made it clear that 

Egyptian civilization was black in character. 

Justice Tabaro is a retired judge of the Courts of Judicature in 

the Republic of Uganda. He served in various capacities in the 

Judiciary which he served for thirty six (36) years. Justice 

Tabaro is an ardent reader on Africology. He is widely 

published in academic and non-academic periodicals and 

Chairs the University Council of Marcus Garvey Pan Afrikan 

University. 

http://blackherbals.com/african_heritage_africans_led_humanit 

y_in_civilization.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

-11- Traditional African Clinic August 2013




THE MARCUS-GARVEY PAN AFRICAN INSTITUTE / 

UNIVERSITY (MPAI / MPAU) - A WORK IN PROGRESS 

Professor Babuuzibwa Luutu 

Executive Director (MPAI) and Vice Chancellor-designate (MPAU) 

Mbale, Uganda, East Africa 

THE MARCUS GARVEY PAN-AFRIKAN 

UNIVERSITY-MPAU was established with the goal 

of promoting a new kind of university, which can 

build on the experiences and in conformity with the 

need of drawing on African knowledge heritage, 

create an institution, which stands on “Two Pillars” 

with one pillar in the communities as centres of 

research and knowledge production, and the other 

pillar at the University Campus where this knowledge 

will be analysed, systemised, mainstreamed, and 

disseminated to a wider global community. 

Therefore the vision of the Marcus Garvey Pan- 

Afrikan University is to link Afrikan communities as 

depositories of African culture and knowledge with 

the University for the Application of field and 

theoretical research collaboration. MPAU will 

therefore be dedicated to the epistemological 

rediscovery and research based on that epistemology 

aimed at locating, promoting, managing and 

developing of Afrikan knowledge and wisdom, so 

that they can become part and parcel of the global 

knowledge systems in the process of economic selfemancipation. 

This is one of the inspirations MPAU wishes to draw 

as one of the rich heritages of the African people in 

order to provide the students, adult learners and the 

-12- Traditional African Clinic August 2013 

communities with a space in which they can learn as 

well as carry out research for analysis into dissertations 

and thesis, after having interacted and been trained by 

their teachers, community experts, and consultants at 

the University Campus along the community knowledge 

sites. The University will provide students with the 

facilities necessary for expanding on their existing 

knowledge and, with their teachers and indigenous 

knowledge experts in the community expand on that 

knowledge. Such a process will enable them to carry 

out theoretical formulations and reflections in an interdisciplinary, 

plural-disciplinary and transdisciplinary 

manner as well as comparative manner. The ultimate 

objective will be to generate knowledge not only for its 

own sake but for the sake of utilising it in society by 

doing and acting to transform their lives through 

interaction with the wider world and humanity in the 

process of African recovery and rebirth. 

Vision 

MPAU will be linked to African communities as 

depositories of African Culture and knowledge and will 

be dedicated to the epistemological rediscovery, 

relocation, promotion, management and development of 

African indigenous knowledge and wisdom so they can 

become part and parcel of the global knowledge systems 

and recognized as such. Concerns will include but not 


Continued from page 12 – The Marcus-Garvey Pan- African 

Institute /University (MPAI / MPAU) - A Work in Progress 

be limited to, indigenous agricultural, pastoral, fishing, 

metallurgical, meteorological and medical knowledge, 

historical and cultural accounts, cosmological and ethical 

wisdom. 

Mission 

Based on this vision, MPAU will develop a structure of 

knowledge, production, documentation and 

dissemination that stands on two pillars namely the 

Campus and Community sites of knowledge. 

Objectives 

(a) undertake research in areas of Afrikan 

Knowledge and Wisdom and profile such knowledge 

into a global research agenda 

(b) recover the feminine principle and document 

Afrikan Women’s knowledge from an African-cradle 

perspective 

(c) identify and strengthen community Sites of 

Knowledge as one of the pillars of the University 

(d) recruit researchers to undertake research on a 

new epistemological basis with(in) Community Sites of 

Knowledge and link them with other institutions of 

higher learning so that their research findings can be 

exposed to peer review and recognition 

(e) link some of the research activities to the 

university’s own staff development and training 

programmes 

(f) ensure that research findings are shared with the 

communities from which the knowledge was derived 

including documenting them in their respective 

languages 

(g) utilize the results of the research to develop 

curricula and create a new epistemology that can 

mainstream Afrikan Knowledge and Wisdom 

(h) document all materials obtained through 

research both at the Community Sites of Knowledge and 

at the Institute so that libraries can be built both at 

community levels and at the Institute 

(i) in collaboration with other institutions, develop 

ICT projects that can link rural communities to 

institutions of higher learning, secondary schools, 

primary schools, hospitals, spiritual and health centers 

for purposes of e-learning and e-health for the rural 

communities 

(j) publish the results of the research in the form of 

textbooks, monographs and booklets that can be used in 

kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as well as 

institutions of higher learning, so that these materials can 

become the basis of developing both a school and 

University system based on Afrikan Knowledge Systems 

(k) at some stage, through affiliations offer courses on 

Afrikan indigenous knowledge and wisdom at diploma or 

degree levels with the existing institutions of higher 

learning in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa as well as 

globally leading to joint degree awards 

(l) build a new model of the restorative economy 

based on research, innovation, learning and doing with 

Community Sites Knowledge as sites of production and 

exchange, and vice versa 

(m) raise resources for self-sustainability of the 

institution 

(n) build up collaborations and partnerships with other 

institutions both locally and globally in order to promote 

the above objectives 

(o) encourage and facilitate the use and terminological 

development of native African languages as media of 

instruction and intellectual discourse at all levels 

CORE PRINCIPLES OF MPAI-MPAU 

MPAU stands by the following principles, which are drawn 

from the African historical experience and heritages, which 

Africans have achieved through interactions with other 

communities throughout its history: 

• The Principle of MAAT of balance and Connective 

Justice; 

• The Principle of Restoration and harmony in the 

community; 

• The Principle that the African Community is dynamic; 

• The Principle of sovereignty, democracy, and full 

participation 

• Principle of self reliance and interdependence; 

• Principle of reciprocity and solidarity; 

• The Principle of Honesty and Uprightedness; and 

• The Principle of Transparency and Accountability 

The new transdisciplinary approach is based on 

Afrikology that removes strict boundaries between 

academic disciplines. Such an approach aims to work with 

rural and urban communities in the areas of expertise they 

possess. To access their inherit knowledge through 

research and teaching, and will necessitate the creation of 

appropriate protocols that can enable the Institute / University 

to establish an ethical relationship between the 

Institute, the researchers and the custodians of knowledge 



Continued from page 13 – The Marcus-Garvey Pan- African 

Institute /University (MPAI / MPAU) - A Work in Progress 

possessed by these communities. This will imply the 

need to build organic institutional relationships that 

enables the Sites of knowledge to have access to 

resources through their products as well as through 

institutional support relationships with the 

Institute/University. This will strengthen their capacities, 

including the building of quality assurance, functional 

applied research that also protects the intellectual 

property rights of the communities. The themes would 

also require the attraction of students and staff and their 

retention to this new academic environment and the 

instilling of an African patriotism and a Pan-African 

attitude. 

ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES 

The University will open with two faculties which shall 

aim right from the start to develop a transdisciplinary 

approach to scholarship, which is built into the 

epistemology of Afrikology. 

The two faculties are: Faculty of Sciences and 

Technology and the Faculty of Transdisciplinary 

Studies. These faculties will in the course of time be 

structured, into Departments, Sites of Knowledge, 

Institutes, and Centers. 

a. FACULTY OF SCIENCES AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

i) African Traditional Medicine and 

Healing programme 

b. FACULTY OF TRANSDISCIPLINARY 

STUDIES 

i) African Philosophy programme 

ii) Restorative Governance and Justice 

programme 

The transdisciplinary approach to teaching and research 

will mean that the boundaries between the basic sciences 

(physical sciences) and law, management, the social and 

human sciences (listed under Transdisciplinary Studies) 

will be narrowed, to allow students in the different 

faculties, departments and programs to pursue a common 

course that touches on the central elements, which makes 

all knowledge integrative and holistic. The same 

principle will apply to the departments within the two 

faculties. The transdisciplinary epistemology will ensure 

that the mono-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary 

limitations are overcome by enabling 

students to study the different disciplines in an integrative 

manner. 

BRIEF PROGRAMME DESCRIPTIONS: 

• Bachelor of Trans-disciplinary Studies in 

Restorative Governance and Justice (BTS/RGJ): 

The program will deal with the current interest in a 

“transitional justice” and its limitations, which has led 

to the new focus on “restorative justice”. Restorative 

justice has developed in relation to systems of 

traditional governance and international humanitarian 

law. An attempt will be made to link these systems 

together, in which African traditional systems will be 

made to play an integrative role to the existing systems 

of justice, governance, politics, economics and so 

called New Management. Additionally, it will examine 

the potential in providing bottom-up restorative 

approaches and solutions to the crisis of post-colonial 

statehood in all its manifestations and dimensions. 

• Bachelor of Transdisciplinary Studies in African 

Philosophy (BTS/AP): 

The participants in this programme will receive an 

exposition of the intellectual, cultural, scientific and 

religious fundamentals of African philosophy and how 

it relates to other traditions and systems of philosophy. 

The programme will cover the African origins of 

scientific and philosophical thought and its later 

developments. The programme will explore in depth 

the “Deep Thought” of Classical African Civilizations 

that flowered in the Nile Valley and its link with other 

African civilizations of “inner Africa”; the reception of 

certain basic scientific and philosophic ideas from these 

civilizations by the Greeks through which the 

Europeans received their training in philosophic 

thought, especially through Plato and Aristotle. 

• Bachelor of African Traditional Medicine and 

Healing (BATMed&H): 

This program is intended both for those new to the 

field, and those already practicing as herbalists and 

healers but who wish to holistically further their 

existing knowledge and practice. It will also cater for 

allied medical professionals. Its duration, scope and 

depth and the transdisciplinary approach fulfills a 

number of objectives, namely: exposing the participant 

to the historical, philosophical, theoretical and 

methodological underpinnings of African traditional 

medicine and healing; revitalizing, updating and 

validating African traditional medicine and healing in 

the context of other healthcare knowledge traditions 

and practices; and strengthening the African traditional 

medical and clinical practice and industry and its 

associated spiritual-cultural, agricultural and bioecological 

bases. 



Continued from page 14 – The Marcus-Garvey Pan- 

African Institute /University (MPAI / MPAU) - A Work in 

Progress 

References 

• Williams, C [1993]: The Rebirth of African Civilisation, 

Africa World Press, Chicago. 

• IMF [2008]: Beyond Macroeconomic Stability: The 

Quest for Industrialisation in Uganda, Staff Working 

Paper written by Abebe Aemro Selassie (WP/08/231. 

• Shepperson, G [1960]: Journal of African History, 

Cambridge University Press, Vol. 1 No. 2, 1960. 

• Thompson, V. B [1969]: Africa and Unity: The 

Evolution of Pan-Africanism, Longman, London. 

• Garvey, M: Philosophy and Opinions. 

• Marcus Garvey Pan African University Profile 

• MPAU Strategic Plan 200-2014-Final Version 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 2 – MPAU – Marcus 

Garvey Pan-African University 

their betterment. The African elites have not played the 

role as leaders of the African people in their socioeconomic 

transformation. Rather they have been 

operating a post-colonial State system. This has 

resulted in a peculiar situation whereby the knowledge 

of the principles and patterns of African civilisation 

have remained with ordinary, ‘uncertificated’ men and 

women, especially those in rural areas. Historically, 

intellectuals of any civilisation have always been the 

voices of that civilisation to the rest of the world. 

But the tragedy of Africa, after conquest by the West, is 

that her intellectuals, by and large, have absconded and 

abdicated their role as developers, minstrels and 

trumpeters of African civilisation resulting in African 

civilisation stagnating. 

What remained alive in the minds of languages of the 

overwhelming majority of Africans remained 

undeveloped because the ‘uncertificated Africans’ were 

denied respect and opportunities for access to new 

forms of knowledge. Consequently, they could not sing 

out, articulate and develop the unique patterns of 

African civilisation in a rapidly changing world. The 

challenge now is to move forward on a new beginning 

in which the Pan-Afrikan University plays a 

galvanising role in linking the African intellectuals to 

the African people who exist in their ‘Sites of 

Knowledge and Wisdom’ so that both can create a new 

relationship that can enable them to reconstruct a new 

Africa. 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

The Impact of Marcus Garvey 

By John Henrik Clarke 

When Marcus Garvey died in 1940 the role of the British 

Empire was already being challenged by India and the 

rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus 

Garvey's avocation of African redemption and 

the restoration of the African state's sovereign political 

entity in world affairs was still a dream without 

fulfillment. 

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the 

United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been 

up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus 

Garvey's prophesy about the European scramble to 

maintain dominance over the whole world was now a 

reality. The people of Africa and Asia had joined in this 

conflict but with different hopes, different dreams and 

many misgivings. Africans throughout the colonial world 

were mounting campaigns against this system which had 

robbed them of their nation-ness and their basic humanness. 

The discovery and the reconsideration of the 

teachings of the honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey were 

being rediscovered and reconsidered by a large number of 

African people as this world conflict deepened. 

In 1945, when World War II was drawing to a close the 

5th Pan-African Congress was called in Manchester, 

England. Some of the conventioneers were: George 

Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Dubois, Nnamdi 

Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. Up to 

this time the previous Pan- African Congresses had mainly 

called for improvements in the educational status of the 

Africans in the colonies so that they would be prepared for 

self-rule when independence eventually came. 






The Urgency of the Pan Afrikanism Ideal in the 

21st Century 

By Sserubiri Uhura Afrika 

Kyambogo University, Kampala 

The zeal of Pan-Africanism has remained a 

glorious ideology and philosophy that seeks to 

bring to life the glory of a devastated continent. 

There is no doubt that Africa, as a continent, is 

facing a lot of challenges on account of the 

phenomenon of globalization. In the course of 

history, Africa has at one period or the other 

become a battle ground for external socio-political, 

economic and even cultural forces struggling for 

her soul. For instance, one of the fallouts of 

industrial revolution in Europe was the massive 

influx of European powers into the continent in 

search of raw materials for their industries. But 

even before this phase of industrial revolution, the 

so-called discovery of the new-world had 

unleashed on the African Continent, the notorious 

trans-Atlantic slave trade, which led to millions of 

Africans to be forcefully taken away from Africa to 

the Caribbean. 

The subsequent industrial revolution and its 

mercantilist economic dialectics led to the scramble 

and partitioning of Africa into areas of influence by 

the colonizing powers of Europe, and thus was 

unleashed on Africa the period of colonial 

governance. Throughout this period, African spirit 

of brotherhood and communalism was sufficiently 

broken. Africans became slaves to alien cultures, 

political processes and value orientation. 

In the midst of all this confusion, it was the 

Africans sold into slavery that brought a new wave 

of African consciousness. Stephen argues that pan- 

Africanism represented a response to the waves of 

foreign dominance on Africa. In a manner of 

speaking we can describe this response as the 

aggregation of the historical, cultural, spiritual and 

philosophical legacies of Africans from the past to 

the present. As a movement, Pan-Africanism could 

be said to have originated from the European slave 

trade. It will be recalled that the enslaved Africans of 

various backgrounds found themselves enmeshed in an 

inhospitable and exploitative socio-political and 

economic system; an unfriendly terrain that saw their 

African origins as a label of their low esteem and 

servitude. 

Faced with these limiting situations; these Africans 

subsumed their cultural and ethnic differences to 

forester brotherhood, solidarity and a common ground 

of resistance against exploitation. In later years 

especially during the period of decolonization, African 

nationalists who had come into contact with Afro- 

American pan- Africanists carried the current of Pan- 

Africanism into Africa where it became a guiding force 

and ideology in the struggle for decolonization. 

Today, Africa is confronted by yet another 

phenomenon –globalization – that is of global 

dimension. That globalization, as a process, poses a lot 

of challenges to Africa is not in doubt. While some 

schools of thought believe that the process is of massive 

benefit to Africa, others believe that whatever benefit 

globalization has brought to Africa has come at a very 

high price. The contention here is that the benefits of 

globalization can very often be uneven-with the strong 

getting stronger and the weak getting weaker. This is 

particularly true of Africa. Aware of this kind of 

challenge on the African-continent, this work envisions 

to critically assess the relevance of Pan-Africanism in 

addressing the many challenges of globalization on the 

continent. 

Slavery played its shameful role in depopulating Africa; 

Capitalism denuded it of its wealth; Colonialism 

deprived it of birthright, and Imperialism emasculated 

its will to live as a human being and to enjoy its fair 

share of the bounties of the good earth. 



Continued from page 16 – The Urgency of the Pan 

Afrikanism Ideal in the 21st Century 

Africa can play a constructive role in the international 

community and, in the light of their bondage under 

European imperialism it can bring sanity to a world torn 

by greed, self- interest, and inhumanity. 

To enable the despoiled continent of Africa to come into 

its own, it must restore the pristine dignity of the Africans 

themselves, before attempting to revive the stature of 

man in the council of nations. This is one main reason 

why, on their countries attaining independence, African 

nationalists sought to create an image of the African 

personality which will undertake this sacred mission. But 

it should never be forgotten that under the most grinding 

oppression of slavery Africans themselves also thought of 

the African personality. 

When the slaves sang their sorrow songs either in the 

plantations of America or of the Caribbean, they 

remembered Africa, their home. These African slaves did 

not accept slavery as their lot; they were not supine. 

There were sporadic insurrections. Nat Turner 

unsuccessfully led his fellow slaves against the plantation 

owners of Virginia, just as Spartacus did in the days of 

Rome. Toussaint L’ouverture, from Dahomey, 

successfully led the slaves of San Domingo against 

Spain, British and France; he founded the Republic of 

Haiti. 

We must refocus on the fundamentals of our situation as 

black people. Since white Europeans began raiding sub- 

Saharan Africa in the 15th century for Negro captives to 

enslave; since white Arabs invaded Egypt in 639AD; and 

indeed ever since white Persians conquered Black Egypt 

in 525BC, the cardinal question for Black Africans has 

been; 

How can Black Africans organize to survive in the 

world, and with security and respect? 

That question has remained unanswered for 25 centuries. 

We must today face and answer it correctly for the 

conditions of this 21st century, or we perish. For the sake 

of continuity, we must ask; is any of the 20th century 

brands of Pan- Africanism still relevant to our situation 

today? Can any of them help us to organize and survive, 

with security and respect, in the world of the 21st 

century? 

We are clear that Pan Africanism is the primary objective 

and condition for alleviating our suffering and better 

enabling our progress and development. We must 

politically educate and organize the scattered, suffering, 

and struggling African Masses worldwide into the 

movement and organization for the total liberation and 

unification of the entire black Africa. We accept, as a 

17- Traditional African Clinic August 2013 

historical fact and current reality that all persons of African 

descent, wherever we are scattered, in Africa (north 

and south of the Sahara) and the African Diaspora, are 

African, and belong to the Africa. 

We understand that the scattering of Africans all over the 

world and our continuing untold suffering is due 

primarily; to the racist, capitalist, imperialist system and 

that nation, class and gender struggle is the motive force 

for qualitative, revolutionary, change and progress in 

Africa and the World. The struggle is for the complete 

independence, unification and revolutionary development 

of black Africa. 

Pan-Africanism must be our objective for the total 

liberation and unification of black Africa. The African 

people must be politically educated and organized in a 

mass, revolutionary movement to achieve the Pan- 

African objective; and that ideological struggle and 

revolutionary work are the essential determining forces in 

our struggle to achieve Pan-Africanism. 

Just over a decade into the 21st century, things are critical 

for African people. Capitalist Imperialism has continued 

to experience the crises that have convulsed it since its 

initiation as a dominant global political economy. 

The march of capitalism in the form of rehashed 

variations of the ideologies of exploitation has continued 

and has completed its dominance of the globe. All of this 

has had a brutal impact on the masses of poor and 

working people in every section of the world with any 

semblance of industrial development and now threatens 

even the most remote cultures that have yet to be 

overwhelmed by the avaricious passions of the profit 

machine. 

Central to this continuation of this culture of death, 

destruction, rape and robbery, stands the African. In the 

fifty odd years since the military defeat of the African 

revolutionary struggles of the 1960s and 70s, the 

counterrevolution has refused to let up in its policy of 

containment and destabilization of the African working 

class. It has continued to spit on the legacy of our thrust 

for freedom. 

The vultures and bottom feeding parasites of bourgeois 

society continue their brazen, parasitic political 

exploitation of the African masses, while the lumpen 

petty- bourgeoisie grow fat and wealthy on the trap of 

economic extraction in the form of advanced merchant 

capitalism, usury, the illegal drug trade, and so on. In the 

final analysis, the African nation and its revolution is in 

critical condition; after a nearly four decades of 

stagnation, it is short on vitality, long on decay, and rife 

with abject confusion- the legacy of vicious 


Continued from page 17 - The Urgency of the Pan 


counterrevolution from outside and within. 

Within the new, living, vibrant current is where a 

contingency of forces must begin to nail down the 

blueprint for African revolution in the 21st century. Pan- 

Africanism stands on the foundations of our ancestors 

who carried the work of developing revolutionary 

theory, strategy, and tactics before they were cut down 

by the counterinsurgency. It has finally arrived at the 

point where it can say to the past, “we have learned 

from you and now we are ready to add to you.” Pan 

Africanism must stare the future straight in the face and 

gives full expression of the real interests and 

articulations of the struggling masses of African people. 

Neocolonialism, which is the last stage of capitalism and 

imperialism in all of its forms and manifestations, is the 

primary enemy of Africa and the African Diaspora 

today. Leaders and members of parties and movements 

in Africa and the African Diaspora who misuse their 

historical positions in the mass organizations or 

movements during the national liberation phase of our 

struggle; who are in positions of power in these parties, 

movements and in government today, and are unwilling 

to improve the conditions of the people; and who misuse 

their positions of power to accumulate individual/ 

family/tribal privileges and wealth are neo-colonial 

puppets and enemies of the people and the Pan-African 

movement. 

African scholars are revisiting the nationalist period and 

the aborted national project. There is renewed interest in 

the Pan-Africanist vision. There is no way, it is argued, 

and black Africa can truly develop in the face of the 

threat of marginalization by the new imperialist assault 

called globalization, unless it unites. 

The Pan Africanism ideology must give primacy to 

politics. It must be a political ideology, not a 

developmentalist programme. It must provide a vision 

not simply set out a goal. It must inspire and mobilize. 

While black African unity is undoubtedly the rallying 

cry it must unite us to struggle and inspire us to struggle 

to unite. 

No doubt Africa needs economic development. But as 

the Lagos Plan of Action, which was shamelessly 

rejected by African states because of lack of 

endorsement by their imperialist masters, argued, such 

development cannot be self- reliant or sustainable unless 

African economies and resources are internally 

integrated. This in itself requires a political decision. 

Pan-Africanism in its theory and ideology, in its pro- 

gramme and strategy must be anti- imperialist and propeople. 

It must totally and uncompromisingly distance itself 

from the position that globalization offers opportunities and 

challenges and that we should use the opportunities. The 

fact that in your struggle you may wrench the master’s 

weapon and turn it against him does not mean the master 

has given you an opportunity to do so. Globalization, as all 

serious studies show is a process of further intensification 

of imperialist exploitation through deepening the 

integration of the world economy in the interest of 

international finance capital. 

These dilemmas, to a certain extent, may be overcome by 

the conception of Pan-Africanism as a peoples’ ideology of 

struggle and a vision of liberation as opposed to the statist 

Pan-Africanism of leaders. Pan-Africanism must be a 

bottom- up people’s ideology putting pressures on their 

states and monitoring their actions rather than a top- down 

statist programme or plan. People’s Pan-Africanism must 

be wary of black African states and their imperialist 

backers who wrap up their “nepadisms” in the garb of Pan- 

Africanism. 

A spectre is haunting Africa- the spectre of Pan- 

Africanism. We Africans have been exploited a great deal, 

humiliated a great deal, disregarded a great deal. Now we 

want to make a revolution, a Pan-Africanist revolution so 

that we are never again exploited, humiliated and 

disregarded. 

It could well be that the Black comprador elites in Africa 

today have degenerated from the level of humanity 

displayed by their ancestors, and have become subhuman in 

their preference to stomach insults and dishonor gladly; that 

they are spineless enough to suffer humiliation with 

equanimity; that they are so debased that they can 

contemplate without indignation the prospect of the 

extermination of the black race; that they lack human selfrespect, 

lack a sense of dishonor, and are quite happy to 

live in a state of shame! Otherwise, why have they put up 

with the disgrace of being last in everything laudable on 

earth? Why are they tolerating gross misgovernment, 

chronic maldevelopment and a disgraceful powerlessness? 

It is quite possible that our Black comprador rulers are too 

infantile to take responsibility for the collective security of 

Black people; too infantile or comatose to take an interest 

in the processes of extermination that have already been 

unleashed on us by our European and Arab enemies; too 

infantile to comprehend the abundant evidence of our 

extermination; too deranged to understand that the survival 

of a people cannot and should not be left to happenstance or 

to the enemy‘s goodwill. 

Frankly speaking, our leaders are like crawling babies who 



Continued from page 18 – The Urgency of the Pan 


are eating dirt and playing in a sandpit without knowing 

they are in the middle of a battlefield. All they are 

concerned with is stuffing their mouths and being 

entertained by the booming sounds of artillery, the rata-tat-tat 

of machine gun fire, the spectacle of 

explosions and laser guns lighting up the night sky. 

Being breast-feeding infants well below the age of 

reason, and too young to be frightened, thinking about 

their safety is well beyond their ability. 

Our leadership is infantile. They are psychologically 

retarded babies in adult-sized bodies. Never 

having been taught their true history, they 

are like those adults who have regressed to 

the mental state of babies after being hypnotically 

deprived of the memory of their past. The babyish 

mentality of our elites prevents them from 

understanding the danger in which we are. Like babies 

at the breast, we cannot recognize the abundant 

evidence of the grave threats to our survival. 

For half a century we have had a Pan-Africanism that, 

due to ignorance or lack of appropriate information 

about Black Africa‘s historical, sociological, cultural 

and security realities, is mostly disconnected from and 

unresponsive to the Black African peoples’ problems, 

aspirations and interests. The time is overdue for the 

demise of that kind of Pan-Africanism. 

But if we have any sense of race honor, and if we wish 

to physically survive we need a new Pan-Africanism, a 

Pan-Africanism with a clearly articulated and 

consistent set of doctrines, a Pan-Africanism with 

correct objectives and strategy, a Pan-Africanism that is 

committed to building a Black superpower in Africa. 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 15 - The Impact of Marcus 

Garvey 

The Pan-African Congress in Manchester was radically 

different from all of the other congresses. For the first 

time Africans from Africa, Africans from the 

Caribbean and Africans from the United States had 

come together and designed a program for the future 

independence of Africa. Those who attended the 

conference were of many political persuasions and 

different ideologies, yet the teachings of Marcus 

Garvey were the main ideological basis for the 5th Pan- 

African Congress in Manchester, England in 1945. 

Some of the conveners of this congress would return to 

Africa in the ensuing years to eventually lead their 

respective nations toward independence and beyond. In 

1947, a Ghanaian student who had studied ten years in the 

United States, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah returned to Ghana on 

the invitation of Joseph B. Danquah, his former 

schoolmaster. Nkrumah would later become Prime 

Minister. In his fight for the complete independence for the 

Gold Coast later to be known as Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah 

acknowledged his political indebtedness to the political 

teachings of Marcus Garvey. 

On September 7, 1957, Ghana became a free selfgoverning 

nation, the first member of the British 

Commonwealth of Nations to become self-governing. 

Ghana would later develop a Black Star Line patterned 

after the maritime dreams of Marcus Garvey. My point here 

is that the African Independence Explosion, which started 

with the independence of Ghana, was symbolically and 

figuratively bringing the hopes of Marcus Garvey alive. 

In the Caribbean Islands the concept of Federation and 

Political union of all the islands was now being looked 

upon as a realizable possibility. Some constitutional 

reforms and changing attitudes, born of this awareness, 

were improving the life of the people of these islands. 

In the United States the Supreme Court's decision of 1954, 

outlawing segregation in school systems was greeted with 

mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African- 

Americans. A year after this decision the Montgomery Bus 

Boycott, the Freedom Rides and the demand for equal pay 

for Black teachers that subsequently became a demand for 

equal education for all, would become part of the central 

force that would set the fight for liberation in motion. 

The enemies of Africans, the world over were gathering 

their counter-forces while a large number of them 

pretended to be sympathetic to the African's cause. Some of 

these pretenders, both Black and White, were F.B.I. and 

other agents of the government whose mission it was to 

frustrate and destroy the Civil Rights Movement. In a 

different way the same thing was happening in Africa. 

The coups and counter-coups kept most African states from 

developing into the strong independent and sovereign states 

they had hoped to become. 


While the Africans had gained control over their state's 

apparatus, the colonialist's still controlled the economic 

apparatus of most African states. Africans were discovering 

to their amazement that a large number of the Africans, 

who had studied abroad were a detriment to the aims and 

goals of their nation. None of them had been trained to rule 

an African state by the use of the best of African traditional 

forms and strategies. As a result African states, in the main, 

became imitations of European states and most of their 

leaders could justifiably be called Europeans with black 





Towards An Africology of Knowledge Production and 

African Regeneration - Excerpt 

By Professor Dani Wadada Nabudere - RIP 

Former Chancellor, Marcus Garvey Pan African Institute/University 

near relatives in the animal kingdom, lay in the 

highland interior of East Africa, where 

equatorial forest belt is broken by mountains and 

high savannah parklands running south from 

Ethiopia to the Cape. At the heart of this region 

lies the Great Rift Valley, its floor strewn with 

spectacular lakes, its sides rising steeply to the 

high plateaux surmounted by the blue cones of a 

thousand volcanic peaks” [Oliver, 1991: 1]. 

The Cradle and the World. 

Dr. Louis Leakey’s archaeological discoveries in East 

Africa dispelled any doubts about the Cradle of 

Humanity being located in the Great Rift Valleys of 

East Africa. It is here that humanity originates fully as 

sapiens sapiens, despite attempts to assert the 

contrary by scientists who are ideologically driven by 

race theories [Diop, 1981: 25-68]. Even before 

Leakey made the historic discoveries, the Greeks had 

long recognised the originality of the people in the 

Nile Valley. Writing in the first century BC, Diodorus 

of Sicily had observed that the Nubian or Ethiopian 

people whom he visited seemed to be the first “to 

emerge from the bowels of the earth and begin to 

live.” He also observed that most of the practices 

adopted by the Egyptians were of Nubian or 

Ethiopian origin and, especially, “the college of 

priests,” which were “almost in all respects identical 

in the two nations” [Quoted in Obenga, 1995: 73-4]. 

An outstanding British historian on Africa, Roland 

Oliver, with this in mind stated what most scholars 

have increasingly come to accept: 

“It seems that we all belong, ultimately, to Africa. 

Almost certainly, the Garden of Eden, in which 

our ancestors grew gradually apart from their 

Roland Oliver adds that the recent findings of 

molecular biology had revealed that the planet was 

not merely first colonised from Africa: it was also 

“largely recolonised by the first fully sapient men 

spreading out, again from Africa, to the rest of the 

world, within the last 25,000 years. He observes that 

if this new knowledge were to spread and pondered 

over by the next generation of scientists across the 

whole spectrum of intellectual disciplines, “the 

outside world will learn to think of Africa with more 

respect and that Africans themselves will face their 

fellows with a new confidence” [Ibid: 252]. Oliver 

concludes that should this “hypothesis” become 

established, then “a major revision of the existing 

literature of prehistory would become necessary, but 

the resulting modifications of generally received 

opinion should be less far-reaching than for the other 

continents” [Ibid: 26]. 

But this respect and confidence as well as the major 

revisions of literature on the prehistory of 

humankind (but also of the history of the world) will 

not come on their own. This effort will require a new 

crop of African scholars themselves not just to be 

proud of the fact that the Cradle of Humankind was 

located in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, but 

also to follow this up by demonstrating themselves 

as Cheik Anta Diop and those who have followed 

him have done: that the civilisational achievements 



Continued from page 20 – Towards An Africology of 

Knowledge Production and African Regeneration 

of Egypt were achievements of those of the African 

people and that those achievements were later to 

become archetypes that ‘streamed’ from the Cradle to 

the rest of humankind in the rest of the world. Such 

new discoveries will reveal that the achievements of 

early humankind in the Cradle were in fact to become 

the common heritage of the whole world, showing their 

universal character. 

But what is it that we are talking about here? We are 

talking about the need for a mental/psychological 

revolution involving the understanding of ourselves 

historically and in the present. The records are there for 

us to interpret and apply to our situation. The 

restatement of the fact that Africa was the Cradle of 

Humankind will not of itself mean much unless we can 

demonstrate that it was from here that the original ideas 

that formed human knowledge and wisdom were 

created and to highlight those ideas that were crucial to 

human existence, but which have been used for 

purposes of greed and self-glorification in the modern 

world. More importantly, research in this area should 

lead to the creation of a new philosophy “that can 

reconcile man with himself” [Diop, 1981: 361]. 

Carl Gustav Jung was convinced of the originality of 

humanity in African when in 1925 he made his first trip 

to Africa starting with East Africa, in the course of his 

studies. For him, the only way to understand humanity 

was to see it from its originality face to face “with men 

of the other epoch” and who seemed to have put their 

imprint on Egypt. He was not impressed by the socalled 

“Asiatic elements” in the Egyptian civilisation 

nor the attempt to look at Egypt from the West, from 

the direction of Europe and Greece “but from the 

south” [Rice, 1990: 254-6]. Among the archetypes that 

Jung saw “streaming out of Egypt” to the rest of 

humanity were the divine kingship, the ‘Great 

Individual,’ the festival of renewal, the Gods, the 

Divine Animals, the symbolism in early Egypt, the 

symbolism of the Tomb, the evolution of the burial 

customs, the Temple, the ancient Egyptian psyche and 

experiences of the species, the pyramids and the texts 

in the Temples as “psychoanalytical primers.’ 

Jung noted that the most important achievement of the 

Egyptian-Africans was the knowledge they were able to 

assemble as they moved from the unconscious to the 

conscious. This is description of the emergence of 

Homo sapiens sapiens as they moved from the Cradle 

of East Africa northwards, eastwards and westwards. 

This description is about how the universe was formed 

as humankind became conscious and aware of self and 

begun to engage in different kinds of activities that made 

them human. In this way, the first Africans built up their 

first civilisation in the Nile Valley and established the first 

political society that lasted several millennia. 

Some of these achievements, which were later challenged 

by the invading forces were restated in the first African 

renaissance recorded in the Memphite Theology by the 

Pharaoh Shabaka of the Cushite (Nubian and Ethiopian) 

dynasties who tried to recapture Egypt’s old glory and 

reassert it. This was done in 716 BC in a document also 

called the Memphite Manifesto. In the Manifesto Shabaka, 

made an attempt to discover and reinvent the past glory and 

preserve it. He tried to remodel Egypt from the past after 

disruptions of several centuries by outsiders. 

The subject of the text was Memphis, its mythic and 

political significance “as the location where the creation 

emerged from the primal waters and the seminal locus of 

pharaoh kingship” [Assmann, 1996: 346]. The creator-god, 

Atum is referred to in the Manifesto as “the Universe” and 

is depicted in the text as “unfolding in the world” and at the 

same time “creating it.” In this way, the Egyptian 

cosmologies depicted in a combined way both an account 

of the birth of the world with a report on the emergence of 

consciousness and the idea political rule. The elevation of 

Memphis to the royal capital of a reunified Egypt was, 

according to Assmann, a “feat of cultural renewal,” which 

provided the impetus for the ensuing renaissance. 

The Memphite text also gives an account of how 

knowledge was created from the word and language. 

Assmann calls this an “anthropological discourse” which 

begins with how Atum created knowledge through the 

“seed” and “hands” of Amun and how sub-gods emerged in 

pairs referred to in the text. These creations are also 

referred to as the “teeth” and “lips,” which are said to have 

formed the frame for the “tongue” that in turn created 

everything by naming them: 

That the eye sees, the ear hear, and the nose breathes 

air is in order to make a report to the heart. 

This it is that makes all knowledge originates. The 

tongue, it is that repeats what is thought by the heart. 

Assmann observes that the process of creation is here 

conceived in bodily terms, “Phallus” and “hand” – the 

traditional physical symbols of creativity - are represented 

as “teeth” and “lips.” The genuine creative organs are heart 

and tongue. He adds that since the Egyptians made no 

distinction between “body” and “mind/spirit,” knowledge 

and language, originate in the heart on the basis of the 

perceptions reported to it by the eyes and the ears: 

“The knowledge formed in the heart is communicated by 

the tongue,” but the ear also hears, which creates a basis 





for communication in language-the basis of 

knowledge creation [Ibid: 352]. 

The text then relates how all the gods were “born,” how 

divine speech recorded in the hieroglyphs originated 

“from which it was thought out by the heart and 

commanded by the tongue.” With this all trades and all 

arts were carried out with the action of the arms and the 

walking of the legs, the movement of all limbs in 

accordance with the instructions of those words that 

were thought up by the heart and uttered by the tongue 

and thereby providing all things. Assmann points out 

that this is the most elaborate Egyptian account of 

creation by the Word, which differs from the biblical 

account in two ways. 

The first is the role of the heart that is the planned 

conception of creation- an idea absent from the Bible. 

The second is the role of script, the hieroglyphs 

mentioned on two occasions in the text. He adds that 

these two points are closely related: “For what the heart 

thinks up are not the names of things but their 

‘concepts’ and their ‘forms.’ Hieroglyphic script is a 

rendering of the forms and relates to the concepts 

‘thought up’ by the heart and given outward and visible 

form by hieroglyphic script” [Ibid: 353]. We shall see 

below how true this understanding the process of 

language is to the African oral literature and how this 

can help us to clear the confusion that Plato and 

Aristotle brought to the concept logos or the word. 

God Ptah is depicted in the text as the artist and 

craftsman, who endow things their ‘design’, their 

immutable forms and which are depicted by the written 

signs. Here is introduced another god-Thoth-who now 

becomes the god of the ‘tongue,’ but also of the god of 

hieroglyphic script. According to the text, Thoth is able 

to transform the thoughts of the heart into spoken and 

written language. In this, creation is at the same time an 

act of the articulation-conceptually, iconically, 

phonetically of the world. The written signs originate at 

the same time as the things they stand for and the 

names they bear. The totality of all creation is 

encompassed in the term “all things and all 

hieroglyphs.” The hieroglyphs are the Forms of the 

things that constitute the totality of the real world. Thus 

Thoth, the god of the script, does not have to invent 

words like Plato tried to do in imitation of the Egyptian 

philosophy, but to find what is in the structure of 

things. He records “all the things that exist: what Ptah 

created” [Ibid: 354]. 

According to Gadamer, Plato separates the name from 

the thing in order to create the “Idea” for the thing to be 

understood on its own. This is because the word was 

understood primarily as a name. We see that this was also 

the case with the Egyptians, except that for them the 

word and the name stood for real entities expressed in 

form. For the Greeks, on the other hand, the name did not 

represent a true being. This belief in the word (logos) and 

doubt about it, constituted the problem that the Greek 

Enlightenment saw as the relationship between the word 

and thing. Thereby the word changed from presenting the 

thing to substituting for it. The name that is given and can 

be altered raised doubt about the truth of the word. 

This is how dialectics was also brought in from the 

Egyptians by Plato to deal with the problem they had 

created for themselves in denying that the word/name 

was capable of producing truth. Thought in this case 

became dependent on itself and the ideas it produces 

were equally independent. Hence it is not the word that 

opened the way to truth, but the ideas that could be 

created and dialectically related in form. Thus, unlike the 

Egyptians, for the Greeks, the word (logos) is a stream 

that flows from thought and sounds through the mouth. 

Language is peripheral to the process and that is why at a 

later stage, the word is represented by a sign to which 

meaning is attributed. Gadamer observes: 

“It must be admitted that every development of 

scientific terminology, however, confined its use may 

be, constitutes a phase of this process. For what is a 

technical term? A world whose meaning is univocally 

defined, inasmuch as it signifies a defined concept. A 

technical term is always somewhat artificial insofar as 

either the word itself is artificially formed or – as is 

more frequent-a word already in use has the variety 

and breadth of its meanings excised and assigned only 

one particular conceptual meaning, in contrast to the 

living meaning of the words in spoken language 

[Gadamer, 1989: 414-15]. 

For the Egyptians, the sign represented by hieroglyphs 

are merely forms of the things that constitute the totality 

of the real world. The hieroglyphs represented the real 

world. Thus we can see that we are coming to the point 

where we must see that the restoration of the original 

philosophical and cosmological framework, which the 

Egyptian-Africans attached to the world and its power of 

creation of the Universe. The word and its resulting in 

language, and its attribution to god Thoth as the recorder 

of the knowledge created through them becomes essential 

for comprehending the world of the African linguistic 

world. Here language emerges as the living reality that is 

created by the beingness of Africans with meaning that 

springs from their culturally and historically constructed 

out of their ontological being. What we have to do is to 

construct a science of Africology, which can help us 





recover this originality of the African Universe and 

thought. 

Professor Nabudere was also the former Executor Director of 

the Afrika Study Group and the Marcus Garvey Pan African 

Institute 

http://www.blackherbals.com/Afrikology_and_Renewal.pdf 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 3 – Pan Africanism and 

Religion 

What Pan Africanism and African religion share is the 

commitment to uphold the well-being and happiness of 

the individual and the collective. Pan Africanism and 

African religion also oppose the callous biblical Cain’s 

doctrine that man is not his “brother’s keeper”. Detailed 

discussion of this doctrine may be found in article 5 of 

this series, entitled African socialism. One, therefore, 

sees complementarily between pan Africanism and 

African religious systems. Unfortunately the same 

cannot be said of the extraneous religions such as Islam 

or Christianity. The reason for this is the unspoken 

tension that exists between Pan Africanism and these 

religious systems. The source of the tension originates in 

historic times when the invading Arabs and Europeans 

launched sustained attacks on African culture and 

virtually destroyed African religious systems. Today 

both Islam and Christianity command substantial 

numbers of followers on the continent. They are, 

nonetheless engaged in a cut throat competition, not 

unlike the one between European nations during their 

scramble for colonies, to expand their spheres of 

influence. Often the rivalry erupts into violent clashes, 

pitching Africans against Africans. Sometimes sectarian 

conflicts develop within communities belonging to the 

same religion, again setting up Africans against 

Africans. It requires no rocket social scientist to see that 

such happenings defeat the ends of pan Africanism. 

Finally, it was noted earlier on that for socio-economic 

policy pan Africanism espouses Africanistic socialism. 

Christianity as a spiritual philosophy arose and grew in 

the womb of capitalism; in the Greco-Roman empire 

whence it spread to the whole of Western Europe and the 

near East. Its export to Africa meant introducing 

capitalist values. The Christian missionaries, serving as 

pathfinders and pacifiers, found themselves in symbiotic 

relationships with traders and the colonial militia. The 

capitalist values proved repugnant to the Africanistic 

socio-economic values. Collision became inevitable and 

able. The issue is yet to be resolved. We have to assess 

the context and extent to which it frustrates our efforts to 

pursue our pan African objectives. 

About lrmolomo: Born in Mokopane, Limpopo Province, South 

Africa; formally lecturer in History. Currently, Researching and 

writing on the liberation of Africa 

http://theideaofpanafricanism.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/panafricanism-and-religion/ 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

Continued from page 19 – The Impact of Marcus 

Garvey 

faces. They came to power without improving the lot of 

their people and these elitist governments continue until this 

day. 

In most cases what went wrong was that as these leaders 

failed to learn the lessons of self-reliance and power 

preparation as advocated by Marcus Garvey and in different 

ways by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Dubois, Elijah 

Muhammad and Malcolm X. Africa became infiltrated by 

foreign agents. Africans had forgotten, if they knew at all, 

that Africa is the world's richest continent, repository of the 

greatest mineral wealth in the world. They had not asked 

themselves nor answered the most critical question. If 

Africa is the world's richest continent, why is it so full of 

poor people? Marcus Garvey advocated that Africans 

control the wealth of Africa. He taught that control, control 

of resources, control of self, control of nation, requires 

preparation, Garveyism was about total preparation. There 

is still no unified force in Africa calling attention to the 

need for this kind of preparation. This preparation calls for 

a new kind of education if Africans are to face the reality of 

their survival. 

Africans in the United States must remember that the slave 

ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no 

hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people 

and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the 

places where slave ships dropped us off. In the 500 year 

process of oppression the Europeans have displaced our 

God, our culture, and our traditions. They have violated our 

women to the extent that they have created a bastard race 

who is confused as to whether to be loyal to its mother's 

people or its father’s people and for the most part they 

remain loyal to neither. I do not think African people can 

succeed in the world until the hear again Marcus Garvey's 

call: AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, THOSE AT HOME 

AND ABROAD. 

We must regain our confidence in ourselves as a people and 

learn again the methods and arts of controlling nations. We 

must hear again Marcus Garvey calling out to us: UP! UP! 

YOU MIGHTY RACE! YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH 

WHAT YOU WILL! 

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/Garvey21.htm 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 





Applied Afrikology, Restorative Practices and Community 

Resilience in the Mt. Elgon Area, East Africa 

By Ronald Elly Wanda 

Director, Afrika Study Centre 

Abstract 

This article explores the thermal characteristics or 

‘nuts-and-bolts’ of the epistemology of afrikology 

as a universal scientific epistemology that goes 

beyond Euro-centricism or other ethnocentrisms 

using cultural case studies from East Africa. 

Looking at three specific case studies drawn from 

Community Sites of Knowledge (CSKs) as 

depositories of indigenous knowledge systems, it 

makes an attempt to find out what Afrikology looks 

like. What is its DNA? Is it the water that quenches 

the thirst? Or the thirst itself? Or both? The author 

argues that the liberal paradigm imposed on African 

communities has undermined the hermeneutic 

power of Africans to interpret the world through 

their own symbols - which has led to a crisis of 

meaning, of life, persons, and community. In 

realising the falsity of dichotomisation of complex 

human relations, by certain restraining epistemologies; 

communities are attempting to correct this 

under a system of restorative practices that include; 

justice, medicine, and cross-border restorative 

cultural activities under the platform of afrikology. 

Through practical means and community centered 

interactions, the author tries to demonstrate how 

communities are moving away from the perspective 

of African “victimhood” by adopting the epistemeology 

of thinking from the heart’ as an approach 

towards renewed community centered empowerment 

and restorative intellectualism. 

Introduction 

We must ‘situate’ ourselves in our communities, 

dialogue with them develop new perspectives 

together with them; unlearn the wrongs together 

with the people, new ways of knowing ourselves. 

We can do this by drawing from communities, 

strong room as archival materials paths that can 

unite them into new societies.We have to go beyond 

this concept of integration to find a new fitting 

concept of the people of Africa who have a very long 

history of state formation – Dani Wadada 

Nabudere, 2006. 

The foundation of our talk in this chapter is the timeless 

supposition that we are culturally more together than 

we are alone. Our theme, aims to explore the 

practicalities of culture in peace creation and the 

workings of afrikology as an epistemology in East 

African communities, or to put it simply, afrikology and 

cultural clusterism in action. What does Afrikology 

look like? What is the DNA composition of cultural 

clusters in Mt Elgon’s cross border communities? 

To begin with, the first articulation of Afrikology 

declares that: “it is a true philosophy of knowledge and 

wisdom based on African cosmogonies. It is Afribecause 

it is inspired by the ideas originally produced 

from the Cradle of Humankind located East Africa. It is 

not Afrikology because it is African, but it is Afribecause 

it emanates from the source of the Universal 

system of knowledge originating in Africa. The 

philosophic product is therefore not relativistic to 

Africa but universal in essence with its base in Africa. It 

is also – (ko) logy because it is based on the logos-the 

word, which was uttered to set in motion the Universe 

in its originality. It was from that word that human 

consciousness first emerged and it was from that 

consciousness that humanity emerged as thinking and 

acting agent with language from the word as the active 

cultural achievement. 

As Dani Nabudere, the epistemological and 

philosophical grandmaster of Afrikology, in one of his 

last books (before his sudden death) Afrikology: 

Philosophy and Wholeness (2011) illustrates: 



Continued from page 24 – Applied Afrikology, Restorative 

Practices and Community Resilience in the Mt. Elgon Area 

Afrikology is not African-centric or Afrocentric. It is a 

universal scientific epistemology that goes beyond 

Eurocentricism, or other ethnocentrisms. It recognises 

all sources of knowledge as valid within their 

historical, cultural or social contexts and seeks to 

engage them into a dialogue that can lead to better 

knowledge for all. It recognises peoples’ traditions as 

a fundamental pillar in the creation of such crosscultural 

understandings in which the Africans can 

stand out as having been the fore-bearers of much of 

what is called Greek or European heritage as fact of 

history that ought to be recognised, because from this 

fact alone, it can be shown that cross-cultural 

interactions has been a fact of historical reality. 

Professor Nabudere argues meticulously that for centuries 

the African personality has been bedeviled by the burden 

of foreign domination that has thus affected her selfunderstanding. 

Subsequently, Nabudere urges that the 

process of re-awakening and recovery in Africa has to be 

one of a historical deconstruction, what he calls 

“consciousness raising,” not by others, but by Africans 

themselves tracing the origins and achievements of their 

civilizations. This, he insists, requires the adoption of 

Afrikology as an epistemology that recognises orality as a 

valid source of knowledge. He therefore, encourages 

researchers and practitioners alike to adopt a holistic 

approach towards recognising that orality can only be 

interpreted under a platform that accommodates multiand 

interdisciplinary approaches. Appropriately enough, 

this is what he calls ‘act locally, think globally.’ Implicit 

in this epigram is the belief is that it is local struggles in 

the villages that can guarantee African-rebirth, 

resurgence and renaissance and ensure that local 

communities reject neo-traditionalism that had been 

instituted by the colonial state. 

However, Nabudere at the same time warns that this 

should not be seen in isolation but in solidarity with other 

local groups elsewhere in the world. The argument here 

seems to be that if the driving force towards globalization 

is domination, then globalised resistance based on “global 

consciousness” ought to be its antithesis. The imperative, 

as such, for the authentic liberation of Africa, as argued 

by another revered philosopher Mogobe Ramose, 

requires neither a supplicative apologia nor an 

interminable obsequies defense of being African. “The 

African must simply be an African, that is, a human being 

second to none in our contingent but complex universe”. 

The brutal and systematic assault on communities across 

Africa and the subsequent systems (cultural, religious, 

epistemological, curricula’s, governance etc) imposed on 

communities denotes that this is essential. 

The dialectical Impact of Colonialism in Africa 

For Africans the world over, the advent of colonialism by 

Europeans was a tragic experience. In 1885 during the so 

called ‘Berlin Conference’, Africa was scrambled up 

among occupying powers with the sole aim of violently 

looting as much as they could in their areas of influence. 

Thus African states were created to facilitate and ease the 

efficiency of rapid colonial exploitation. The colony 

became a laboratory of caprice where all sorts of clinical 

trials (political, social, and cultural) were performed, 

causing untold suffering to African communities- effects 

of which still remain visible this present moment. The 

dialectical inter-phase that occurred during colonization 

also left Africa ruined psychologically and intellectually. 

The experience left two broad “legacies” on Africa; first 

was the denial of African identity and second was the 

foisting of western thought and cultural realities and 

perspectives on Africans. In Egypt for instance, the late 

Palestinian-American academic Edward Said has 

observed that when the British ruling class tried to 

assume political power over Egypt, it did so by first 

establishing British ‘knowledge of Egypt’.” Said further 

elaborates that: 

The British were initially not concerned principally 

with military or economic power over Egypt, but their 

knowledge of the Orients, including Egypt, was 

conceived as a form of power. The objective was to 

have such knowledge about the “distant other” in 

order to be able “to dominate it and (exert) authority 

over it.” This in effect meant denying autonomy of 

knowledge over the object of domination since to do 

so would have recognised the existence of knowledge 

of the object over itself. The object’s existence could 

only be recognised, in the words of the Colonial 

representatives, in as much “as we know it.” 

As such, the current cultural value crisis among Africans 

is the result of the impact of liberal philosophy and its 

associated discourses. For so long the liberal paradigm 

has undermined the hermeneutic power of Africans to 

interpret the world through their symbols. One common 

factor among liberal theories is the value that they place 

on individual freedom to pursue interests and goals. This 

is perhaps why classical liberals such as the British 

Philosophers John Locke and John Stewart Mills placed 

strong emphasis on freedoms from social control. From 

this foundational value of freedom follows the welfare 

state, wealth, and power manifestations of a mindset 

centered on individualism. Therefore, the concept of the 

world and manner of living which informs Western 

societies can best be described as materialistic. This way 

of life has captivated the Western civilization ever since 

and has been aggressively exported to all parts of the 





world where their civilization has gone in search for 

material resources and fulfilling its expansionist 

philosophy. 

Epistemological dependency culture in Africa 

Today in East Africa, in spite of flag independence in the 

early 1960s, the state is still dependent on Western 

political constructs, socio-legal ideas, and judicial and 

epistemological philosophies. Like elsewhere in Africa, 

this is because the structures of all nation-states (Kenya, 

Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi) oozes from an 

engineered political metaphysical past, where people 

never dialogued their differences as a basis for federating. 

They were simply conscripted into geopolitical constructs 

that they neither chose nor bargained for. Therefore, 

colonialism as such, designed and inspired many of the 

problems our communities face today; this includes those 

now being rotated as universal rights and the deliberate 

portrayal of women in Africa as victims of traditional 

culture and in need of rescue. 

The identification of African women as subordinate 

victims, devoid of any form of agency to resist or 

challenge oppression, has roots in historical, economic, 

social, cultural and political structures designed and 

defended by Eurocentric philosophies. Ugandan scholar 

Mukasa Luutu has argued elsewhere that this perception 

of African justice systems implies that indigenous Africa 

was insensitive to human rights and as such, the concept 

of human rights and its protection originated from 

Western civilization. On the same basis, human rights 

have been misappropriated and patented as an organic 

attribute of Western society and values; this has portrayed 

the West as the mode, the yardstick and arbiter over 

human rights concerns in the world. 

One other key problem characterizing the post-colonial 

state in East Africa has been its tendency to fragment its 

own communities into hostile factions. Instead of 

politically uniting its people within and across its borders, 

the African political elites have resorted to colonial 

tactics of ‘divide and rule’ and the ideology of ‘neotribalism’ 

by exploiting the ethnic diversities of their 

communities to their benefit and to the detriment of unity 

in the so called ‘state’. It is common place in East Africa 

to be asked by state operatives: We, toa Kipande or kitu 

kidogo or at times if you are very unlucky toa kitu yote’ 

(produce your identity card, or money). Instead of 

utilizing the rich ethnic and cultural diversities of 

communities as building blocks to a people’s African 

unity, they use these diversities to divide the people even 

further in order to, yet again, enrich themselves. In so 

doing they perpetuate neo-colonial domination and fall 

prey to powerful global force. They are therefore 

deliberately failing to deconstruct the exogenously 

hegemonic agendas wearing economic, religious, 

charitable and other guises programmed into the colonial 

state, preferring instead to reconstruct it in every way the 

former colonialist would have wanted- one that supports 

them and not communities. 

Under the liberal heritage (that has guided European 

thought on development and human rights for the last 

four hundred years) that has since been hurriedly imposed 

on African communities, by exogenous forces in 

collaboration with local elites, African thought and 

society has subsequently experienced a crisis of meaning, 

of life, persons, and community. This is because this 

liberal heritage imposed on Africans its notion of the 

world, values, and manner of living. According to this 

heritage, social evolution constitutes the basic principle 

of the world and its main assumption is that technical 

knowledge is therefore the only key to human 

development. 

This Western view of development is based on the idea 

that humanity moves in a linear fashion and that this 

movement or progress is unidirectional and irreversible. 

One implication of this view is that there is and can only 

be one path or direction that humanity can take, and that 

this is the one provided by advanced Western countries. 

And as Malawian Philosopher Harvey Sindima has 

pointed out, this is the understanding behind the concepts 

of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’. Professor Sindima rightly 

concludes, that “centuries have shown that the alliance 

between progress, science, and technology has not 

eliminated misery; on the contrary destitute has emerged 

and the future of all creation hangs in the balance”. 

The Legacy of liberalism on African ‘intellectuals’ 

and policy makers 


Nowadays in East Africa, Eurocentric ideas are still very 

prevalent and their liberal notions pervade all aspects of 

life, particularly in urban areas. ‘Modernity’ or ‘catching 

up’ with the West: its technology, infrastructure and even 

way of life seem to be the primary objective towards 

which many countries are busy striving towards. This 

precarious mentality has been worsened by a brigade of 

natives under diverse name tags such as “intellectuals,” 

“change agents,” or even “modernists,” euro-centrically 

trained, it seems, in the fine art of social, political, and 

worst of all cultural banditry. They tend to reject and at 

times even deny Africa’s own cultural and intellectual 

achievements. In another arena, one critic captures this 

self-denial psyche well: “It was African scholars who 

were affected by Eurocentric education or who had not 

been exposed to the rich cultural history of Africa that 

denied the existence of African philosophy during the 




“Great Debate” of the seventies and eighties.” 

Sadly, there are certain writers such as the Ghanaian 

Kwasi Wiredu in his 1980 publication Philosophy and an 

African Culture, that have busied themselves with the 

appalling task of watering down the insulting language of 

Eurocentric writers and their condescending attitudes 

towards African tradition-by supporting their fundamental 

insinuation that Western tradition of thought is 

essentially superior to the African tradition of thought. 

They have gone to even further by saying much more 

than this. Their conclusion is that Africans may never 

develop any respectable tradition of thought unless and 

until they can copy western paradigms. 

Cultural rootless leadership and community 

fragmentation in East Africa 

Today, one pertinent problem that continues to 

characterize our so called states in East Africa is their 

tendency to fragment their own communities into hostile 

factions. Instead of politically uniting its people within 

and across its borders, our political elites have resorted to 

colonial tactics of ‘divide and rule’ and the ideology of 

‘neo-tribalism’ by exploiting the ethnic diversities of our 

communities to their benefit and to the detriment of unity 

in the so called ‘state’. In so doing they perpetuate neocolonial 

domination and fall prey to powerful global 

force. They are therefore deliberately failing to 

deconstruct the exogenously hegemonic agendas wearing 

economic, religious, charitable and other guises 

programmed into the colonial state, preferring instead to 

reconstruct it in every way the former colonialist would 

have wanted-one that supports them and not 

communities. 

It is fair to point out, as such, that the current economic, 

political and intellectual elites suffer from an acute sense 

of cultural relevance before the generality of their people. 

Thus they espouse visions and programs of modernity 

and development driven by imported cultural 

benchmarks. This is a direct result of the impact of 

western ways of thinking and doing things and its 

associated discourses on them, which instills an allergic 

instinct against African cultural rootedness which is 

fashionably castigated as ‘backwardness’, ‘ignorance’, 

‘superstition’, ‘primitive’, ‘parochial’ etc. 

In a word, the African state can be summed up as what 

Professor Patrick Chabal has called ‘non-organic state’. 

Chabal argues that the African state is both 

‘overdeveloped and soft’. It is overdeveloped because it 

was fastidiously and artificially put into place. All the 

textbook institutions of a state and its government are 

present. It is soft because, although powerful, it cannot 


administer welfare. This observation later gave rise to his 

other book Africa Works (1999) that Chabal penned with 

Jean-Pascal Daloz, which he argued that, after all, there 

might be a way of perceiving Africa as quite efficient- if 

only we were to remove western lens. 

The changing global political culture: from 

globalisation to glocalisation 

All over the world today, there is something taking place, 

a ‘wind of change’ of some sort if you like. We are 

seeing a large shift of socio-cultural and socio-political 

attitudes where communities by and large are retreating 

to the local as the only source of security in a world 

where little seems to make sense anymore. With society 

at the international and national level seen as abstract and 

unrealistic, the local is increasingly being viewed as real 

and practical. In a world where once every local 

phenomenon was examined from the point of view of its 

national and international ramifications, the reverse is 

likely to be the case today. British political sociologist 

Frank Furedi captures this change well: “ironically, the 

more the world is becoming internationalized, with every 

region brought into an intimate relationship with the 

world market forces, the more the singularity of the 

experience of the parish-pump is insisted upon”. 

Social movements and Community interactivity 

In the Mt. Elgon area of East Africa, this restorative 

exodus has also caught on. As if responding to Herbert 

Stein, the American economist’s caustic aphorism “If 

something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” 

Community sites of knowledge (CSK)-{depositories of 

indigenous knowledge systems} are increasingly 

becoming nurseries for alternatives socio-cultural and 

political leadership leading to organic restorative 

practices, at the centre of which one finds efforts to 

address persistent questions of marginalization, 

discrimination and social and cultural exclusions. This is 

in large measure, a response to the declining political and 

cultural capacity of the state. Triggered by the realization 

slowly taking place in the region that democratization 

will not come from periodic elections, which political 

parties have for so long mistakenly viewed as their 

exclusive domain of operation. 

Political parties across East Africa, instead of being a 

force for democratisation, have instead been empty 

vehicles for tribal barons or cabals of kleptocrats without 

a committed agenda for cultural restoration or political or 

social reform. Political parties have been instruments of 

convenience for powerful individual politicians. Rather 

than help forge cultural consciousness they’ve led to 

further fragmentation of the state that has in turn led to 

further violence at the heartbeat of communities’. 




Newton Garver in his tidy article What Violence Is 

(1968) has suggested that violence is not only a matter 

of physical force but rather that it is also psychological 

in that it affects one’s ability to make their own 

decisions, he went on to show that each kind of violence 

has both personal and institutional forms. It is not my 

aim to take issue here with Garver’s account but merely 

to tap into his observations that I think are relevant in 

the context of our present conversation. Garver’s 

account is valuable as it stands. It gives a useful way of 

viewing a vast range of very diverse and often 

spectacular human behavior, a way which enables us to 

see through the diversity and spectacle to certain 

essential features in respect to Afrikology and its 

application in communities. 

Garver roots his account of violence in a specific moral 

practice, namely, the evaluation of behavior in terms of 

fundamental human rights. He argues that we get an 

even greater resolution of diversity if we focus on the 

question of what is common to these two basic kinds of 

violence. Much of who we are depends on our ability to 

act in concert with each other. This is true of our 

physical survival. Few of us could live for more than a 

few days, and none of us would have matured into 

adults, without the ongoing support of various forms of 

interactions. This interdependence, according to Garver, 

is also true of our community and cultural life. Our 

language, our knowledge, our arts, all of our social 

structures, and even much of our sense of self are a 

function of our capacity for interactions. 

I think it is fair to say that most of what we value in life 

is creatively woven out of our capacity for complex, 

diverse, sustained and systematic interactions. One 

fundamental purpose of Afrikology is to enhance our 

ability to interact with each other so as to improve our 

lives. It enriches us by amplifying our ability to satisfy 

our desires, power, through concerted activity. It is just 

as clear that diminishing each other’s ability to 

participate in such forms of interactivity impoverishes 

us all, sometimes as is the case in most places in East 

Africa, in violent ways. Afrikology is the art of 

interactions. 

Afrikology in communities 

Over the past few years, all the major social science 

paradigms from structuralism to Marxism, world 

systems theory and globalization that had sought to 

explain the predicament of African societies in terms of 

structures and epistemologies have been countered and 

critiqued by a perspective that places primacy and 

emphasis on the human heart, creativity and resilience, 

in a word- afrikology. One of the most important features 

of Afrikology to the epistemological struggle in the 

academic understanding of social and cultural change in 

Africa has been its capacity to explode often victimizing 

approaches in exchange for a much more balanced 

understanding of communities at work in Africa. 

Commenting directly on the heritage of the social science 

and humanities’ enterprises in Africa, Nabudere, as part 

of his intellectual trajectory for the 21 st century, and in 

direct reference to Afrikology, has referred to two 

diametrically opposed orientations. He characterized one 

as Eurocentric and subservient to European social 

sciences and the other as Afro-centric in that it is steeped 

in African knowledge from the past. He however, makes 

it clear, as the following case studies will attempt to 

show, that Afrikology is universal and it is at the core of 

the creative process of social transformation and cultural 

restoration, understanding perceptions, ideas, and needs. 

About the case studies 

As a way into this conversation, what comes to mind and 

heart immediately are four recent compelling community 

accounts. The first is a dialogue in search of meaning that 

focused on ‘language, culture and women’s rights’ that 

took place deep in the villages at the heart of 

communities across Uganda and Kenya. It was through 

this afrikological podium that we discovered a discourse 

in which the old traditions and cultures were able to 

interrogate modernity and vice-versa within their own 

contexts, which were varied. Such a dialogue between the 

two worlds had been an on-going struggle and counterstruggle 

that has to be recognized and understood. The 

two constituted a dialectical relationship and this 

relationship had to be interrogated. We came to the 

conclusion that modernity had not fully managed to 

contain and destroy tradition, but that on the contrary in 

some cases the latter had out survived the former 

although with the odd modification. This interrogation 

proceeded along the path that sought to highlight the 

strategies of survival adopted by traditionalism against 

the destructive impact of a globalizing and universalizing 

modernization -which offered no new benefits to those 

affected by modernization. 

The second narrative comes from Pi’Kwii a community 

farm and traditional site of knowledge based in eastern 

Uganda in search of community resilience through 

organic farming culture and agricology. Acting as an 

integrative knowledge system centre, Pi’Kwii under the 

directorship of Reverend Ebukalin Sam, a former local 

district chairperson, collects information on indigenous 

farming and agricultural practices and other methods of 

knowledge from Key Farmer Trainers within the Pi’Kwii 

farming zone. The farm then communicates on Tuesday 





and Thursday to the rest of the community on what has 

been agreed on their gatherings, such as new information 

to the community, events, other organizational, social and 

cultural communications including farming techniques to 

the rest of the communities in the region through 

recorded cassette messages that community members will 

then listen to at their own leisure and respond with their 

inputs back to the main cultural station. 

The community is organised into what are known as the 

‘4H-Clubs’ or simply in Head, Heart, Hand and Health 

clubs, aligned with extended families as the smallest 

socio-economic unit. Leaders of change from the 

community, local schools, strategic partners, and agents 

from other community sites of knowledge, also serve as 

important platforms of knowledge sharing and action to 

the site of knowledge. 

The third narrative comes from Iwokodan community site 

of knowledge based in Palisa, Uganda as it searches for 

judicial balance through the workings of restorative 

justice in redressing inter and intra-community 

transgressions. This arises out of realisation of the fact 

that western analytical philosophical paradigms, which 

inform social sciences and the humanities, tend to 

polarise situations instead of seeing unities and 

complementariness between them. This is in a way what 

dialectics has meant for western thought right from Plato 

and Hegel. Philosophically, the Iwokodan restorative 

approach has led the community organised as a clan to 

rediscover its sense of utu or humanness cultivated in an 

Afrikological epistemology that recognises unities and 

complementarities in relationships between humans and 

nature in general. The African beliefs, which we find, 

represented in the basic idea of ‘Ubuntu,’ or the need to 

take into account ‘reciprocal relations’ that guide 

peoples’ perceptions of themselves are crucially 

important in defining a comprehensive solution to global 

and local situations, which in African conditions, happen 

predominantly in rural conditions such as is the case in 

the Iwokodan community site of knowledge. 

The fourth account captures afrikological efforts by 

cross-border communities around the Mt. Elgon area in 

search of collective identities through cultural- clusterism 

organized through a peace and cultural animation festival 

that took place in November 2012 in Kapchorwa on the 

slopes of Mt Elgon. Cross-border conflicts in the Mt. 

Elgon area have had many dimensions with various 

correlated causes and factors. Although land has been a 

major contributing factor to the conflicts, other social and 

economic underlying factors have also played a role in 

fuelling the conflicts. In addition, the conflicts have had 

negative social, cultural, and economic impacts on all 


cross-border communities living in the area among 

them: displacement, physical harm to individuals; the 

destruction of property; death- resulting in a high incidence 

of orphans and widows; rape and other forms of 

sexual violence and exploitation; and the resulting food 

and general insecurity. Furthermore, these problems 

have presented the cross- border communities already 

dealing with conflicts of multiple types, from mineral 

extraction to cattle rustling, to drought, to post-conflict 

inter-ethnic violence, to the creation of national parks 

for tourism in both sides of the mountain in Kenya and 

Uganda. However, until now, there has been no 

comprehensive effort in focusing on culture as an 

alternative dispute resolution mechanism as well as 

restorative practices of cross-border communities as a 

soluble alternative in promoting peace and regional 

security in Africa. After all, the concepts of ‘culture’, 

‘peace’, ‘security’ and ‘development’ are indeed, 

intimately related. 

Case Study one: 

Community Dialogues on ‘Language, Culture and 

Women’s Rights’ in Uganda and Kenya 

Having identified the verbal dependency of most 

African intellectuals and social activists on Western 

processes of development and its concepts of rights as a 

major obstacle to Africa’s development, and because of 

the prejudicial biases that exists within their ‘modern’ 

inclined psyches; the purposes of our journeys in 

communities in rural northern and eastern Uganda and 

rural western Kenya were an attempt to bring about a 

meaningful, and productive dialogue between 

modernity and traditional conceptions and misconceptions 

of human rights by engaging the so called 

‘intellectuals’ representing the modernist view and the 

‘uncertificated/uneducated’ rural masses/natives representing 

their own traditional view. 

The objective in part, was to create an afrikological 

podium that will diffuse the hostility that exists 

between modernists and traditionalists both of whom 

view each other’s motives with suspicion. Modernists 

tend to view traditionalists as ‘illiterate and 

backwards,’ whilst traditionalists on the other hand, 

tend to look at modernists as muzungu (foreign) minded 

with imported ideas and in a rush to rid tradition and 

replace it with modernity. In a sense, similar to Western 

assumptions where the “barbarian” is inferior to the 

“civilized”, the rural dweller is accordingly, seen as 

subservient to the developed urban intellectual. 

Therefore, the verbal distance that exists between the 

two (urbanite ‘experts’ and rural ‘uneducated’ natives) 

among other things, is manifested by their ways of 

understanding, perceiving, interpreting, and evaluating 




as well as in their modes of articulation and 

communication of issues of human rights. The lack of 

meaningful interface between the two groups appears 

to be a problem deriving from the issue of language, 

culture, and meaning. 

Thus, this afrikological community conversation was a 

direct attempt at scratching the fabric and personality of 

Afrikology, in order to try and understand what is in the 

heart, not just the mind of those engaged in the 

conversations. It adopted the use of dialogue as opposed 

to debate; this is because dialogue unlike debate 

emphasizes listening to deepen understanding. A 

dialogue draws participants from as many parts of the 

community as possible to exchange information faceto-face, 

share personal stories and experiences, honestly 

express perspectives, clarify viewpoints, and develop 

solutions to community concerns. Dialogues go beyond 

sharing and understanding to transforming participants. 

While the process begins with the individual, it 

eventually involves groups and institutions. It develops 

common values and allows participants to express their 

own interests. It expects that participants will grow in 

understanding and may decide to act together with 

common goals. In dialogue, participants can question and 

reevaluate their assumptions. Through this process, 

people are learning to work together to improve relations. 

The nature of the dialogue process can motivate people to 

work towards change. Ultimately, dialogues can affect 

how policies are made. This in effect is restorative 

learning and unlearning that can only be cultivated by the 

use of an afrikological epistemology. 

Background to the dialogues 

On Saturday 16 th April 2011, a conference organized by 

Afrika Study Centre was held at Marcus Garvey 

University’s Mbale campus, brought together a number 

of stake holders (mostly women) from the world of 

NGOs and civil society at large. The conference 

identified a number of community researchers from 

Uganda and Kenya. During the conference, it was 

decided that two researchers (a female and male) be part 

and parcel of each dialogue. These researchers were 

required to identify a number of persons from their 

respective communities to engage in the dialogues, it was 

agreed that these dialogues be held at the heart of their 

rural communities, this it was thought would create a 

comfortable environment for rural dwellers thereby 

allowing them an opportunity to engage in the dialogue 

truthfully and without fear that at times is brought about 

by the “big hotel culture” that hinders certain community 

members from speaking honestly from their hearts, 

perhaps for fear of being ridiculed as not “fitting in” or 

perceived as saying the “wrong things”. 

The idea of the project, the late Professor Nabudere 

said, came as a result of a regional conference on 

Restorative Justice and International Humanitarian 

Law that he had helped organise back in 2008 in 

Nairobi, Kenya. He informed the conference that 

during the three day conference which featured prime 

ministers, ministers of justice and legal, and community 

experts around the East African community, he 

opposed the idea raised by some participants that the 

question of women and human rights in East Africa 

were confined to the tradition Vs modernity dichotomy. 

He instead argued that it was a question of language 

and culture. “There is lack of interfacing between the 

researcher and the researched. The ‘NGO expert’ ought 

to meet with the community and converse the issue of 

meaning” added Nabudere. 

Language and meaning 

Nabudere argued that language is a guide to social 

reality, and that it is the medium of expression for 

African societies. Therefore, from this perspective, 

experience is largely determined by the language habits 

of the community, and that each separate structure 

represents a separate reality. Mukasa Luutu, the Vice 

Chancellor of MPAU, who chaired the Mbale 

conference supplemented Nabudere by adding that 

language is a modeling system, and that “no language 

can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; 

and no culture can exist which does not have at its 

center, the structure of natural language”. This is 

apparent in the use of vocabulary and the semantics of 

words. 

Luutu pointed out to the conference that all education 

in East Africa has been colonially oriented; it had 

delinked people from their communities and societies. 

“Education as such has been presented to us as 

modernity-which has created a further distance between 

individuals and their rural community”. Giving an 

example of the Missionary schools in East Africa, 

Luutu argued that their primary mission was to change 

the character of the individual. 

These days, the script is clear. The state through the 

constitution imposes cultural restrictions under the 

auspices of the human rights law- i.e., you are allowed 

to do all you want culturally as long as it is not 

repugnant, in some cultures homosexuality is 

considered repugnant. The law criminalises this. Good 

conscience is considered good Christian values. 

Polygamous relations are prohibited but having many 

mistresses is allowed. 





A consensus later build up on the conference that the 

vocabulary of a language plays an important role as a 

window into the universe of knowledge of its speakers 

and their view of the world around them. Words are taken 

as a label of aspects of culture, and are thus an index of 

the cultural world of society. If a language does not have 

a term for something, it may mean that thing is probably 

not important in that culture. On the other hand, if a 

language has a set of names for something then perhaps 

that thing reflects some cultural essence of the people. 

Clearly, from Nabudere’s point of view, there is no 

particular language or culture that names everything or 

catalogues the whole compass of knowledge of the world. 

Underlying a word, therefore, is its relationship with 

other words, and the goal of analysis is to discover 

vocabulary sets that carry the underlying semantic 

components of the language and a people's culture. 

The outcome of the Mbale Conference led us to 

identify the following: 

• Community researchers (male and females 

numbering 12). 

• Individuals for dialogue. 

• The need to hold workshops to clarify 

appropriate approaches and ideas. 

• The need to hold regional workshops for sharing 

experiences. 

• The need to monitor and assess progress. 

The Conference also pointed out the four key areas 

that guided the basis of our dialogues: 

a) • Bridal Price. 

b) • Widowhood and Inheritance rights. 

c) • Gender Based Violence (domestic violence). 

d) • Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). 

Acholi Community Dialogue 

The Acholi dialogue focused on two of the above issues, 

(a) Bride Price and (c) Gender Based Violence. This 

dialogue was of particular importance more so because of 

what the communities around this region have gone 

through. The northern armed conflict between the Lord’s 

Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony’s (now a 

fugitive from international justice) and Uganda’s national 

army (Uganda Peoples Defense Forces-UPDF) that ended 

in 2006 as a result of a peace agreement signed in Juba, 

in the then Republic of Sudan, was one of the longest 

armed rebellion in Uganda’s history and one of the 

worlds’ worst humanitarian disasters. It began soon 

after President Yoweri Museveni usurped power in 

1986 also through a five year armed-guerrilla war. It 

led to the deaths of thousands while at the same time 

leaving around two million people internally displaced. 

The 23 year civil war also led to a near collapse of 

family and traditional structures; communities in this 

area registered high levels of poverty and crime rates, 

they became dependent on the state and the donor 

community as agricultural activities and other income 

generating activities were restricted by the state on 

grounds of safety, consequently it also led to the 

prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the area. As is mostly 

the case in conflict situations, of all the structural and 

physical violence that this community experienced, it 

was women and children that suffered the most. With 

this background in mind, I took my seat in the forum on 

Thursday 11 th August 2011, at the Acholi Paramount 

Chief’s home a few miles west of Gulu town. 

A prayer was said in Acholi and the moderator (Mr. 

Lak) then proceeded to introduce the topic, speaking in 

Acholi, he explained the reason why the dialogue was 

being conducted in their native language, he then asked 

each and every participant to introduce themselves, 

explaining their backgrounds. This, the moderator 

explained “was important as it makes people 

understand each other and each other’s points of view. 

“At times our point of view bares a direct correlation to 

our background. For the benefit of our friend Elly 

Wanda, the research’s coordinator, who doesn’t speak 

or understand our language, but is interested in what we 

all have to say, May I ask Ms Lapot to go and sit next 

to him, to assist him with translations. Thank you!” 

The moderator, then encouraged women participants 

not shy away from expressing their opinions, however 

“embarrassing” or displeasing they may appear, “this 

after all is the aim of dialogue”, he said. The forum 

made up of fourteen women and eleven men begun the 

dialogue on none other than Joseph Kony, the elusive 

rebel leader of the LRA, a terrorist outfit described 

above that has terrorised the Acholi community for a 

period close to a quarter of a century. 

The question “who was Kony’s mother?” asked by 

Vicky Arayo (local Councilor), in perhaps trying to 

understand Joseph Kony’s background, and maybe to 

also reach her own sense of closure triggered a heated 

discussion on African feminity and the role of mothers 

in conflict resolutions. Riming well with an observation 

made earlier by Nabudere that one cardinal 

requirement of Afrikology is the feminine principle in 

African consciousness and existence; Professor 





Nabudere has urged very strongly that African scholars 

must re-assert it as they strive to rejuvenate African 

knowledge sources. 

This has been an aspect, he has pointed out, which 

Western epistemology has tried to undermine and 

sideline in advancing their patrilineal cultural values in 

Africa. Vicky’s answer then came from Akello Laiyeng: 

“Kony’s mother was an Alima (slave), who came into 

Kony’s dad’s homestead whilst pregnant- therefore Kony 

is not an Acholi! I read this in a reliable local journal”, 

she said. 

The discussions continued into women’s participation in 

decision-making about war and peace, it was agreed by 

most participants that Acholi women were part and parcel 

to the initiatives that led to the end of the war and that 

their role has been pivotal in post conflict reconstruction 

of their community. 

Calls to involve women in matters of war and peace have 

begun being taken seriously in other societies around the 

world as well; this follows the 1995 United Nations 

Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, which 

returned women’s role to the forefront of peace activities. 

The conference suggested that governments should be 

encouraged to increase the participation of women in the 

peace process at the decision-making level, including 

them as part of delegations to negotiate international 

agreements relating to peace and disarmament. 

Lucy Lapot came in the conversation and likened Kony 

to Hitler: 

“Well, I think Kony’s LRA plan was like Hitler’s Aryan 

race project; he (like Hitler) also wanted to reproduce a 

new breed of Acholi people that is why he engaged in a 

vicious campaign of abductions of young girls and boys 

in our community. There are many similarities that link 

Nazi Germany with what we went through here in 

northern Uganda, but they have their differences also. 

The most tragic similarity between the two genocides is 

the lack of intervention. Victims of both genocides were 

deprived of the basic living conditions along with 

necessary means of survival. Whilst for the Jews in 

Germany, upon their arrival in the concentration camps, 

they were stripped of all worldly possessions that they 

still had, including their own clothes, which were 

replaced with prisoner uniforms. For us here, we 

similarly lacked possessions of our own for the most part. 

Even though we were still in street clothes rather than 

prison uniforms, we received many of our possessions 

through charities because we were poor. Whilst starvation 

killed vast amounts of people during the Jew holocaust, 


we here in Uganda, were dying of malnutrition. We 

were victims in all sense. We were deprived of the most 

basic necessities of life, not to mention how treacherous 

the psycho-social problems we’ve had and still 

endure”. 

Violence as such produces enormous insecurity and 

requires one to tread carefully when asking questions 

concerning those affected such as those in the Gulu 

forum. People living in contexts of open violence as 

have community members in this dialogue; tend to 

watch constantly for their personal and collective 

security. They search for ways to feel and be safe, and 

to find protection. For a moment or so, I found myself 

wondering what and how does the challenge of 

sustained violence feel like from within this community 

faced with such overwhelming odds? Have psychosocial 

problems pointed out above by Ms Lapot in the 

now post-conflict Acholi community affected women’s 

rights especially in relation to inheritance? How does it 

feel like to face the level of violence that some of these 

communities members have gone through? More so, as 

insecurity has the capacity to create the permanency of 

feeling uncertain. 

My response in part came from Mrs Achelang: 

Uncertainty goes hand in hand with the experience of 

unpredictability. In seeking safety, we have tended to 

suspend trust in what was happening around us. To be 

insecure has meant that I no longer have a clear sense 

of myself and must for my own safety suspend trust in 

others. Deeply suspicious for my own good, it means 

that I can no longer take at face value even the most 

common things around me. This is the plight facing our 

children today, especially those born at the apex of the 

conflict, as well as those who grew up in the camps. 

There are many problems that the current generation of 

our youth is facing. Ms Debbora Oyella (OHCHR) 

agreed and added, “our youths especially males are 

very bitter”. 

It is widely recognised that periods of war or disaster 

can produce ruptures or crises within societies from 

which new orders can emerge. The Acholi community 

has clearly not been an exception. The dialogue then 

pondered for while on issues surrounding the civil war 

and its impact on their community. Through the 

dialogue, it was agreed that War, urban displacement, 

inter-tribal and international presence, NGO 

interventions, government development projects, 

women’s and children’s rights promotion – were all 

identified as having had a dramatic impact on the 

Acholi community in particular kwo town – the Acholi 

community living in and around Gulu town, and how 

they perceive issues of rights. 




There was mixed reactions from some participants when 

it came to discussing the catalysts of the cultural 

transformation that has taken place in their community, 

this led to some ambivalence and controversy over the 

meaning of the social changes that have taken place in 

their community. 

For example, Ms Deborah Oyella who works at a local 

branch of United Nations Office of the High 

Commissioner for Human rights (OHCHR) took a 

modernist view and argued that for some, especially 

women and young men, town life, despite its material 

hardships, has been the foundation for a world that is 

modern and global, unlike restricted rights for women 

under traditional and local arrangements, town life has 

offered a wider degree of freedom, independence and 

opportunity that were impossible for women in the 

village . In spite of a pandemonium cry from elderly men 

in the dialogue, rising to object her views, Ms Oyella 

went on to further argue that while men, and especially 

male elders, have seen their authority and status within 

Acholi society wane, women, and to a lesser extent 

youth, have seen their authority and status rise 

precipitously in a post-conflict Gulu town. “Displacement 

to town has had an impact nothing short of historic on the 

lives of many women, as women themselves recognise. 

Meetings were held in the camps or in the town, elders 

and clan leaders are having little way of imposing their 

decisions”. In short, she argued that Acholi elders and 

chiefs have largely lost their power of social regulation, 

as Acholi women are liberating themselves. 

Ms Judith Max who works at a local branch of 

Federation of Women Lawyers-Uganda chapter (FIDA) 

rose up in support of Ms Oyella and observed that 

traditionally in her community; women were specifically 

assigned roles in the home and the field, which was 

controlled at the family level by the husband or father and 

at the village and clan level by male elders and male clan 

chiefs. But with modernity and town existence, women’s 

roles have changed significantly better. She explained 

that many women feel that town life had led to certain 

positive changes in their lives and opportunities. 

Economically, women have gained access to loans, both 

individually and through groups. They own property in 

town, such as buildings, vehicles, and land, and own their 

own businesses. Women also express satisfaction at 

having learned to sell agricultural produce and save 

money. Socially and politically, women pointed out the 

number of women who are now in positions of authority 

in prominent NGOs and in the local government system. 

Women are achieving higher levels of education and 

undergoing training by NGOs and government on 

health and other issues concerning their rights. 

At the same time, however, there were some 

participants, three women in particular who objected to 

Oyella and Max’s modernist observations, accusing 

them of exaggerations. Modernity, through what at 

times they called “town life”, they observed, has had a 

significantly negative impact on women’s quality of 

life. Because many men have died, joined armed 

organisations or abandoned their wives, women in large 

part have been left with the primary responsibility for 

providing for their families, which have often expanded 

to include a number of dependents in addition to their 

own children. Water, firewood and grass for roofing are 

hard to come by, women are now forced to go out and 

earn money so that they buy land and or rent a house, 

they must also pay for their children’s school fees and 

other medical facilities that are often inadequate and 

very expensive. Another negative consequence brought 

about by “town life”, they pointed out, was the methods 

of making money that have emerged in the context of, 

and which they constantly drew attention to, 

specifically prostitution for women and thievery for 

men. Indeed, prostitutes and thieves were widely cited 

as a negative consequence of the predominance of 

‘easy money’ in town; however it was only elders who 

tended to frame all modern methods of making money 

as fundamentally equivalent and corrupt. Men’s 

disempowerment has been further intensified by NGO 

initiatives which tend to favour women and youth. 

For many older Acholi participants, however, this 

dominance of ‘NGO moneyed culture’ in town was an 

unmitigated evil, a corruption of Acholi society and its 

cultural values. As one elderly man pointed out, 

“before the war, wealth was not held in money, but in 

cattle”. As a result, money itself was widely perceived 

as a symptom and agent of the destruction of Acholi 

society, as it replaced tangible, rooted resources. All 

money-oriented economic activity was seen by some 

elders who spoke in the dialogue as a betrayal of the 

values of Acholi culture, the proper roles that young 

men and women are supposed to have, and the respect 

and subordination they are supposed to show to elders. 

For some elders like Mr Achelang, “Gulu town had 

given birth to a lost generation of Acholi, addicted to 

material riches, disconnected from their roots in the 

land and without even basic cultural knowledge”. 

In pre-war Acholi society, significant authority was 

held by a lineage- and clan-based structure of 

patriarchal, generally gerontocratic, leadership, 

comprising the more centralized authority of rwodi or 

‘chiefs’ and the more decentralised authority of elders– 




Practices and Community Resilience in the Mt. Elgon 

Area 

ludito kaka – individually and in councils. This 

structure was brought into crisis by the civil-war and 

displacement. Many elders died, and the civil war 

presented bigger problems for ‘traditional’ leadership 

to resolve. The authority of this lineage-based structure 

has also been undermined by the creation of the 

Resistance Council/Local Council system, which has 

taken over many of the conflict resolution roles 

previously held by ‘traditional’ authorities. Their 

disempowerment has been further intensified by NGO 

initiatives which tend to favour women and youth. 

Finally, displacement itself has had a significantly 

negative impact on lineage-based leaders, as clans 

have been dispersed; restrictions on movement have 

made clan meetings difficult and land also difficult to 

access, the dialogue noted. 

After tea break, the dialogue then returned to the 

primary subject matter and delved into the issue of 

meaning, it was felt necessary to explain the words and 

what they meant in Acholi in relation to their 

traditional culture. 

1) Ot- Lim – Bride price (where Ot means house, and 

Lim means wealth). 

2) Keny Atunga- this is when parents identify a 

potential bride for their son. 

3) Nyom Apenya- two lovers (boy and girl) agree to 

marriage and decide to inform their parents about 

their intentions. This process triggers a series of 

investigations by both families. 

4) Cuna Wat- this is a process initiated by relatives, 

usually one’s aunt introduces a spouse to a boy, 

following a series of investigations on the girl’s 

background. 

5) Alima- slave. 

6) Nyom- marriage. 

7) Daa- Too (widow). 

8) Coo-Too (widower). 

The traditional Process of Nyom 

Ms Adong Lucy, a blind and elderly woman, who 

identified herself as an Keny- alima (descendant of a 

slave) that had been captured during the intra-tribal 

wars and brought to Acholi, offered, with additional 

input from other participants, to explain the stages of 

Nyom (marriage). The Acholi community attaches so 

much significance to the marriage ritual, that failure to 

marry is considered a curse (or an abnormality) and it 

is common for the elders to be called in to monitor events. 

Childlessness is also counted as one of the most serious 

misfortunes to befall a couple, with women typically taking 

all the blame. In such cases, the marriage could be dissolved 

or the husband be allowed to marry another wife. Polygamy is 

regarded as a normal arrangement and as such a man can 

marry as many wives as he want provided he can look after 

them. For the Acholi, children are very important as they are 

often considered ultimate goal of any marriage. In the past a 

couple could not set up a home until their first child was born. 

Until then, the newly married couple lived in the groom's 

mother's house. In cases where a girl conceived before the 

official marriage, the Nyom would not take place until she 

had given birth, to confirm that the child belonged to the 

groom. Nyom in Acholi is usually a lengthy process which 

begins with a boy seeing a girl and initiating courtship. She is 

typically expected to be coy and hard to get in order to protect 

her morally upright reputation. 

Traditional Courtship 

A boy, on meeting a girl that takes his fancy, seeks the 

company of a friend and visits the girl's home. The two boys 

are taken to the girl's mother's house. The girl's mother 

vacates the house, leaving the groom-to-be alone with the 

daughter to chat, after which the girl walks the two visitors 

out. Later, the mother asks her daughter to identify the 

visitors, at which point the daughter announces the boy's 

interest in her, and her opinion of him. If it is positive, the 

mother goes ahead to inquire about the boy's clan in order to 

verify that the two love birds are not related by blood. The girl 

always looks out for the boy who owns plenty of cattle. 

However, a young man chiefly depends upon his lineage to 

get both the permission to marry a girl and the ability to 

provide the material goods required to pay her OT-LIM bride 

price (which is a must in the Acholi tradition culture). After 

the visit, the boy satisfied with what he saw, tells his family, 

who subsequently find out about the girl’s clan and her 

family's status socially. The boy eventually wins her over as 

several encounters lead to her finally giving in and accepting 

the boy's bead or a bracelet, a sign that she has agreed to be 

married to him. This pursuit is known as luk (getting to know 

each other). Expression of love among the Acholi youth was 

in the past mainly through 'blood packing' (making cuts on 

their bodies and tasting each other's blood). This used to be a 

version of cementing the relationship. 

Although marriages were sometimes organized without the 

consent of the boy and the girl in the past, such scenarios are 

increasingly rare today, with most people embracing the 

modern ideal of freedom of choice. In the past, if a father 

preferred a friend's daughter over other girls for his son, it was 

possible for the two fathers to’ strike a deal’ and compel their 

children to get married to each other. Because it was often the 

father's wealth that afforded the boy the OT-LIM, there 





was little he could change. When the boy's family agrees, 

he is given a green light to marry the girl. He informs her 

and she in turn, announces to her parents that special 

visitors will be arriving on a given day to conduct the 

marriage ceremony. The girl's mother then informs the 

girl's entire family. In preparation for the visitors, the 

structures in the girl's homestead receive a new layer of 

mud mixed with cow dung. Seats (mainly animal hides) 

are set. On the agreed day, the boy, his father, brothers 

and other family members (as invited) go to the girl's 

home and are welcomed into the house of her mother. 

The visitors are not allowed to stand, but kneel 

throughout the introductions, with the girl's father asking 

the questions. 

He asks the visitors who they are and the boy's father 

responds appropriately. The girl is asked to ascertain she 

knows them. The items to be delivered as OT-LIM 

(which is a practical way of saying thank you to the girl's 

mother) are discussed and a specific date set for the 

delivery. This though, does not necessarily mean that the 

items must all be brought once. Installments are often 

accepted. After this ceremony, the girl becomes part of 

the boy's clan. It might take a while to complete dowry 

payments but the girl's status changes from nyako (girl) 

to dako ot (wife) immediately. Chanting and singing to 

the sound of sauce pans hitting the ground, 

congratulations are offered to the new couple as they are 

bid farewell to their lives as singles. This rejoicing is 

called nakub kub. OT-LIM can take the form of cattle, 

goats, sheep, household items or money. Often, the girl's 

OT-LIM is not spent but saved to offset her brothers' OT- 

LIM when it is their turn to marry and pay. OT-LIM 

refunds are made in the event of a divorce, although the 

value refunded depends on the terms agreed upon when it 

was paid. In the event of a death, the surviving partner 

demands that a sacrifice in form of a goat be offered to 

the gods and the corpse is taken through the back door of 

the house. This partner never sees the corpse again. 

Participants then engaged in discussions centering on Ot- 

Lim, what it meant from a traditional point of view and 

how it is being perceived in modern times. Mr Onek: “I 

think that traditional marriages are a good idea but to be 

honest, I think that Ot-Lim is too expensive and this is 

why we are seeing our boys running away from their 

responsibilities by impregnating girls and absconding”. 

Another male participant Mr Layine supplemented that 

he thought the problem with Ot-Lim is an educational 

one. He argued that parent demand a hefty Ot-Lim if their 

girl is ‘educated’. A girl ought to be a girl in spite of 

educational attainment, he stressed. Mr Lak thought that 

the problem with Ot-Lim was the distorted meaning. “Ot- 

lim traditionally meant appreciation; but nowadays it 

literally means paying or buying a wife (Bride Price). 

This traditional custom established good relations 

among families and legitimized the children born in the 

marriage. But today, some women are given away to 

the man who pays more. This, in a way, can be seen as 

the commodification of women or forced marriage, 

which was not the original intention of Ot-Lim. 

Ms Grace Latig of United Nation population Fund 

(UNFPA) then came in and argued that the problem in 

part lies with old men that are modernized –urbanized, 

“these men”, she observed, “tend to demand allot for 

Ot-Lim and they also impose items that are not 

supposed to part and parcel of the Ot-Lim”. 

Ms Vicky Acheri supported Ms Latig’s point and 

added: “I don’t think Ot-lim is a bad idea, but we ought 

to demand for cultural structures that consider the 

bride’s voice as often one finds that she is on the 

periphery of discussions and negotiations centering on 

Nyom and Ot-Lim. “Also I think that Ot-Lim is not 

bride price, we should strive to remind those 

confusssed about this definition that Ot-Lim is a token 

of appreciation to the bride’s family and in particular 

the mother. We are not selling our daughters! In the old 

days Ot-Lim used to be shred communally, it used to be 

passed around. These days it all commercialized, 

people even do electronic cash transfers and people 

start businesses with”. 

Lak: Yes, that is very right! Ot-Lim was a connecting 

factor and not a divisive factor as modern times is 

proving”. 

Lucy then suggested: “We should extend this very 

important dialogue to a wider platform using radio and 

television. This is timely! We thank MPAU for 

initiating and arranging this very important dialogue! 

Mzee Andrew then blamed Acholi community in the 

diasapora. “They are the problem as they are the ones 

disorganizing our community. They disregard our 

traditional customs when marrying and see things in 

terms of modern rights and law”, he said. 

The dialogue then turned its attention to the issue of 

divorce and inheritance. It was observed that the 

purpose of marriage was unity, and argued that in 

Acholi culture divorce was very much discouraged- all 

things possible were initiated to prevent a couple from 

getting divorced. “Divorce as such is not an easy 

process” said one woman, a local councilor. “It is 

brought before an elderly group to discuss and mediate 

the matter within the family, in the event of this failing 

then the matter is taken to the Clan leader, if tension is 





noticed between the two couple to be of the potential to 

lead to gross violence (death) then the woman is sent back 

to her family home for some time to allow the husband 

time to ‘cool off’. 

Divorces as such have to be on solid grounds. Impotency 

and bad spiritual activities etc by either party is often 

considered good reasons. An Ot-Lim is refund is initiated 

once a divorce is granted; the refund is not given in full as 

certain deductions have to be taken into account. 

Afterwards the parties are then allowed to remarry. 

Vicky added that Ot-Lim is only refunded that once the 

bride remarries, and only if she goes through the subcounty. 

Lak then observed that “if a woman divorce and leaves 

the man and a refund is made. She still has the right to 

return to her original first husband, and he has no right to 

prevent her”. He went to argue that modern systems of 

regulating marriages often make references to tradition at 

times of difficulties. For instance, he wondered, “what 

happens when a woman who had children and then 

decides to marry. Whom do the children belong to?” 

Participants seemed divided on the matter; some argued 

the children belonged to the new husband whilst other 

supported the previous husband. Traditional case studies 

were then given by Mr Okello in support of traditional 

inheritance rules. 

In conclusion, the dialogue settled that inheritance was not 

so much a common feature in their society this is because 

of their polygamy permitted in their culture. Others argued 

that the purpose of inheritance was to maintain continuity, 

reproduction and clan strength. Both Coo Too (widower) 

and Da-Too (widow) have rights in the event of death. 

Banya Angelo observed that widow inheritance was 

difficult these days; she went on to blame the difficulty on 

modernity. “Our women have adopted a lot of foreign 

culture and are demanding for all sorts of freedoms”, he 

said. 

Lak said that inheritance was about children, “it is a 

dynamic affair not a static one. Dog ot lako twolo (the 

door is always open)”. One woman, a local leader, asked: 

“Will I lose all my property, including what I bought with 

my late husband to the inheritor?” 

Mr Anchelang answered: “The woman has the right to the 

customary land in the village and the land or property in 

town”. Before the dialogue came to an end, Judith Max 

came in and observed that “there are two parts of the 

properties (customary and personal or family)”, she went 

on to say that “she’d have no claim to the customary but 

full entitlement to the personal or family property”. 


A song was then sung in Acholi by women as they 

laughed and walked out of the dialogue. It went like 

this…Lut kot go cwara weka meya…may thunderstorm 

struck my husband and leave my lover… 

Cultural Lessons drawn from the dialogues 

One thing clear that we can draw from these dialogues is 

that there is no African country that is free of African 

traditions or free of at least some elements that belong to 

western modernity. Drawing from the community 

conversations, it is therefore logical that governments in 

East Africa, in one way or another, try and make 

decisions about the legal and political position of both 

tradition and modernity in their social and legal systems. 

After all, most of the crises that local communities are 

facing have been expounded by the recommendations 

that these communities have received from foreign and 

local “experts” on Human rights and development. The 

concept of development has its roots in the notion of 

progress, which is fundamentally a materialist 

philosophy bent on unlimited growth or exploitation and 

accumulation. The African bureaucrats and political 

elites have been unable to draw on their concept of 

community or bondless of life when taking decisions on 

national policies. 

Women’s rights, no matter how we eventually refine the 

concept, demand that residences old and young, male 

and female in the urban as well as in the rural centers are 

heard, and not pushed aside. People in the villages and 

other rural parameters, commonly referred to as the 

“illiterates” or the “uneducated” in modernist lingo, who 

make up the majority of the African communities need 

to gain a ‘voice’ in the parlance of contemporary 

community, cultural or political studies speak. Whether 

we use the older language of “empowerment” or the 

current speak of the epistemology of the ‘heart’ as 

defined by Afrikology, the philosophical language of the 

moment, the message is clear. People cannot plan and or 

speak for others; people must be given a chance to 

participate in meaningful ways in resolving the 

challenges of discrimination whether man- made or from 

nature. Solutions must be inclusive not exclusive. 

As a result, these dialogues about modernist verses 

tradition conceptions of women’s rights have depended 

on thinking about the world in an organic, incremental, 

bottom up terms rather overarching, top down 

abstractions. It has also been about accommodation and 

accumulation of small scale change that adds value to 

our communities in how community members view 

women and the discourses concerning their rights. To 

paraphrase the late Professor Nabudere’s horizontal 

concept, there can be no single ‘centre’ that will 

determine the existence of all human beings everywhere 




because ‘one-size fits all’ will no longer be allowed to 

dictate global or local development. All human beings 

have to assume responsibility for their own survival and 

abandon the unilinear epistemology of looking at 

complex and diverse realities in a one-dimensional 

manner. 

In the course of these dialogues, a consensus build up in 

most participants that traditional role models of men and 

women, respectively husband and wife defined their 

behavior and how they perceived rights and 

entitlements, this it emerged in the conversations, were 

a help for both of them. For instance, in the dialogues, 

community members agreed that most disagreements 

could be settled in the homestead. This is better than 

making the matter public and going to court. There were 

only a few duties for a husband in relation to his wives: 

to give security and to provide land, clothing and 

protection for the children. A man who refused to take 

care of these things or became violent was disciplined 

by the elders. Women had to take care of the livestock 

and to cook for their husband. 

The rules in the village were simple for everybody. The 

statement: “in the old days, there were not so many 

options in life as there are today”, as one participant in 

the dialogue put it, indicated that participants and the 

community at large was suspicious of the new freedoms 

perpetuated by modernist advocates. 

Women participants in the dialogue recognised the 

importance of women’s organizations in raising their 

voice. Women organisations they said provides them 

with a space in which to come together and discuss their 

problems; many women who were not in a group 

expressed their intention to form one in the future. Most 

of the organisations they referred to are those oriented 

around small income-generating activities or give out 

loans, but women also described how these 

organisations had helped them. As one woman group 

leader in the dialogue explained, women’s voices are 

now heard in public, whereas before ‘women were not 

supposed to have a voice.’ I think this statement is 

significant as it demonstrates the value placed by 

women on having a voice, being heard, both as an 

individual and collectively as a community. In all the 

dialogues most women resonated the need to have a 

voice as a key feature to the resilience of a community 

and its sense of identity. Having a voice, for them, 

means that they can participate in the decisions that 

affect them and their community, it also allows them to 

define their own future thereby repositioning the 

feminine principle as a core constituent of afrikology. 


Case Study two: 

P’Kwii Farm Community Site of Knowledge 

In tracing the history and meaning of the heart or DNA 

of Afrikology, one could easily ask: What would a 

communal heart be like? What would have to happen to 

bring such a thing into being? The answer in part lies in 

P’kwii. 

P’kwii community farm is a Community Site of 

Knowledge engaged in re-centering the rural agenda 

holistically through the epistemology of afrikology. Its 

efforts and struggle over a period of twenty two years 

has been to uphold and emancipate their heritage 

enshrined in their inherited indigenous knowledge 

systems, which have sustained them throughout 

centuries. This knowledge was degenerated and 

criminalized so that members of their community who 

dared to propagate it and or try to practice it for their 

self- sustenance were accused of practicing superstitious 

and backward ideas and practices and were subjected to 

prosecution under colonial penal laws. However the 

members of this community did not give up the struggle 

to preserve what was rightly theirs, including scientific 

knowledge such as astronomy, which older women of 

the clans were experts in its practice. Using this 

knowledge they were able to observe stars and trace their 

movements, which enable them to predict the weather 

patterns to be expected in the coming months and to 

determine which varieties of millet or sorghum should 

be planted in the coming season with very good results. 

However, the colonialists and the colonizers could not 

accept such knowledge which was barred from practice. 

In enforcing this Aduso who was the custodian of the 

Iteso cultural spirits who fed all the lactating mothers on 

very nutritious root plants (Ikorom) and leaves of Edusa 

(Moringa) was regarded as source of superstitious, 

backward practices and criminal ideas and practices. 

With the introduction of Cassava to Teso in 1946, her 

practices and ideas were criminalized and abolished by 

the colonialists and their enforcers hence Aduso was 

abused, demonized and belittled. To reinforce the 

abolition of eating these nutritious plants Ikorom and 

Edusa, a song was concocted and composed to 

criminalize the practice, ideas and directly abuse Aduso, 

as stupid, backward and barbaric. To spread their 

message faster, this song was taught in all Teacher 

Training Colleges in Teso so that the teacher trainees 

would propagate it further by teaching it to be sung by 

children as innocent agents in killing their own ancestral 

heritage and knowledge. The song went as follows:- 

Ebanga Aduso; 

Chorus; enyami ikorom, Aduso x2 


Continued from page 37 –– Applied Afrikology, Restorative 


Adusele na; abatir na; ebangana- Aduso chorus; enyami 

ikorom x2 

This song literary meant that Aduso was stupid, though 

healthy was stupid. The elders on realizing the motive of 

the colonialists and their enforcers decided as a means to 

preserve the Edusa plant have its name changed to 

Elekumare (which means bring out the cow) which the 

enforcers could not know as they were not able to either 

identify or differentiate thus preserving the plant and 

knowledge up-to-date. All the two plants have been 

validated as very nutritious by modern science. 

Pi’Kwii is engaged in reviving its Iteso community’s 

interest in indigenous and traditional food crops as 

fundamental sources of food nutrition and security. 

With the introduction of modern cash crops, traditional 

crops in Iteso have been marginalized and excluded by 

modern conventional agricultural practices. Their value 

as food sources has declined, as they have been 

superseded by commercialized hybrid food varieties such 

as groundnuts and cassava in the Iteso region. This has 

been accompanied by the stigmatization of traditional 

foods as inferior crops or ‘foods for the poor’. 

Its members’ adaptive capacity, their ability to tolerate 

and deal with change, to respond to their prevailing 

contexts of environmental risk in order to meet their food 

needs, is evidenced through their self- organizing, selfdriven 

agency to mobilize prior knowledge on traditional 

food crops. Linked to this is the ability of its 

community’s elderly members to predict weather changes 

through the gathering and interpretations of information 

based on traditional cosmological predictions. During 

their meetings on Tuesday and Thursday, Key Farmer 

Trainers (KFTs) with the help of their elderly members 

discuss their traditional foods, social, cultural and 

agricultural methods- mobilizing knowledge through 

afrikological memory capital which is then applied to 

revive and resuscitate previous traditional agricultural, 

social, cultural and agricological practices. The 

afrikological application of traditional knowledge by 

P’Kwii community site of knowledge is implemented in 

the growing, harvesting and value-additional processing 

of traditional food crops and in the storage of seeds for 

future use by the community members- this is in response 

to the threat of genetically modified seeds (GMOs) posed 

to the indigenous organic seed. As observed by a visiting 

African scholar, Dr Andreas Velthuizen: “the persistence 

of this community in conserving and preserving their 

inherited heritage has enabled them to survive and 

continue to apply their knowledge and resist impositions 

such as genetically modified seeds and plants which are 

continually forced down the throats of those 

communities”. 

Case Study three: 

Iwokodan Community Site of Knowledge 

Post-conflict communities are increasingly turning their 

attention to the legacy of indigenous practices of dispute 

settlement and reconciliation. The argument is that 

traditional and informal justice systems may be adopted 

or adapted to develop an appropriate response to a history 

of civil war and oppression. Iwokodan community site of 

knowledge based in Palisa, eastern Uganda captures well 

this change. 

At this site of knowledge organized as a clan, the 

community has incorporated strong elements of 

modernity in order to preserve their traditional justice 

system and traditional clan governance structure. The 

Iwokodan Clan is modeled on a modern government 

structure, it has a written constitution, with modern 

governance structures featuring ministries and ministers 

and assistant ministers in its structure. It has opted for 

restorative justice in the event of conflict adjudication. 

The consequence is that modern courts are not able to 

deal with this increasing mass of criminal cases. This has 

led to increased cost and delay with self-evident injustice 

being caused to individuals and hence a feeling of 

injustice. The other problem Iwokodan’s local 

government minister Mr. Joseph Okwalinga pointed out 

is that criminal litigation is particularly dependent on 

individual memory. Documents that can objectively 

refresh memory ordinarily play a small part in the usual 

kind of criminal case. Witnesses must rely solely on their 

recollection. When it takes more than a year, and 

sometimes three years, for a case to come to trial, 

memory becomes highly suspect. There is a particular 

case concerning a land dispute between Iwokodan’s clan 

members, the Clan made a successful application to the 

high court of Uganda for permission to revert it back to 

its local jurisdiction, the Clan resolved the case (which 

had taken twenty years in the high court) amicably within 

two weeks. There are a number of inter and intracommunities 

murder cases that the Clan has resolved 

cordially without reference to the high courts. 

Consequently, there is an increasing demand for 

afrikology’s holistic approach to justice among 

communities across the east African region, which seeks 

to shift the focus of the trial from the battle between the 

lawyers to the discovery of truth by modifying the 

complex rules of evidence, encouraging the defendant to 

contribute to the search for truth, and requiring full and 

open discovery for the prosecutor. Continued on page 39 


Continued from page 38– Applied Afrikology, Restorative 


For defence lawyers, under current adversarial system, 

courtroom victory usually translates into obtaining an 

acquittal, and consequently they regard discovery of the 

truth as incidental or even irrelevant to this pursuit. In 

most criminal trials, discovery of the truth is the last thing 

a defence lawyer desires. There is a dichotomy that is 

normally created between the need for justice and the 

need for reconciliation. Yet these processes are in fact 

two sides of the same coin. 

The answer to this, as the Iwokodan cases vividly 

demonstrates, is a new afrikological system that can 

ensure speed of trial while ensuring that the truth will 

prevail and the restorative justice approach offers the best 

result that can integrate the process. The modern courts 

alone cannot ensure that justice prevails in all cases as 

experience has shown that modern courts tend to be 

overwhelmed by criminal and it is the primary 

responsibility of the people who have caused conflict or 

harm to each other or to society to face the consequences 

of their actions and try to address the harm done. It is the 

duty of society at large to provide them with the 

opportunities and institutional arrangements to enable 

them to do so. This is what Iwokodan community site of 

knowledge is attempting to do. 

Case Study four: 

The first Mt. Elgon Cross-border Community 

Festival: The Road to Cross-Border Peace - 

Overcoming the Legacy of Bordered Identities, 

Cultural fragmentation and Unresolved Conflicts. 

Today’s real borders are not between nations, but 

between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, 

privileged and humiliated. Today no walls can separate 

humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the 

world from a national security crisis in another… Dr. 

Kofi Anan 

Cross-border communities in the Mt Elgon area of East 

Africa, as is the case elsewhere in Africa, have gone 

through untold violence and indescribable grief that the 

clamor of the victims is still heard, and the sounds of the 

silenced-guns, sharp-spears and pangas (machetes) still 

reverberate in the minds of the ex-fighters as well as 

those who lived though the conflict experience. The scars 

of the conflicts are still visible not only on the bodies and 

souls of the older generations but also on the young- the 

continuing stigmatization of widowed women as 

‘husband snatchers’ and their children as cultural orphans 

is one case in point. Community conflicts in the area 

have had many dimensions with various correlated causes 

and factors. Although land has been a major contributing 

factor to the conflicts, other social and economic under- 


lying factors have also played a role in fuelling the 

conflicts. In addition, the conflicts have had negative 

social, cultural, and economic impacts on all crossborder 

communities living in the area among them: 

displacement, physical harm to individuals; the 

destruction of property; death-resulting in a high 

incidence of orphans and widows; rape and other forms 

of sexual violence and exploitation; and the resulting 

food and general insecurity. Furthermore, these 

problems have presented the cross- border communities 

already dealing with conflicts of multiple types, from 

mineral extraction to cattle rustling, to drought, to postconflict 

inter-ethnic violence, to the creation of national 

parks for tourism in both sides of the mountain in Kenya 

and Uganda. 

As Kenyan scholar Robert Simiyu has pointed out, the 

rhythmic nature of land-related violence in the Mt Elgon 

area, as, often coinciding with general elections and 

other critical moments in Kenya’s national politics, 

indicates that there may be more to it than just land 

disputes or pure intercommunity hatred. He argues that 

there is possible political motive for the chaos. This is 

borne out by the fact that in some instances, state 

agencies have been implicated in the conflicts, while in 

others the state has remained ambivalent. The result, 

Simiyu argues, is that many conflicts remain unresolved, 

some years after they first started. It is important to note 

that the land problem has persisted since colonialism, 

and successive regimes have been unable to permanently 

resolve the land question to the satisfaction of all 

community members. In short, the valleys and slopes of 

Mt Elgon bare testimonies of the severity of the conflicts 

faced by cross-border communities’ that have been 

caged in imagined political boundaries. Needless to say, 

the stories of communities around the Mt. Elgon area are 

one of joy and sorrow. 

Cultural Clusterism 

To overcome these cross-border divisions created in the 

area, which threaten further fragmentation of 

communities and clans, we tapped into professor 

Nabudere’s wisdom and created a situation in which we 

encouraged cross-border cultural-linguistic communities 

to regroup as much as possible into ‘clusters’- for 

instance, linking the Bamasaba with the Samia and 

Babukusu or the Sabiny with the Sabaoti and pokots or 

the Iteso with the Karamojongs and so forth, so that they 

become strong nations capable of defending and voicing 

their local interests and concerns globally. 

It is against this background that Afrika Study Centre 

(ASC) and the Mt Elgon Residents Association (MERA) 

with the help of Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan 

Institute/University and other stakeholders organised the 


Continued from page 39- Applied Afrikology, Restorative 


Kapchorwa Cross-Border Peace and Cultural festival that 

took place on Friday 9 th to Sunday 11 th of November 

2012 at Kapchorwa Demostration School, in Kapchorwa 

town on the slopes of Mt Elgon in Eastern Uganda. 

The social concept and cultural context in which we 

undertook the cross-border cultural ‘integration’ tried to 

imagine and invent new ways to enable communities to 

break out of their encirclement first by the global system 

and then by African elites who control state power that 

continue to marginalize communities. The festival is an 

ongoing afrikological endeavor by the Afrika Study 

Centre and local cross-border communities to deal with 

the destabilising effects and consequences of western 

colonization and domination. 

After all, there has been no comprehensive effort in 

focusing on culture as an alternative dispute resolution 

mechanism as well as restorative practices of crossborder 

communities as a soluble alternative in promoting 

peace and regional security in Africa. 

Cultural animation training 

For cross-border communities to undertake this 

transformation, ASC selected four members (two female 

and two males) in April 2012 from each cross-border 

community in both Uganda and Kenya (they included: 

Bukusu, Samia, Sabaot, Sebei, Benet, Iteso, Bamasaba, 

Pokot, and the Karamajong) to undergo a one month 

intensive ‘Cultural Animation Training Programme’ at 

the Marcus Garvey Pan Afrikan Institute/University in 

Mbale, Uganda. Course participants (animators) 

underwent a process of self conscientisation through 

restorative cultural learning and unlearning paradigms 

and cultural memory methodologies. 

Upon completion of the training, animators returned back 

to their respective communities to mobilize and learn and 

prepare their communities for the festival. They were 

tasked with the responsibility of observing their cultures 

with a deeper interest, learn and contribute to the revival 

and strengthening of aspects that communities were keen 

on. Overall they were also expected to initiate some 

learning and documentation centre that will gather 

materials archived in practices and procedures of their 

cultures and languages. This way, a socio-cultural 

treasury of grassroots experiences, mechanisms and 

technologies of sustainable environment, food and human 

security systems would be gathered and showcased at the 

cultural festival and beyond it. 

Learning Outcomes 

• Learning by seeing, listening and observing-then 

practicing; 

• Adopting a doing, using and interacting approach; 

• Acquainting oneself with holistic understanding; 

• Critically adopting transdisciplinary skills in learning; 

• Adopting Afrikology as a transdisciplinary way of 

knowing, being and relating to the demand for 

knowledge, truth and justice; 

• Learning to work with culture at the University 

Campus and the community; 

• Learning and innovating as you work in the 

community. 

The three day festival was the culmination of a ‘People 

to People Reconciliation’ linkages and activities that 

begun in 2006 with the support of The Harry Frank 

Guggenheim Foundation of USA. The basic objective 

of the festival activities has been to enable each of the 

cross-border communities to present their culture 

including foods, traditional medicines, handicrafts, 

songs, dances, social practices, building technologies 

and other material cultures in one another. This 

constituted a learning experience and demonstrated to 

them the similarities and breaks in their cultural 

heritages and therefore became a firm basis for 

restorative peace and transformation. 

Activities 

The festival explored the following themes: 

(a) ‘Food (in) security’ and regional security. 

(b) ‘Cross-cultural spirituality’ and African traditional 

cultures. 

(c) Remembering Dani Nabudere, the “people’s 

Professor”. 

These themes were spread over a three day festival 

activity schedule as follows; 

Day One: was dedicated to matters of ‘Food (in) 

security’ and regional security- showcasing different 

cultural foods from each of the Mt Elgon communities. 

The overall objective was to stimulate interest and 

revive the culture of traditional ‘granary model’ needs; 

indicating the common convergence of strategies to 

respond to and address the common problem of food 

vulnerabilities and approaches to common collaborative 

culture of sharing of produce and seeds within the 

communities. 

Day two: was dedicated to matters of ‘Cross-cultural 

spirituality’ and African traditional cultures – the 

second day creating a space for recognition of cultural 

jurisdiction at play in which dialogue about intentions, 





values, and assumptions were brought out and 

negotiated. The ethical space imperative included a two 

bridge of awareness building and understanding in 

which at last, dialogue on issues of the 'African 

feminine principle’ were revitalized and knowledge and 

benefits undertaken. This was intended to help find 

ways of better linking modern sciences to the broader 

heritage of human kind and indeed contribute to 

scientific knowledge of universal value”. 

Day three: the final day of the festival was dedicated to 

remembering the “people’s Professor’, the late Dani 

Nabudere without whom, the festival would not have 

taken place. The day thus reflected among other 

activities, Professor Nabudere’s community work in the 

region, the continent and beyond, it featured: Food 

security; Peace; Cross-border solidarities; International 

political economy; Pan-Africanism of peoples; Defense 

of the commons; Cognitive justice and Community 

Sites of Knowledge; Restorative governance, economy 

and justice. 

Conclusion 

Our attention would not normally be drawn towards 

community narratives as holding the promise, potential 

or epistemological lessons of afrikology and restorative 

cultural action in communities. Yet our experiences, 

these settings and people hold seeds, buried and 

unnoticed, but pregnant with life-giving energy that 

instructs our cultural and epistemological inquiry. The 

very nature of a seed, we have tried to demonstrate, is a 

living-dormant container that simultaneously is fruit 

and promise, draws our attention towards the natural 

characteristics of afrikology’s collective well-being and 

the qualities of cultural resilience that contribute to 

healthy communities not only in east Africa but all over 

the world - hence universal. 

These conversations have been a long travel down the 

community-lane in realising the falsity of 

dichotomisation of complex human relations, by certain 

restraining epistemologies; this as we have attempted to 

demonstrate, can only be corrected under a system of 

restorative justice, restorative agriculture, and 

restorative cultural practices that afrikology offers 

aplenty. Through practical means and community 

centered interactions, we have demonstrated that 

communities are moving away from the perspective of 

African “victimhood” by adopting the epistemology of 

thinking from the heart’ as an approach towards 

community centered intellectualism and social as well 

as cultural activism. 

Afrikology stands for maneuvering space within and 

interaction with social, economic and political structures 

that are external to and at the same time part of the 

community itself. Afrikology is about doing justice to 

communities’ capabilities to reflect and act to without 

losing sight of the structural circumstances that enable 

and at times constrain them. It is about the people’s 

strength. It is about making a difference. It is about 

creating an indigenous dialectical space for communities 

to reflect on its social and cultural values and thereby 

create a connecting relationship between itself that allows 

room for reflexivity and reflectivity that resultantly 

reveals the inner soul of the community the world at 

large. 

In the Upanishad of Nabudere, the epistemological 

grandmaster of Afrikology, we can equate the 

fundamental nature and universalism of afrikology as a 

passage that speaks to how those who become wise lose 

the Great Oneness, the Way Rivers all flow into the sea. 

In the transformation from the solitary to the communal 

there is a mysterious physics that each generation has to 

relearn and advance regarding how we are more together 

than alone. In the hard-earned experience of Oneness, we 

all have the chance to discover, through love and 

suffering, that we are at heart the same. The task for us 

today is to restore connections that history has shattered. 

Making cultural education a lived experience for many 

cross-border learners around the Mt Elgon area is not 

possible in the present regime of culturally isolated 

knowledge production. The symbolic languages used in 

current educational systems are not learnt at an early age 

by a large percentage of children in the area. For them, 

education especially cultural, its language, its methods 

and its packaging represents an alienating experience 

both culturally and epistemeologically. 

References 

Nabudere, D., Afrikology: Philosophy and Wholeness, 

(Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa) 2011, p.92 

Ramose, M., African Philosophy though Ubuntu. (Mond Book 

Publishers, Harare) 2005. P.4 

Wanda, R. E., Comprehensive Report on Community Sites of 

Knowledge, (Unpublished work), MPAU, Mbale, Uganda, 

November 2010. P.4 

Said, E., [1992]: Orientalism, Penguin, London. See also Said, 

E [1994]: Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, London in Dani 

Nabudere’s “Archie Mafeche: Scholar, Activist and Thinker”, 

Africa Institute of South Africa, 2011, p.2. 

Luutu, B.M., International Human Rights and African 

Traditions of justice: The quest for Connection and meaning, 

East African Journal of peace and Human Rights, No 8, (2002) 

p.142. 

Arif, Nasr ibid p.6 Continued on page 42 


Continued from page 41 - Applied Afrikology, Restorative 


Sindima, J. H., Africa's Agenda: The Legacy of Liberalism and 

Colonialism in the Crisis of African Values, (Greenwood 

Press: London)- 1995 p.2 

Sindima, ibid p.30 

Nwala,T. U., Critical Review of the Great Debate on African 

Philosophy (1970-1990) (Nsukka: William Amo Centre for 

African Philosophy UNN 1992) p.5 

Chan, Stephen., Grasping Africa: A Tale of Tragedy and 

Achievement. Pp33-34 

Furedi, Frank., Mythical Past, Elusive Future: History and 

Science in Anxious Age (Pluto Press: London) p.239 

Stern, Herbert. See 

http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2001/010601.htm 

Wanda, R.E., The Big Question. (2010) BBC Focus on Africa. 

BBC World Service, London. Pp 24-25 

Garver, Newton. What Violence is, The Nation. No 209. 24 th 

June 1968. 

There were eight dialogues across Uganda and Kenya, but for 

the sake of brevity, we have only highlighted the Acholi 

dialogue that took place in Gulu, northern Uganda. 

Velthuizen, Andreas., Community Sites of Knowledge: 

Knowledge Creation and Application for Sustainable Peace 

in Africa. African Sociological Review, 16 (2) 2012. 

Annan, K., Building a Culture of Peace for the Children of the 

World, UN Report (can be accessed at http://www:un.org). 

Simiyu, R., 2008, Militarisation of resource conflicts: The case 

of land-based conflict in the Mount Elgon region of Western 

Kenya, ISS Monograph No. 152, Institute for Security Studies, 

Pretoria. 

The author is a transdisciplinary fellow based at the Marcus 

Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute (currently being constituted 

into a University) in Mbale, eastern Uganda, where he 

coordinates the Institute’s research and academic 

programmes. He is also the director of Afrika Study Centre 

(ASC), a regional community site of knowledge engaged in 

cross-border restorative cultural research and studies. 

Email: ronald2wanda@yahoo.co.uk 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

PHOTOS FROM THE MOUNT ELGON CROSS 

BORDER CULTURAL FESTIVAL – NOVEMBER 

9-11, 2013 IN KAPACHOWA, UGANDA 

1. Karamojong Community Group 

2. Karamojong Community Group 

3. Pokot Community Group 

4. Iteso-Amagoro Community Group 



Continued from page 42 – Photos of Cultural Festival 


1. Bamasaba Community Group 

2. Iteso (Teso Art in Culture) 

3. The Chemkengen Community Site of Knowledge, Trans 

Nzoia, Kenya 

4. MERA-Chemkengen Community Group 

5. Sr. Mary Asio (Teso Art in Culture) – Source Opak (MPAI- 

MPAU), Frances Okello (Deputy Chair, MPAU University 

Council (r-l) 

6. Kiwanuka Lewis – African Traditional Herbal Research Ctr. 

7. Mama Nabudere and M. Luutu handing out certificates

Continued from page 43 - – Photos of Cultural Festival 


1. Sabiny Youth Group - Modeling African dress – Hunters 

- Gathers 

2.Modeling African Dress - Agriculturalists 

3.Modeling African Dress - Cattle Keepers 

4. Modeling African Dress-Cattle Keepers to University 

5. Board Members with Vice Chancellor M. Luutu, Source 

Opak, Frances Okello and Nakato Lewis 

6. Karen Colvard, Guggeheim Foundation 

☻☻☻☻☻☻




PAN-AFRICAN INDIGENOUS HERBAL MEDICINE: 

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 

By Nakato E. Joel-Lewis, Kiwanuka R.G. Lewis 

African Traditional Herbal Research Centre 

Introduction 

African Traditional Medicine is a body of knowledge 

that has been developed and accumulated by Africans 

over tens of thousands of years. It is associated with the 

examination, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, prevention 

of, or promotion and rehabilitation of the physical, 

mental, spiritual or social wellbeing of humans and 

animals. Despite numerous attempts at government 

interference, both foreign and domestic, this ancient 

system of healing continues to thrive in Africa and 

practitioners can be found in many parts of the world. 

African Traditional Medicine is holistic in approach; that 

is, processes of the physical body, mind, emotions and 

spirit, work together in determining good health or ill 

health. The equation of good or ill health also includes 

the interaction and relationship between nature, the 

cosmos, and human beings. Practitioners of African 

Traditional Medicine must have in-depth knowledge of 

all the parts of this equation. 

Practitioners of traditional African medicine are able to 

cure a wide range of conditions, including cancers, 

acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), malaria, 

psychiatric disorders, high blood pressure, cholera, 

dysentery, infertility and most venereal diseases. Other 

applications include epilepsy, respiratory diseases such 

as pneumonia and asthma, digestive diseases such as 

ulcers and gastroenteritis, eczema, hay fever, anxiety, 

depression, benign prostate hypertrophy, urinary tract 

infections, diabetes, gout, diarrhea, and healing of 

wounds and burns just to name a few. 

Under colonial rule (both on the African continent and in 

the Diaspora), many European nations considered 

traditional healers to be practitioners of witchcraft and 

outlawed them for that reason. In some areas of colonial 

Africa, attempts were also made to control the sale of 

traditional herbal medicines. More recently however, 

there is expressed interest in integrating traditional 

African medicine with the continent’s national 

health care system. 

In many developing countries and in Africa as a 

whole, traditional healers are the major health labor 

resource. An estimated 80% of the population 

receives its health education and health care from 

practitioners of traditional medicine. They are 

knowledgeable of the culture, the local languages 

and local traditions. 

Plants also play an important part in the health of 

African people. They are a staple part of their diet. 

Supplementary foods to improve health and herbal 

remedies are used to prevent and cure diseases. 

Methods of indigenous healing throughout the world 

commonly use herbs as part of their tradition. 

Early humans, out of Africa, took with them the 

knowledge of medicinal herbs and adapted it to the 

local environment. Recent studies have revealed that 

the knowledge of ancient Egyptian medicine science 

has its origins in inner Africa, to be more exact, 

Central and West Africa. This medical knowledge 

also has formed the basis for Western allopathic 

medicine, as it is widely known that the Greeks 

borrowed very heavily from Egypt. However, the 

continued use by African traditional doctors of 

medicinal herbs, animal products and practices 

known to the ancient Egyptians suggests sustained 

scientific and religious interaction in the past. 

The Egyptians were writing medical textbooks as 

early as 5,000 years ago. This indicates not only a 

mature civilization but also a long period of medical 

development. Out of the hundreds and thousands of 

medical papyri that must have been written, only 10 

have come down to us, the most important being the 

Ebers and Edwin smith papyri. These 10 papyri 

form the basis of most of what Egyptologists know 



Continued from page 45- PAN-AFRICAN INDIGENOUS 

HERBAL MEDICINE: TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 

about Egyptian medicine. It has affirmed, however, that 

much of the training and instruction of the priest must 

have been orally transmitted, as it is in the rest of Africa. 

It is likely, therefore, that we have only a partial grasp of 

the true scope of Egyptian medical knowledge. 

Moreover, like their counterparts in the rest of Africa, the 

Egyptian priest-physicians often kept their best 

knowledge secret and like all African peoples, the 

Egyptians had a large material medica, using as many as 

1000 animal, plant, and mineral products in the treatment 

of illness. 

One of the consequences of the Tran-Atlantic Slave 

Trade and the Maafa, is that African Traditional herbal 

medicine is now found throughout the New World. In 

spite of the diversity of source regions, certain 

fundamental features characterize most 

African/American/Caribbean healing traditions. These 

include theories of causation related to the spiritual 

realm, the capacity to identify symptoms associated with 

specific diseases, and the ability to prescribe culturally 

acceptable treatments. 

In promoting survival, cultural identity, spiritual 

assistance and resistance, the ethnobotanical knowledge 

of New World Africans laid the foundation for the rich 

traditional healing system still practiced in the Caribbean 

to this day. 

The focus of this paper is to display the role of African 

indigenous herbal medicine in the survival of enslaved 

Africans in the New World and the technological transfer 

of this and related African technologies to the Americas 

and the Caribbean during the period of the Transatlantic 

Slave Trade. 

The Slave Trade 

The transatlantic slave trade was the trading, primarily of 

African people, to the colonies of the New World that 

occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean. It began from 

the 14th to the 19th centuries. Most enslaved people were 

shipped from West Africa and Central Africa and taken 

to North and South America and the Caribbean to labor 

on sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco and cotton plantations, in 

gold and silver mines, in rice fields, or in houses to work 

as servants, blacksmiths, artisans, etc. The shippers were, 

in order of scale, the Portuguese, the British, the French, 

the Spanish, the Dutch, and the North Americans. 

The word '''Maafa''' (also known as the African 

Holocaust) is derived from a (Kiswahili) word meaning 

disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy. The term 

today collectively refers to the Pan-African study of the 

500 hundred years of suffering of people of African 

heritage through slavery, imperialism, colonialism, 

oppression, invasions and exploitation. 

The African Holocaust was the greatest continuing 

tragedy the world has ever seen. It was also the most 

impacting social event in the history of humanity. It 

reduced humans with culture and history to a people 

invisible from historical contribution; mere labor units, 

commodities to be traded. From the Maafa, the racialsocial 

hierarchy was born which continues to govern the 

lives of every living human where race continues to 

confer (or obstruct) privilege and opportunity. In the 21st 

century, the legacy of enslavement manifests itself in the 

social-economic status of Africans globally. Without a 

doubt Africans globally constitute the most oppressed, 

most exploited, most downtrodden people on the planet, a 

fact that testifies to the untreated legacy of Slavery. 

It is estimated that 40-100 million people were affected 

by slavery via the Atlantic, Arabian and Trans-Saharan 

routes. Many died in transport, others died from diseases 

or indirectly from the social trauma left behind in Africa. 

The Atlantic system took a terrible toll in African lives 

both during the Middle Passage and under the harsh 

conditions of plantation slavery. Many other Africans 

died while being marched to African coastal ports for sale 

overseas. The overall effects on Africa of these losses and 

other aspects of the slave trade have been the subject of 

considerable historical debate. 

White historians will say that most deaths in the Middle 

Passage were the result of disease rather than abuse. The 

trauma of being enslaved and separated from country, 

culture and love ones can certainly be considered a form 

of mental abuse and would certainly have contributed to 

the mental illness exhibited by many of the captive 

Africans. 

However, dysentery, spread by contaminated food and 

water, did cause many deaths as did malaria and yellow 

fever. Other slaves died of contagious diseases such as 

smallpox, leprosy and yaws, carried by persons who 

infections were not detected during medical examinations 

prior to boarding. Such maladies spread quickly in the 

crowded and unsanitary confines of the ships, claiming 

the lives of many slaves already physically weakened and 

mentally traumatized by their ordeals. 

At the height of the slave trade between 1650 and 1900, 

10.2 million African slaves arrived to the Americas and 

the Caribbean from the following African regions in the 

following proportions: 

• West Central Africa (Republic of Congo, Democratic 

Republic of Congo and Angola): 39.4% 

• Bight of Benin (Togo, Benin and Nigeria west of the 

Niger Delta): 20.2% Continued on page 47 


Continued from page 46 - PAN-AFRICAN INDIGENOUS 


• Bight of Biafra (Nigeria east of the Niger Delta, 

Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon): 14.6% 

• Gold Coast (Ghana and east of Cote d' Ivoire): 10.4% 

• Senegambia (Senegal and The Gambia): 4.8% 

• Southeastern Africa (Mozambique and Madagascar): 

4.7% 

• Upper Guinea (Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Sierra 

Leone): 4.1% 

• Windward Coast (Liberia and Cote d' Ivoire): 1.8% 

The different ethnic groups, brought to the Americas, 

correspond to the regions of heaviest activity in the slave 

trade. Over 45 distinct ethnic groups were taken to the 

Americas during the trade. The ten most prominent were: 

• The Gbe speakers of Togo, Ghana and Benin (Adja, 

Mina, Ewe, Fon) 

• The Akan of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire 

• The Mbundu of Angola (includes Ovimbundu) 

• The BaKongo of the Democratic Republic of Congo 

and Angola 

• The Igbo of southeastern Nigeria 

• The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria 

• The Mandé speakers of Upper Guinea 

• The Wolof of Senegal and the Gambia 

• The Chamba of Cameroon 

• The Makua of Mozambique 

Slave Plantations in the New World 

The West Indies was the first place in the Americas 

reached by Columbus and the first part of the Americas 

where native populations collapsed. It took a long time to 

repopulate these islands from abroad, but after 1650 

sugar plantations, African slaves and European capital 

made these islands a major center of the Atlantic 

economy. In the 1600’s English colonization societies 

founded small European settlements on Montserrat, 

Jamaica, Barbados and other Caribbean islands, while the 

French colonized Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti, 

producing tobacco and sugar. The Portuguese had 

introduced sugar cultivation into Brazil from the islands 

along the African coast after 1550. By 1600 Brazil was 

the Atlantic world’s greatest sugar producer. In the 

1800’s Haiti had surpassed Brazil as the greatest producer 

of sugar and Jamaica surpassed Barbados as the English 

most important sugar colony. 

Enslaved Africans in the United States produced 

tobacco, cotton, indigo and rice. Africans who arrived 

in Carolina and Georgia sometimes referred to as 

Gullah/Geechee, brought with them attributes of 

biology, botany, culture, and language that reflected 

their homeland. 

On most islands, 90% or more of the inhabitants were 

slaves. The average slave lived seven years. Although 

the large proportion of young adults in plantation 

colonies ought to have had a high rate of natural 

increase, the opposite occurred. Poor nutrition and 

overwork lowered fertility. Life expectancy for slaves 

in the 19 th century Brazil was only 23 years of age for 

males and 25.5 years for females. An opinion common 

among slave owners in the Caribbean and in parts of 

Brazil, held that it was cheaper to import a youthful 

new slave from Africa than to raise one to the same age 

on a plantation. In the Dutch colony of Surinam, 

300,000 Africans arrived between 1668 and 1823, but 

scarcely 50,000 descendants survived at the end of that 

period. 

The harsh condition of plantation life played a major 

role in shortening the lives of slaves, but again the 

greatest killers were disease and malnutrition, 

especially to children under five. Only slave 

populations in the healthier temperate zones of North 

America experienced a natural increase, those in 

tropical Brazil and the Caribbean had a negative 

population growth. Such high mortality greatly added 

to the volume of the Atlantic slave trade, since 

plantations had to purchase new slaves every year or 

two just to replace those who died. 

The additional imports of slaves to permit the 

expansions of producing-plantations meant that the 

majority of slaves on most West Indian plantations 

were Africa-born. As a result, African religious beliefs, 

patterns of speech, styles of dress, adornment and 

music were prominent parts of West Indian life. 

In Latin America the captive labor force was also 

dominated by slaves born in Africa. In northeastern 

Brazil, Yorubas predominate at the close of the slave 

trade, but earlier the region had seen imports from 

nearly every slave source. In Rio de Janeiro, even after 

three centuries of sustained slave traffic, more than 73 

percent of the 1832 slave population was African born. 

Although Rio de Janeiro was dominated by Bantuspeakers 

from Angola and the Congo, almost all other 

groups were represented. Coastal South Carolina 

witnessed the arrival of most BaKongo people from the 

Congo and Angola, but the Senegambians were also 

well represented. 



Continued from page 47 – PAN-AFRICAN INDIGENOUS 


Included among the ranks of these newly arrived laborers 

were priests, magicians, and herbalists, who frequently 

retained, even as slaves, a measure of their previous 

status. This, in turn, facilitated the survival of a social 

hierarchy necessary for a shaman class and reinforced the 

collective knowledge of African ethnomedicine and its 

epistemology, among the resident Black populations. By 

contrast, North America received only half a million 

Africans during the entire slave trade, and witnessed 

minimum survival of their ethnomedical system. 

Given the harsh conditions of their lives, it is not 

surprising that slaves in the New World often rebelled. 

Because they believed rebellions were usually led by 

slaves with the strongest African heritage, European 

planters tried to curtail African cultural traditions. 

In the British West Indies, African herbal medicine 

remained strong as did African beliefs concerning nature 

spirits and witchcraft. Maroon communities consisting of 

runaway slaves were especially numerous in the 

mountainous interiors of Jamaica, Hispaniola, the 

Guianas, and Brazil. Maroon societies, such as those 

founded in Jamaica and Brazil acted as foci for the 

retention of African cultural beliefs and as symbols of 

resistance to white authority. But by the 1760s, African 

traditional religion was outlawed in Jamaica and in 

Guadeloupe ordinances forbade any use of plants by 

Africans, whether for medical or spiritual ends. 

The European conquest and colonization of the Americas 

was achieved with the exchange of Old World and New 

World diseases, ethnomedical systems and plant-based 

pharmacopoeias. Neglect by slave owners forced 

enslaved Africans to tend to their own medical problems. 

Firmly established in colonial times, African-based 

medicine, spirituality and their associated plant 

pharmacopoeias persisted and thrived in the Americas 

and the Caribbean. 

African Ethnomedicine and Epistemology 

African ethnomedicine and epistemology is firmly based 

in the healing power of the plant realm. Most healing 

rituals and ceremonies involve the use of leaves, roots, 

barks, or plant reproductive structures. 

The pharmacological treatment of disease began long ago 

with the use of herbs. A useful concept for plant 

screening, long practiced in Africa, is any species with 

morphological features similar to human body parts are 

believed to be effective agents in treating those respective 

ailments. 

An alternative method for identifying potentially useful 

species is reported among the Yoruba and their New 

World descendants. While mounted by one of their 

guardian deities, devotees suddenly bolt into the forest 

and collect hitherto unknown plants as directed by 

whatever spirit possesses them. Species collected this 

way enter into that person’s material medica. 

There are examples of many Europeans relying on 

traditional herbal cures administer by enslaved people 

who in turn rejected the main European treatments of the 

time, which included bleeding and purging. Africans 

often used their own traditional remedies to treat diseases 

they were already familiar with. 

A wide range of plants such as aloes, okra and even 

cotton, was used to treat all sorts of illnesses such as 

water retention, piles and venereal diseases and to heal 

wounds. Herbal remedies were used against diseases such 

as malaria, yellow fever, smallpox and worms. 

Along with China and India, west-central Africa 

represents one of the world’s most developed 

ethnomedical traditions. European slavers repeatedly 

noted the skills of Africans in effecting cures with plants 

and the expertise of specific ethnic groups such as the 

Fulani, Yoruba, Dahomean and Ashanti, who were 

regarded as especially skilled with herbal medicines. 

Although elements of various African healing traditions 

survive, wherever Yoruba and Dahomean slaves were 

present in sizable numbers, their cosmology and 

ethnomedical system came to predominate. 

In the use of plants, African practices differed 

dramatically from those favored by Europeans. Herbal 

treatments were often prepared from living plants, rather 

than the dried concoctions favored in white medicine. 

Vitamin-rich greens formed a central component of the 

diet of New World Africans, and roots and herbs made 

into infusions (bush teas) remain to this day central to the 

traditional cures of the Caribbean. West Africa’s rich 

tradition of using bush or herbal teas and greens for both 

food and medicine was the source of their continuing 

importance in the African Diaspora. In West Africa, the 

leaves of at least 150 species of plants are used as food, 

with 30 cultivated and over 100 collected gathered in the 

wild. 

These herbal cures stood in sharp contrast to the invasive 

treatment of venesection, cupping, blistering, purging and 

leeching practiced by Europeans during the plantation 

slavery era. While such techniques have largely vanished, 

African herbal remedies endure to this day in the 

Caribbean folk healing system. The survival of an 

African ethno-medical and epistemological tradition 

results in part from its capacity to deliver both physical 

cures as well as psychological solace to New World 

Africans. Plants native to the tropics and to Africa played 





a direct role in healing diseases whose origins are attributed 

to a physical and spiritual (holistic) origin. 

New World Africans also recognized genera whose 

attributes were known in Africa. The genus Strychnos spp., 

for instance, served as a poison throughout the Black 

Atlantic. Rauwolfia spp., which acts as a tranquilizer, was 

commonly used in Africa as well as by diasporic 

populations in the Caribbean. Euphorbia spp., which 

provided relief from colds, indigestions and pain are found 

in traditional pharmacopoeias of both areas. 

Brazil, which absorbed more than 4 million African 

immigrants, retains African religious and medical systems 

so orthodox that, until recently, Nigerian priests undertook 

pilgrimages to Brazil to rediscover ceremonies long 

forgotten in Africa. With a total of approximately five 

million slaves imported, the Spanish Caribbean exhibits 

magico-religious ceremonies scarcely different from those 

in Africa. 

Africans also used inoculation as a form of prevention for 

diseases such as yaws. Yaws is an infectious tropical 

disease caused by a spirochete bacterium Treponema 

pertenu. It enters through cuts in the skin, causing a large 

ulcer at the point of infection and multiple ulcers on the 

body. It also affects the joints and the bones. Yaws infects 

many Africans in Africa and the Americas and is most 

common in areas of poverty, poor sanitation and 

overcrowding. A closely related bacterium, Treponema 

pallidum causes syphilis. 

Of further interest is the centuries-old practice of small-pox 

vacillation, which is carried out all over Africa. During an 

epidemic, material from the pustule of a sick person is 

scratched into the skin of unaffected persons with a thorn. 

In the majority of instances, there is no reaction and the 

persons inoculated are protected against smallpox. In some 

cases, the inoculation will produce a mild, non-fatal form of 

the disease which will also confer permanent immunity. 

Centuries before Jenner (Father of Immunology), Africans 

had devised an effective vaccination method against 

smallpox. 

African Traditional Plant Knowledge 

There is little attention to African botanical transfers and 

the role of New World Africans in establishing the 

continent’s native plants elsewhere. The emergence of three 

centers of plant domestication in sub-Sahara Africa (two in 

West Africa) added more than 115 endemic species to the 

global food supplied while laying the foundation from an 

ongoing process of experimentation and crop exchanges 

with other Old World societies. Enslaved Africans and free 

maroons continued this process in the Caribbean. 

It is often forgotten that the vanishing Amerindian 

population of the Caribbean was replaced with forced 

African migrants who originated in tropical societies. 

Research attention has yet to elucidate how New World 

Africans drew upon their knowledge of tropical botanical 

resources for food, healing, cultural identity and survival. 

West Africa and the New World, although separated by 

several thousand miles of ocean, shared some plant 

species before colonization. Slaves landing on Caribbean 

shores would have recognized many of the plants they 

encountered. Newly arrived shamans continued to 

employ the species as they had done in Africa. The 

foundation in tropical botanical knowledge provided 

Africans the critical knowledge for shaping Afro- 

Caribbean plant resources. 

With the exception of the coffee plant and the oil palm, 

Europeans were not much interested in plants of African 

origin. While these two valued tree species would 

become plantation crops in the Caribbean, most plants 

indigenous to Africa depended upon New World Africans 

for their establishment, as whites did not consume them. 

Several factors, including soil exhaustion and 

deforestation, altered the balance of the ecology of the 

West Indies. By the 18 th century, nearly all of the 

domesticated animals and cultivated plants in the 

Caribbean were ones that Europeans had introduced. 

Europeans also introduced new food plants to the region. 

Of these, bananas and plantain from the Canary Islands 

were a valuable addition to the food supply; and sugar 

and rice formed the basis of plantation agriculture, along 

with native tobacco. New World foods also found their 

way to Africa. The white potato, cassava and maize 

moved across the Atlantic to Africa. 

African domesticates, important in Caribbean cuisines, 

include the akee apple (Blighia sapida), wild spinach or 

pigweed (Amaranthus hybridus, Amaranthus spp.) that 

give calalu its distinctive flavor, along with bitter leaf 

(Vernonia spp.) and Brassica spp., the ‘greens’ favored in 

Diaspora dishes. Other African introductions include the 

baobab (Adansonia digitata) and the kola nut (Cola 

acuminate, C. nitida) a non-alcoholic stimulant with 

medicinal properties. 

Most West African cultivars traditionally served both 

food and medicinal purposes. Grains, fruits and tubers 

sustained the body while leaves, barks and roots from the 

same plants, healed it. Because so many cultivars also 

served as medicinals, introduction of Old World food 

plants to feed the growing slave populations supplied 

Africans with a familiar assortment of medicinals. 

Common species like lemon, originally used in Africa 





only for it curative properties, was being cultivated and 

used medically in Brazil by 1549. 

By the early 1700s, African cola nut served as food and 

medicine for Jamaican slaves. The African’s use of okra, 

both as a staple and to induce abortion had been observed 

in the mid 18 th century in Guyana. Other early 

introductions of medicinal food crops included winged 

yam, pigeon pea, sorghum, oil palm, watermelon, akee 

and black-eyed peas. 

Carried aboard slave ships, African plants contributed to 

survival, health and economy in the Caribbean. The 

journey across the Middle Passage introduced African 

grasses possibly for bedding and as fodder for cattle. 

Guinea grass was reported in Barbados in 1684 and 

introduced to Jamaica in 1745. Many crops, given to the 

enslaved aboard the slave ships, also provided the means 

for New World Africans to establish these plants in 

subsistence plantation fields and their dooryard gardens. 

These include African rice (Oryza glaberrima), yams 

(Dioscorea cayensis, D. rotundata), cow [black-eye] peas 

(Vigna unguiculata), pigeon (Congo) peas (Cajanu 

cajan), melegueta peppers (Aframomum melegueta), 

palm oil (Elaeis guineensis), sorrel/roselle (Hibiscus 

sabdariffa), okra (Abelmosclus esculentu), sorghum 

(Sorghun bicolor), millet (Pennisetum glaucum, Eleusine 

coracana), the Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranean) 

and mangoes (Mangifera Indica). 

One African plant, the Castor bean (Ricinus communis) 

was used for lamp oil, medicine and even as a hair tonic. 

Prominent African medicinal plants introduced during the 

transatlantic slavery include (Momordica charantia) 

cerasse, (Kalanchoe integra), leaf of life, (Phyllanthus 

amarus) carry-me-seed, (Leonotis nepetifolia) leonotis, 

(Cola acuminate) kola nut and Corchorus spp) 

broomweed. 

The curative value of Kalanchoe is reflected in its 

common names ‘long-life’ and ‘never-die’, while 

‘maiden apple’ or the ‘African cucumber’ (Momordica 

charantia) ranks as the single most important medicinal 

of African origin in the Black Atlantic. It is used as an 

abortifacient, to treat snakebite, pain, high blood pressure 

and as an anti-inflammatory for rheumatism and arthritis. 

Another Old World plant esteemed for healing among 

population of the African Diaspora is Abrus precatorius, 

a venerable south Asian ayurvedic medicine that had 

already diffused to the African subcontinent from India 

long before the onset of the transatlantic slave trade. Used 

as a febrifuge and expectorant by Caribbean diasporic 

populations, Abrus precatorius remains an esteemed 

herbal remedy throughout the Black Atlantic. 


Other plants of African origin established in the 

Caribbean material medica are wrongly attributed to an 

Asian origin, thereby obscuring the African floristic 

contribution to regional folk pharmacopoeias. Tropical 

Old World plants formed part of an ancient history of 

exchanges between Africa and Asia (notably, with 

India and China). Tamarind (Tamarindus indica), 

castor bean (Ricinus communis), and okra (Abelmoshus 

esculentus) provide examples of crops that originated in 

Africa and diffused to Asia between one and three 

thousand years ago. Other African domesticated plants, 

such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and millets 

(Pennisetum glaucum, Eleusine coracana) became the 

subjects of intense plant breeding in India thousands of 

years before returning again to Africa as new varieties. 

Still other plants of Old World origin were long 

established in Africa prior to their dissemination across 

the Atlantic by slave ships. These include mustard 

green and kale, introduced from the Mediterranean, and 

sesame (sim-sim), originally of Asian origin but so long 

used in Africa that it bears the name ‘benne’ which 

became the plant’s name in the U.S. south. 

Plant exchanges between India and Africa by maritime 

and overland routes had been underway for millennia 

before Europeans began enslaving Africans in the 

fifthteen century. Taro (Coloasia esculenta), lime 

(Citrus aurantifolia), the luffa sponge (Luffa spp.), an 

edible green (Celosia argentea) and banana and 

plantain (Musa spp.) offer examples of Asian crops that 

diffused to Africa in prehistory. The significance of 

many Asian medicinals in Afro-Caribbean folk 

medicine began with their previously established value 

to Africans long before the wave of Asian and Chinese 

immigration to the Caribbean that dates to the 19 th 

century. 

Even the medicinal use of some Native American 

species, after being naturalized in Africa, diffused to 

the New World with the slave traffic. American 

tobacco had arrived and was probably being used 

medicinally in Africa by the 1600s. During the late 

years of the slave trade, Africans arriving in Venezuela 

introduced healing rituals with tobacco that were 

uniquely African. Similarly, the South American 

peanut was carried by the Portuguese to Africa and 

incorporated into the African ethnomedical systems; it 

made its way to the Caribbean as a food and a medicine 

for captive laborers. 

One hundred and eighty-six plant families and almost 

700 genera are common to Africa and South America. 

A mid-20 th century survey of the West Indies reported 

that 20% of the species were aliens, that the majority 

was from Old World, and that most had arrived during 




early colonization. 

Transplanted African laborers recognized and used not 

only a large number of their native food plants but also a 

variety of medicinal weeds. Exotic plants that have 

retained parallel African and African-American 

medicinal value include hollow stalk, a febrifuge, bitter 

melon as a febrifuge and purgative, cow-itch vine as a 

vermifuge, chamber bitters as a diuretic, castor bean as a 

purgative and African spider flower as a cure for earache. 

African plants entered the Americas repeatedly over the 

350 year period of the Atlantic slave trade in which 

millions of Africans were delivered into bondage. 

Arriving aboard slave ships as food and medicines, the 

plants were grown by New World Africans on plantation 

provision fields, dooryard gardens, and subsistence plots. 

In this manner, more than fifty species native to Africa 

became a part of the Caribbean botanical resources. An 

additional fourteen species of Asian origin but grown in 

Africa since antiquity were also established. 

There is as yet no systematic overview of the medicinal 

species of African origin that are widely used in 

Caribbean pharmacopoeias. However, the dozens of 

compendia of herbal medicines now published for the 

Caribbean and tropical West Africa offer a point of 

departure for the study of African plant cures, 

traditionally valued by Black Atlantic populations. 

Indigenous Traditional Herbal Medicine in Jamaica 

In Jamaica, African traditional herbal medicine is still 

being practiced by the descendant maroon populations as 

well as in other maroon societies all over the Caribbean 

and the Americas. The Jamaican Maroons were enslaved 

Africans who fought the British for autonomy and 

retained much of their African culture to include 

knowledge of medicinal herbs and their uses. 

Columbus reached the island in 1494 and spent a year 

shipwrecked there in 1503–04. In 1534 the Spanish 

colonial capital was established at Spanish Town. The 

Spanish enslaved many Arawak Indians; most died from 

overwork and European diseases. By the early 17th 

century, no Arawak Indian remained in the region. 

In 1655 a British expedition invaded Jamaica and began 

expelling the Spanish. However, many of the Spaniards' 

escaped slaves had already formed communities in the 

highlands. Increasing numbers also escaped from British 

plantations. These former slaves were called Maroons, a 

name probably derived from the Spanish word cimarrón, 

meaning “wild” or “untamed.” The Maroons adapted to 

life in the wilderness by establishing remote, defensible 

settlements, cultivating scattered plots of land (notably 

with plantains and yams), hunting, and developing 

herbal medicines. 

In the initial twenty-five years of British control, 

plantation labor in Jamaica was sourced from the older 

British colonies of Barbados and St Kitts. Given the 

pattern of British sources of supply; the largest single 

group of these slaves was drawn from among the Akan 

and Ga-Andangme peoples of the coastal strip of 

present-day Ghana. However, from 1685 to the close of 

the seventeenth century, 40 per cent were from Angola 

in West-Central Africa, and 30 per cent were Ewe-Fon 

from the area immediately east of the Gold Coast, with 

the Ewe-Fon and Akan numbers increasing over the 

next half century. 

Later, between 1792 and 1807, approximately 83 per 

cent of the slaves came from the Bight of Biafra and 

Central Africa, compared to 46 per cent from these two 

regions over the entire history of the slave trade to 

Jamaica. These two sources would have yielded 

peoples who were largely Igbo, Efik and Ibibio from 

the Niger delta, generally referred to as 

"Moko/Moco/Mocho", and a range of Central African 

ethnic groups generally referred to as "Congo". Even in 

the postslavery period, between 1840 and 1864, about 

eight thousand Africans recruited as indentured 

labourers were brought into Jamaica. The majority 

were "Congo", "Igbo" and "Nago" or southwestern 

Yoruba. 

The mainstream of Jamaican contemporary folk 

medicine is an unbroken continuity from Africa 

through plantation slavery. Folk medical knowledge 

was part of the total cultural package of interacting 

elements brought by slaves from Africa. It was the kind 

of cultural item that existed in the minds of Africans 

and was not likely to be lost during the Middle Passage. 

Early works on health care in Jamaica identify yellow 

fever, smallpox, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, 

remittent fever, gout, yaws, rheumatism, typhoid, 

dropsy, dirt-eating, and worms, among others, as major 

illnesses that plagued the island inhabitants. 

A slave's life in Jamaica, like everywhere in the New 

World, was brutal and short. The number of slave 

deaths was consistently larger than the number of 

births. As slave traffic and European immigration 

increased over time, the island's population grew with 

slaves, accounting for more than half of the total 

population. 

In Jamaica, important practitioners in the African 

medical system, such as medicine men and diviners, 

were brought over in the trade and were able to recreate 





and re-establish their roles and functions in the New 

World. One route to the acquisition of these roles and 

functions was the hereditary one, both in Africa and, to 

some extent, in Jamaica: mothers passed on knowledge of 

childbirth to their daughters, and fathers passed on the 

ability and practice of occult healing to sons. Both in 

Africa and Jamaica, medicine men and other practitioners 

received their calling in dreams, visions and visitations 

from the spirits. 

For example, according to Dr. Ogundele (2007), the 

Yoruba in Africa considers ethnomedicine as an 

important part of a child’s education. Every Yoruba child, 

as from about the age of eight years begins to learn in an 

informal way, the names of local plants as well as their 

uses. This is in terms of therapeutics and nutrition. Early 

childhood education in indigenous medicine applies 

basically to the rural people, who constitute the majority 

of the population. Every opportunity is turned into a 

teaching affair by the parent of the child. This kind of 

environmental consciousness is the foundation of 

sustainable health care in Yoruba land. Not only does the 

parent or a senior person teach the child about medicinal 

plants, he also gives instructions on the time of the day a 

plant can be obtained from the forest. This is an aspect of 

the Yoruba ancient knowledge of plant behaviour or 

botany that the contemporary people hardly appreciates, 

because of the impact of Western education on them. 

Rural children in the Jamaica received the same type of 

education. 

The assumption that Jamaican folk medicine is based 

historically on African folk medical practices may 

therefore be valid. If the conditions of slavery inhibited or 

prevented the practice of certain aspects of African 

culture, it could be argued that in the case of medical 

practices they encouraged, required and allowed slaves to 

rely on their own devices to heal themselves. There is 

also evidence that even when some medical facilities 

were provided, slaves had more confidence in their own 

therapeutic devices. Medical practices may be one of 

those rare areas of African culture whose survival and 

continuity in the New World were enhanced by the 

condition of slavery. 

Slaves relied on tested and proven practices that they had 

known in Africa. Some flora and fauna common to both 

Africa and Jamaica, would have been recognized and 

used in well-established ways by slaves in Jamaica. Even 

if one opposes the Africanist hypothesis of Jamaican and 

Afro-American culture, or subscribes to the cultural 

deprivation hypothesis (that is, that Africans were 

“stripped” of their culture or were unable to practice 

herbal medicine because of their ethnic diversity and the 

unfavourable conditions of slavery), it should not be 

difficult to accept that concepts of causation and 

therapeutic alternatives such as prayers, botanicals, etc., 

were part of the knowledge brought and retained by 

Africans, and transmitted to successive generations. The 

“cultural baggage” brought by slaves from Africa is 

indispensable in accounting for the character and 

persistence of folk medicine in contemporary Jamaica. 

The Maroons of Jamaica and elsewhere can be credited 

with many achievements. They became the frontline 

fighters in the struggle against slavery in all its various 

forms. Before any known struggles for independence in 

the New World, Maroon communities had developed 

strong ideas and strategies of self-sufficiency, self-help 

and self-reliance and fought with great skill and courage 

for the right to self determination. Also, the 

communities managed to unite people who had come 

from diverse backgrounds and regions of the world, 

speaking different languages and practising diverse 

customs and traditions. African traditions featured 

prominently in the formation and transformation of the 

ways of life of these groups throughout the entire period 

of their struggle. 

Results of a Comparative Study of Jamaican 

Medicinal Plants and Possible Sources 

A preliminary comparison of 50 medicinal plants in the 

Jamaican pharmacopoeia that coincide with the online 

databases of medicinal African plants, Metafro Infosys 

(PRELUDE) and the Plant Resources of Tropical Africa 

(PROTA). Emphasis was placed on the similarities in 

the usage of these indigenous plants and their possible 

sources in Africa. The data obtained on the sources and 

uses of these plants come strictly from published 

sources. 

Our objective was to determine if the knowledge and 

source of indigenous Jamaican medicinal plants could 

be linked by source to regional areas in Africa that 

would have been used by enslaved Africans. Given the 

details from where and what areas African slaves were 

taken, gives us some indication of the amount of 

medical knowledge and ways of knowing enslaved 

Africans brought with them to the New World. 

This preliminary study shows some interesting details. 

Nearly all of the plants chosen agree with the usage and 

source data obtained on west, central African countries 

involved in the Slave Trade. Of the 50 medicinal plants 

and food, 24 are of African origin; four from new world 

sources; and eight from old world sources. Many of 

these show similar uses both in Africa and in the New 

World. 



Continued from page 52 – Pan-African Indigenous Herbal 

Medicine: Technology Transfer 

Six of the African plants were not listed in any of the 

databases for Jamaica, however of these, three are listed 

in a Haitian pharmacopoeia. 

Also shown are six pan-tropical plants and their uses that 

are common to Africa, Jamaica, the Caribbean, and South 

America. Eight of the plants are listed as biblical species 

mentioned in the Bible and show similar uses wherever 

they appear. 

According to Sheridan, 1985, modern studies of 

medicinal plants common to Africa and the West Indies 

show that about 60 out of 160 specimens of medicinal 

plants in Jamaica are known to have been or continue to 

be used in Africa. 

A comprehensive study by Mitchell et al, 2006 

(University of the West Indies), lists a review of the 

medicinal plants in Jamaica collected from postgraduate 

theses, articles and technical reports beginning in 1948 

thru 2001. Jamaica has 2888 known species of flowering 

plants that are native or fully naturalized. Of these, 784 

species (27.2%) are endemic to Jamaica. The study lists 

334 plants species growing in Jamaica that have been 

identified as having medicinal qualities. Out of these, 193 

plant species (55%) have been investigated for their 

bioactivity against human or plant pathogens, and/or for 

possible pharmacological or physiological actions. 

Many of the plants used in the Jamaican folk medicine 

and found to have medicinal and agricultural potential, 

are not endemic to Jamaica. Of the 334 identified 

medicinal plants growing in Jamaica, 31 were endemic 

(9.3%); another 12 have a restricted distribution range to 

the Caribbean, 50% were restricted to the Americas while 

37% are found throughout the tropics. 

A more in-depth study is needed on the origin of 

medicinal plants and knowledge of their uses by enslaved 

Africans in the New World, to add to the growing body 

of plants used for medicinal purposes in Africa. 

Conclusions 

Indigenous medical practices are as old as the time of the 

emergence of the earliest man. These practices involved 

experimenting with different plants and to a less degree, 

animals with a view to determining whether or not they 

had therapeutic value. This serves as a basis for ensuring 

good health for a community. 

Much information about ethnomedicine is documented 

orally. Every environmental set-up, had numerous plants 

with chemotherapeutic values that mankind can use to 

treat a wide range of diseases including illnesses at any 

point in time. 

The continuing use of African ethnomedicine and 

epistemology in the Caribbean and the Americas 

demonstrates a successful technological transfer of 

African traditional herbal medicine during and after the 

transatlantic slave trade. For millions of descendants of 

enslaved Africans, it is still the healing method of 

choice and sometimes the only method that exists. 

African traditional herbal medicine is also more 

conducive to the health of melanated people. 

Like traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and 

Ayurvedic medicine of India, African traditional herbal 

medicine is plant-based. It has been around for 

thousands of years before the use of Western medicine 

and provided the foundation for all three. The African 

continent has now over a billion people. In times of war 

and environmental disasters, the health of African 

people everywhere needs to be secure. This means that 

on the continent, regulatory measures should be put in 

place to ensure all Africans have adequate healthcare, 

independent of outside sources, based on culture. These 

plants can be cultivated, collected and conserved; 

healing methods can be standardized and taught to 

practicing herbalists as reliable and reproducible 

methods for various diseases. 

Much information in Africa has been lost over several 

centuries, but fortunately that which has been lost, can 

systematically be retrieved from adequate sources of 

authentication found in former slave colonies in the 

New World. (June 2010) 

References Cited: 

“African Holocaust (Maafa); 

http://www.africanholocaust.net/html_ah/holocaustspecial.ht 

m; www.africanholocaust.net/articles/TRANSATLANTIC 

SLAVE TRADE.htm 

Asprey, G.F., Thorton, Phyllis, “Medicine Plants of Jamaica, 

Parts I & II”, West Indian Medical Journal, 2(4) & 3(1), 

1954, 

http://www.herbaltherapeutics.net/Medicinal_Plants_of_Jam 

aica.pdf 

___“Medicine Plants of Jamaica, Parts III & IV, West 

Indian Medical Journal, 4(2) & 4(3), September 1955. 

“Atlantic Slave Trade”, 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade 

Beauvoir, Max G., “African Presence in the New World”, 

http://www.vodou.org/ africanpresence.htm 

Carney, Judith A., “African Traditional Plant Knowledge in 

the Circum-Caribbean Region”, Journal of Ethnobiology 

23(2): 2003, pp.167-185. 

“Chapter 18: The Atlantic System and Africa, 1550-1800”, 

The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Volume II, 5th 



TABLE 1. USES OF MEDICINAL PLANTS COMMON TO AFRICA AND JAMAICA 

TAXON AFRICA+ USES+ JAMAICA ++ 

Alliaceae (Liliaceae) 

Allium sativum L. (Garlic) – 

B+++ 

Algeria, Egypt, Libya, 

Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, 

Benin, Nigeria, Kenya, DRC, 

Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Burkina 

Faso, Ethiopia 

Medicine 

Medicine 

Amaranthaceae 

A. hybridus L. sp. hybridus/A.viridis 

L. - A 

DRC, Angola, Nigeria, Togo, 

Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda, 

Rwanda, Ethiopia 

Food, Medicine 


(Calaloo) 

Anacardiaceae 

Anacardium occidentale L. (Cashew) 

- NW 

CAR, Nigeria, Benin, Congo, 

Guinea, Angola, Mali, Ghana, 

Senegal, Sierra Leone, 

Tanzania, Comoros, 

Madagascar, Mauritius, 

Mozambique 



Mangifera Indica L. (Mango) - OW Sub-Sahara – Wide Food, Medicine Food, Medicine 

Annonaceae 

Annona muricata (Soursop) - NW 

Annona Squamosa L (Sweetsop)- 

NW 

Benin, Congo, Togo, Ivory 

Coast, Senegal, Cameron, 

Guinea, CAR Sierra Leone, 

Angola, Ethiopia, Reunion, 

Seychelles, Mauritius, 

Comoros, Madagascar, 



Apocynaceae 

Rauwolfia vomitoria Afzel. - A 

Nigeria, Benin, Mali, Congo, 

Togo, Ivory Coast, CAR, DRC, 

Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, 

Cameroon, Senegal, Tanzania 

Poison, 

Medicine 

Rauwolfia 

Serpentinea 

Listed in Haiti 

Pharmacopoeia 

Catharanthus roseus (L.) 

(Vinca Rosa) Madagascar – A 

Sub-Sahara wide Medicine Medicine 

(Periwinkle) 

Asteraceae (Composite) 

Artemisia Spp. - PT 

Angola, Ethiopia, South Africa, 

Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, 

Kenya, (East Africa) 

Medicine 

Medicine -No 

species recorded 

garden plant, 

(Garden Bitters) 

Bidens pilosa L. - PT 

(Spanish Needle) 

Congo, Comoros, Mauritius, 

Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Uganda, 

DRC, Burundi, Angola, 

Tanzania, Rwanda, Madagascar, 

Ethiopia, Kenya, CAR, Burkina 

Faso, Reunion, Cameroon, S. 

Food, Medicine, 

Ritual 



Africa, Gabon 

Vernonia spp - PT 

DRC, Angola, CAR, Ivory 

Coast, Burundi, Tanzania, 

Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda, 

Rwanda, S. Africa, Madagascar, 

Reunion, Mauritius 



Vernonia acumiata 

Vernonia pluvalis 

Endemic 

Bombacaceae 

Adansonia digitata L- A 

(Baobab) 

Benin, Niger, Togo, Nigeria, 

Mali, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, 

Senegal, Angola, Congo, CAR, 

Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Guinea 

Conakry, Burkina Faso, Sudan, 

Zimbabwe, DRC, Tanzania, 

Kenya, Ethiopia, Somali, 

Malawi, S. Africa, Mauritania, 

Madagascar 


Fibre 

Listed in Haiti 

Pharmacopedia as 

Medicine, Food 

Boraginaeae 

Heliotropium indicum L. – A 

Seychelles, Benin, Nigeria, 

Togo, Mauritius, Ivory Coast, 

DRC, Madagascar, Senegal, 

Tanzania, Guinea, Guinea 

Conakry, Mali, Gabon 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Scorpion weed) 

Brassicaceae 

Brassica oleracea L. (Cabbage, 

Brussel Sprouts) - OW 

Morocco, Angola, Kenya, S. 

Africa 

Food 

Food 

Caricaceae 

Carica Papaya L. – NW 

(Papaw) 

Nigeria, Benin, Congo, Togo, 

Mauritius, DRC, Cameroon, 

Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, 

Zambia, Gabon, Angola, Sierra 

Leone, Burkina Faso, 

Zimbabwe, Senegal, Guinea, 

CAR, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, 

Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, S. 

Africa, Madagascar, Reunion, 

Seychelles, Comoros 



Commelineae 

Congo, Ivory Coast, DRC, 

Angola, Uganda, Burundi, 

Medicine 

Medicine 


Commelina diffusa Burm. - PT 

Mauritius 

(Water Grass 

Commelina Africana - A 

Benin, Comoros, Burundi, 

Kenya, Uganda, DRC, 

Tanzania, Somalia 

Medicine 

Not Listed 

Crassulaceae 

Bryophyllum pinnatum (L. f.) Oken - 

A 

Kalanchoe pinnatum syn. 

Nigeria, Benin, Congo, Ivory 

Coast, DRC, CAR, Burkina 

Faso, Mali, Cameroon, Sierra 

Leone, Senegal, Guinea, 

Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, 

Madagascar, Seychelles, 

Comoros, Mauritius, Reunion 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Leaf of Life) 

Cucurbitaceae 

Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. 

& Nakai – A; B+++ 

(Watermelon) 

Morocco, Nigeria, Benin, 

Niger, Mali, Senegal, Chad, 

Congo, CAR, Angola, 

Tanzania, S. Africa, Botswana 

(Kalahari), Zimbabwe 


Food 

Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standl.– 

A B+++ 

(Calabash) 


Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, 

Congo, Togo, Nigeria, 

Madagascar, Angola, Ethiopia, 

Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, 

Mauritius, CAR, Senegal, DRC, 

Reunion, Kenya, Rwanda 

Medicine, Ritual Listed in Haiti 

Pharmacopedia as 

Ritual, Medicine 

Momordica Charantia L. – A 


Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, 

Ghana, DRC, Cameroon, 

Senegal, Burkina Faso, 


Comoros 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Cerasse) 

Dioscoreaceae 

Dioscorea spp. - A 

(Species of Yam) 

Congo, DRC, CAR, Rwanda, 

Benin, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, 

Gabon, Senegal, Nigeria, 

Burundi, Cameron, Angola, 

Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda 



Eurphorbiaceae 

Jatropha Curcas L. - PT 

(Physic Nut) 


Comoros, Ivory Coast, Gabon, 

Uganda, Ghana, Madagascar, 

Burundi, DRC, CAR, Sudan, 

Angola, Guinea Conakry, Sierra 

Leone, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, 

Senegal, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, 

Mali, Cameroon, Mauritius, 

Medicine, Ritual Medicine 


Guinea, Kenya, Reunion, Niger, 

Somalia, S. Africa 

Phyllanthus amarus Thonn. – A 


Comoros, Ivory Coast, Uganda, 

Ghana, Tanzania, Mauritius, 

Reunion, CAR, Cameroon 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Carry-me-seed) 

Ricinus communis L– A; B+++ 

(Castor Oil Plant) 

Morocco, Algeria, Chad, 

Nigeria, Burundi, Sahel, DRC, 

Kenya, Niger, W, Africa, 

Rwanda, Zimbabwe, S. Africa, 

Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, 

Mauritania, Cameroon, Burkina 

Faso, Senegal 

Medicine, 

Poison, Ritual 

Medicine 

Fabaceae-Caesalpinoideae 

Cassia occidentalis L. (Senna) - NW 

Nigeria, Benin, Congo, Niger, 

Togo, Ivory Coast, Mali, CAR, 

Equatorial Guinea, DRC, 

Ghana, Cameroon, Angola, 

Guinea, Chad, Gabon, Senegal, 

Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, 

Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, 

Ethiopia, Somalia, Madagascar, 

Reunion, Mauritania, 

Seychelles, Comoros, Mauritius 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Dandelion) 

Fabaceae-Caesalpinioideae 

Tamarindus indica L. (Taramarind) 

- A 


Morocco, Tunisia, Niger, Benin, 

Congo, Togo, CAR, Ghana, 

DRC, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, 

Senegal, Angola, Sudan, Mali, 

Guinea, Burkina Faso, Sierra 

Leone, Chad, Uganda, Kenya, 

Ethiopia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, 

Comoros, Madagascar, 

Seychelles, Mauritius 



Fabaceae-Papilionaceae 

Abrus precatorius L. - OW 


Niger, Ghana, Ivory Coast, 

Mali, CAR, Uganda, Tanzania, 

DRC, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina 

Faso, Guinea, Cameroon, 

Burundi, Angola, Gabon, 

Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles, 

Comoros, Madagascar 


(Red bead vine) 

Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp - A 


DRC, Uganda, Burundi, 

Angola, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, 

Rwanda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, 

Food for Fodder 

Medicine 

Food 

(Gungo Peas) 


Senegal, Gabon, Reunion, 

Coromos, Mauritius, 

Madagascar 

Lamiaceae (Labiate) 

Hyptis Suaveolens L. Poil - PT 

Spikenard 

Benin, Congo, Togo, Uganda, 

Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Tanzania, 

Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, 

Senegal, DRC 

Medicine 

Medicine 

Leonotis nepetifolia(L) R. Br. – A 

Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, 

Uganda, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, 

Sudan, Tanzania, Chad, Gabon, 

Madagascar, Seychelles 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Christmas 

candlestick) 

Ocimum basilicum L – OW 

(Sweet Basil) 


Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, Togo, 

Nigeria, DRC, Cameroon, 

Burundi, Ivory Coast, CAR, 

Congo, Angola, Tanzania, 

Sudan, Kenya, Senegal, 

Uganda, Burkina Faso, Guinea 

Conakry, Gabon, Sierra Leone, 

Mauritius, Comoros, 

Seychelles, Madagascar, 

Reunion 



Lauraceae 

Cinnamomum cassia Lour.; B+++ 

Cinnamomum Zeylanicum 

Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, 

Morocco 

Medicine 

Medicine 

(Cinnamon) 

Liliaceae 

Aloe vera L – B+++ 

Burkina-Faso, Mali, Senegal, 

Kenya, Tanzania 


Medicine 

(Sinkle Bible) 

Loganiaceae 

Stychons spp - PT 

DRC, Angola, Congo, 

Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory 

Coast, Burkina Faso, CAR, 

DRC, Tanzania 

Poison 

Not Listed 

Malvaceae 

Abelmoschus esculentus(L.)Moench 

(Okra) - A 

Morocco, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, 

Niger, Ghana, Madagascar, 

Ivory Coast, Congo, Angola, 

Sierra Leone, DRC, CAR, 

Burkina Faso, Gabon, 

Zimbabwe, Senegal, Mauritius, 

Cameroon, West Africa (Fulani- 

Fula) 


Food 

Hibiscus sabdariffa L - A 

Benin, Congo, Togo, Angola, 

Sudan, Senegal, CAR, Mali, 

Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, 

Tanzania, Guinea Conakry, 

Medicine, Food, 

Fiber, 


(Sorrel) 


Madagascar, Reunion, 

Mauritius Nigeria, Burkina 

Faso, Niger, Uganda 

Gossypium spp. (Cotton) – A 

B+++ 

Congo, Sierra Leone, DRC, 

Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali, 

W. Africa, South and East 

Africa, Guinea Conakry (Fouta- 

Djallon) 

Medicine, Fiber 

Medicine, Fiber 

Poaceae (Graminae) 

Cymbopogon citratus (D.C.) (Lemon 

Grass/Fever Grass) - OW 

Nigeria, Benin, Congo, 

Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, 

DRC, Angola, Ethiopia, 

Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali, 

Cameroon, CAR, Tanzania, 

Gabon, Uganda, Seychelles, 

Mauritius, Madagascar 

Medicine 

Medicine 

Oryza sativa L. 

Oryza glaberrima steud (Rice) - A 

Morocco, Congo, Sierra Leone, 

Ehtiopia, DRC, Rwanda, 


Reunion, Guinea Conakry 

(Fouta-Djallon), W. Africa 


Food 

Rubiaceae 

Coffea Arabia L (Coffee) -A 

Ethiopia, Congo, Rwanda, 

Kenya, Burundi, DRC, Uganda, 

Mauritius, Madagascar, 

Reunion 


Ritual 

Food 

Rutaceae 

Citrus aurantifolia (Christmas) Single 

(Lime) –OW 

B+++ 

Morocco, Nigeria, Benin, 

Congo, Togo, Comoros, 

Uganda, Gabon, Madagascar, 

Mali, Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra 

Leone, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, 

Mauritius, DRC, Senegal, Ivory 

Coast, Cameroon, Kenya, Niger 



Sapindaceae 

Blighia sapida KD. Koenig - A 

Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Gabon, 

São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, 

Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, 

Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, 

Senegal, Sierra Leone and 

Togo. 


Poison 


(Akee) 

Cardiospermum halicacabum L - A 

Benin, Togo, DRC, Mali, 

Kenya, 

Medicine, 

Fodder, Food 

Not Listed 

S. Africa, Uganda, Burundi, 

Sudan, Tanzania, Ethiopia, 

Angola, Rwanda, Guinea 

Conakry, Chad, Gabon, 


Ritual 


Solanceae 

Datura Stramonium L.- OW 

(Jimson Weed) 

Reunion, Seychelles, Comoros 


Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, 

Nigeria, Togo, DRC, 

Cameroon, Angola, Uganda, 

Ethiopia, Burundi, Kenya, 

Rwanda Tanzania, S. Africa, 

Madagascar, Mauritius 


Solanum nigrum L. - OW 

(Black Nightshade) 


Morocco, Tunisia, Somalia, 

Sudan, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, 

Togo, Ivory Coast, DRC, CAR, 

Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, 

Tanzania, Rwanda, Congo, 

Angola, Sierra Leone, 

Cameroon, Zimbabwe, S. 

Africa, Guinea Conakry, 

Burkina Faso, Gabon, 

Madagascar, Reunion, 

Comoros, Mauritius 


Ritual 

Medicine 

Capsicum frutescens L. – NW 


Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, 

Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Congo, 

Togo, Mali, Uganda, Kenya, 

Burundi, Tanzania, DRC, CAR, 

Angola, Cameroon, Burkina 

Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, 

Gabon, Ivory Coast, Sierra 

Leone, Chad, Madagascar, 

Reunion, Mauritius 



(Bird Pepper) 

Sterculiaceae 

Cola acuminate (P. Beauv) Schott & 

Endl (Kola Nut) – A 

C. nitida (Vent) Schott&Endl (Syn.) 


Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Ivory 

Coast, Angola, Burkina Faso, 

CAR, DRC, Sierra Leone, 

Guinea Bissau, Guinea, 

Cameroon, Madagascar 


Ritual 


(Bissy) 

Zingiberaceae 

Aframomum melegueta K Sschum - 

A 

Morocco, Nigeria, Congo, 

Togo, Ivory Coast, Mali, Benin, 

Gabon, Ghana, DRC, Angola, 

Cameroon, Sierra Leone, 

Burkina Faso 


Ritual 

Not Listed 

A = Africa; B = Biblical; NW = New World; OW = Old World; PT = Pan Tropical 

+ = Metafro Infosys Database (Prelude), Emphasis on Central African plant sources 

= Plant Resources of Tropical Africa (PROTA) 


Continued from page 60- PAN-AFRICAN INDIGENOUS HERBAL MEDICINE: TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER 

++ = Mitchell, S.A. and M.H. Ahmad, A Review of Medicinal Plant Research at the University of the West Indies, 

Jamaica, 1948-2001, West Indian Medical Journal, 55(4):243, 2006. 

Asprey, G.F., Phyllis Thorton, “Medicine Plants of Jamaica, Parts I & II”, West Indian Medical Journal, 2(4) & 

3(1), 1954. 

__“Medicine Plants of Jamaica, Parts III & IV”, West Indian Medical Journal, 4(2) & 4(3), September 1955. 

+++ = Duke, James A., Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the Bible, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 2008. 

Carney, Judith A., “African Traditional Plant Knowledge in the Circum-Caribbean Region”, Journal of 

Ethnobiology 23(2): 2003, pp.167-185. 



Edition, by Bulliet; Crossley; Headrick; Hirsch; Johnson; 

Northrup, Publ. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2010. 

Draft National Policy on African Traditional Medicine in South 

Africa, 2008; http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/policy/atm.pdf 

Duke, James A, Duke’s Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the 

Bible, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 2008. 

“Egyptians, not Greeks were True Fathers of Medicine”, 

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/unomeng050907.php 

Finch, Charles, S., “The African Background of Medical Science” 

in Blacks in Science, Ancient and Modern, edited by Ivan Van 

Sertima, 2009. pp. 140-156, 

Handler, Jerome S., Slave Medicine and Obeah in Barbados, 

Circa 1650-1834, New West Indian Guide, 76(1&2), 2000, pp. 

57-90 

Helwig, David, Traditional African Medicine, Encyclopedia of 

Alternative Medicine, 6 April 2001. 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2603/is_0007/ai_260300070 

8/ 

Maroon Heritage: Archaeological, Ethnographic, and Historical 

Perspectives. Ed. E. Kofi Agorsah,. Barbados: Canoe 

Press/University of West Indies Press, 1994. 

Mitchell, S.A. and M.H. Ahmad, A Review of Medicinal Plant 

Research at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, 1948- 

2001, West Indian Medical Journal, 55(4):243, 2006, 

http://caribbean.scielo.org/pdf/wimj/v55n4/a08v55n4.pdf 

Newsome, Frederick, “Black Contributions to the Early History of 

Western Medicine” Blacks in Science, Ancient and Modern, 

edited by Ivan Van Sertima, 2009, pp. 127-139. 

Ogundele, Samuel Oluwole, “Aspects of Indigenous Medicine in 

Southwestern Nigeria”, Ethno-Medicine, 1(2), 2007, pp. 127-133. 

Payne-Jackson, Arvilla and Alleyne, Mervyn C., Jamaican Folk 

Medicine: A Source of Healing, University Press of the West 

Indies, Barbados, 2004. 

Pollitzer, William, “Appendix D: The Gullah People and 

their African Heritage”, Gullah/Geechee Special 

Resource Study Team, National Park Service, October, 

2001. 

Slavery and the Natural World, Plants and People, 

“Chapter 8: Medicines”, National History Museum, 

2006-2008, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/ 

Schiebing, Londa, Plants and Empire: Colonial 

Biosprospecting the Atlantic Worlds, Harvard 

University Press, 2004. 

Sheridan, Richard B., Doctors and Slaves: A Medical 

and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West 

Indies, 1680–1834, Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1985. 

Shultz V., Hansel, R. & Tyler, V.E. (2001) Rational 

Phytochemistry: A Physician’s Guide to Herbal 

Medicine, 5 th Ed. Berlin-Springer-Verlag. 

Uwechia, Jide, “Ancient African Medicine, Egypt 

(Khemit) and the World”, June 8, 2007, 

http://www.africaresoure.com/index.php? 

Voeks, Robert, “African Medicine and Magic in the 

Americas”, Geographical Review, Vol. 83(1); 1993, pp. 

66-78. 

Warner-Lewis, Maureen. "Chapter 5: The Character of 

African-Jamaican Culture", in Jamaica in Slavery and 

Freedom: History, Heritage and Culture, Ed. Kathleen E. 

A. Monteith and Glen Richards. Kingston, Jamaica: 

University of the West Indies Press, 2002, pp. 89-114. 

http://www.blackherbals.com/pan_african_indigenous_h 

erbal_medicine_technology_tranfer.pdf 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 





THE AFRICAN TRADITIONAL HERBAL RESEARCH 

CENTRE/CLINIC 

Blackherbals at the Source of the Nile, UG Ltd. 

www.Blackherbals.com 

WHAT IS THE AFRICAN TRADITIONAL 

HERBAL RESEARCH CENTRE/CLINIC? 

Introduction 

In all ancient cultures around the world, there exists 

traditional indigenous knowledge related to the health of 

humans and animals. Presently, eighty percent of the 

world’s populations still depend upon traditional and 

indigenous knowledge in medicine and herbal practices. 

In Uganda, traditional healers and herbal plant remedies 

play an important role in the health of millions of people. 

Africa as a whole has a long and impressive list of 

medicinal plants based on local knowledge. Based upon 

holistic principles, this science pre-dates Egyptian 

medical science and is between 20,000 and 100,000 years 

old. In fact, it is the oldest medical science on the 

planet. African health practitioners are devoted to 

teaching individuals how to improve their physical, 

mental, and spiritual health through preventative 

lifestyles. 

However, due to the current global health crises, the 

survival of Africans at home and worldwide is becoming 

increasingly dependent upon the cooperation and 

communication of Africa with her descendents in the 

Diaspora. This includes the merging of mother-tongue 

indigenous knowledge systems with western technology, 

merging natural health practices with western 

diagnostics, creating a model environment blending the 

traditional and modern, and building a sustainable bridge 

that links Africa with her African descendents wherever 

we are in the world. 

One of the key mechanisms for enhancing the quality of 

life for all Ugandans is the establishment of a formal 

framework through which adequate healthcare can reach 

all citizens. However, it is becoming more apparent that 

the healthcare system in Uganda, as it stands today, does 

not adequately address itself to solving the multitudes of 

health problems and concerns of all Ugandans. In this 

context, it is apparent that the integration of traditional 


medicine into the national healthcare system has the 

potential to augment, strengthen and promote better 

healthcare for all, in conformity with the national 

health vision. 

Traditional Medicine in Health Care 

Seldom documented, African indigenous knowledge 

(AIK) in health care is passed orally from generation 

to generation. Unfortunately, scientific awareness of 

the value of African indigenous knowledge is 

growing at a time when such knowledge is under 

tremendous threat. It is in danger of disappearing as a 

result of the ever-growing Western influences for 

rapid technological change and because the capacity 

and facilities needed to document, evaluate, validate, 

protect and disseminate such knowledge are lacking. 

For this situation to change, infrastructures, facilities, 

research, and financial resources are needed. More 

research needs to be done on AIK systems and 

methods developed for dealing with it. African 

claims of indigenous solutions to specific health 

problems by indigenous knowledge systems need to 

be validated and attempts made to improve or adapt 

those systems. This research should be conducted 

with people who possess the indigenous knowledge 

and with the local communities involved. Uganda can 

become a model by taking the initiative and 

developing an independent and alternative health care 

system based primarily upon their indigenous 

knowledge of herbs, food and plants. 

Currently, we are witnessing a breakdown of western 

systems to cure diseases, derived from both natural 

and unnatural causes. Most pharmaceutical drugs, 

developed primarily to relieve symptoms, do not cure 

diseases. 

Moreover, our African biochemistry requires a type 

of nutritional support (African dietetics) that is not 


Continued from page 62 – THE AFRICAN TRADITIONAL 

HERBAL RESEARCH CENTRE/CLINIC 

readily available in western cultures or through western 

medicine. The science of African biochemistry is based 

on the biochemical molecule, melanin. The lack of 

melanin-sustaining foods, which can be found in plant 

phyto-nutrients is one of the major causes of our 

nutritional deficiencies and diseases. We plan to make the 

community aware of the foods they must eat to stay 

healthy. 

Vaccines are developed to immunize against disease, but 

can also be use to spread disease. Economic interest has 

the main reason why no medical breakthroughs exist for 

the control or elimination of the most common diseases 

and why these diseases continue like epidemics on a 

worldwide scale. The pharmaceutical industry withholds 

public information about the effects and risks of their 

prescription drugs and vaccines and life-threatening sideeffects 

are omitted or openly denied. Many Africans, like 

their counterparts throughout the Diaspora, cannot even 

afford pharmaceutical drugs to alleviate the symptoms of 

disease. 

On observation, we find evidence that the same diseases 

are affecting Africans in Uganda, other parts of Africa 

and the Diaspora in alarming numbers. There is an 

overwhelming need for African traditional indigenous 

medicine to become familiar with modern herbal 

practices and clinical procedures, so that African 

Traditional Medicine can gain distinctions like that of 

other traditional medicines. In addition, African 

indigenous medicine when viewed in a modern clinical 

setting will elevate the public’s perception of the 

“Traditional African Herbalist.” 

Currently, we are witnessing a breakdown of western 

systems to cure diseases, derived from both natural and 

unnatural causes. Most pharmaceutical drugs, developed 

primarily to relieve symptoms, do not cure diseases. 

Vaccines are developed to immunize against disease, but 

can also be use to spread disease. Economic interest has 

the main reason why no medical breakthroughs exist for 

the control or elimination of the most common diseases 

and why these diseases continue like epidemics on a 

worldwide scale. The pharmaceutical industry withholds 

public information about the effects and risks of their 

prescription drugs and vaccines and life-threatening sideeffects 

are omitted or openly denied. Many Africans, like 

their counterparts throughout the Diaspora, cannot even 

afford pharmaceutical drugs to alleviate the symptoms of 

disease. 

On observation, we find evidence that the same diseases 

are affecting Africans in Uganda, other parts of Africa 

and the Diaspora in alarming numbers. There is an 

overwhelming need for African traditional indigenous 

medicine to become familiar with modern herbal 

practices and clinical procedures, so that African 

Traditional Medicine can gain distinctions like that of 

other traditional medicines. In addition, African indigenous 

medicine when viewed in a modern clinical 

setting will elevate the public’s perception of the 

“Traditional African Herbalist.” 

Blackherbals at the Source of the Nile (BHSN) 

Blackherbals at the Source of the Nile, Uganda LTD. 

(BHSN) is a subsidary of RGL Enterprises 

International, a Canadian-based company registered in 

Uganda, specializing in sourcing, research & development, 

distribution and sales of traditional African 

herbal medicine and herbal health products. 

BHSN is also duly registered company under the 

National Council of Traditional Healers and Herbalists 

Assns., (NACOTHA). We are a marketing and 

promotional organisation designed to open markets for 

natural, herbal and holistic medicinal products through 

internet shopping. We do import/export, business/ 

business, wholesale and retail outlets servicing. 

We are also a marketing and promo-tional organisation 

designed to open markets for natural, herbal and 

holistic medicinal products through ness, wholesale and 

retail outlets servicing. We bring to this project 

expertise in traditional African indigenous herbal 

medicine as practiced in the Diaspora, particularly in 

Jamaica. Through our website, www.Blackherbals.com, 

we gather and disseminate information on health and 

wellness issues and related subjects as they affect 

Afrika, Afrikans and their descendants in the Diaspora. 

We conduct seminars and workshops on health issues 

and gender-related subjects as well as presentations on 

African history, African healing and herbal traditions 

and cultural practices to indigenous healers and 

herbalists and to the community at large. BHSN also 

publishes and distributes a monthly theme-related 

health newsletter to our patients and interested 

members of the community which we are now adding 

to our website for our internet community. The 

newsletters can be downloaded here. 

Our objectives are to propagate the concept of African 

natural holistic living and lifestyle; to propagate the 

consciousness of spirit, mind and body; and to promote 

community outreach programs on current and historical 

issues of health, holistic living, Afrikan history, cultural 

diversity and our relationship with the environment. 

The African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic 

Traditional healers are the major health labor resource 





in Africa as a whole. In Uganda, indigenous traditional 

healers are the only source of health services for the 

majority of the population. For these reasons and more, 

BHSN created "The African Traditional Herbal 

Research Clinic", located in Ntinda, Kampala, Uganda. 

“The African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic" is a 

modern clinic facility created to establish a model space, 

whereby indigenous herbal practitioners and healers can 

upgrade and update their skills through training and 

certification and learn to respond to common and 

uncommon diseases using African healing methods and 

traditions in a modern clinical environment. This 

environmental blending of traditional African medicine 

and western technology is a powerful concept. Many of 

the indigenous traditional healers have not had formal 

training. Their knowledge has been passed on by oral 

tradition. Therefore as an educational tool, the clinic is 

conducting its research in Mother-tongue and English. 

Through the African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic, 

we intend to modernize indigenous health resources, 

standardise effectively-known herbal preparations and 

cures for trade on the local and export markets, and 

certify competent African traditional medical 

practitioners. 

Afrikan traditional medicine is the oldest health system 

on the planet and is a part of our cultural history. Afrikan 

health traditions are becoming very important in today’s 

world because western health systems are failing. More 

importantly, our Afrikan traditions need to adjust to the 

modern conditions that Afrikans today find themselves, 

i.e., being able to deal with the toxic and chronic diseases 

that result from adopting western culture and lifestyles 

and being prepared for the many not-so-natural diseases 

being created in western laboratories. 

When we say we need to return to our Afrikan roots, 

we don't necessarily mean it literally. Not everyone can 

or will physically return to their roots. What we are 

trying to say is let's pull back from western systems, 

such as over-industrialization, fast food, and the biochemical-environmental 

pollution of our planet (and 

ourselves), and return to simpler methods of doing 

things that are more in tune with Nature. We are a part 

of Nature and we certainly emanate from this planet. 

As we watch it being destroyed, we are watching 

ourselves be destroyed. 

We have commonalities that we all share, i.e., the 

melanin (color) in our skin, Afrikan culture, and our 

susceptibilities to the diseases occurring today both in 

Africa and the Diaspora. 

Plan of Action and Strategy 

In pursuit of the mentioned ideals, our strategy is: 

• To recapture indigenous African thought, history, 

herbal, medicinal and agricultural traditions and all 

other indigenous knowledge to reeducate our people 

to African culture. 

• To use and integrate this knowledge with technology 

to develop our nation of African people, to help 

alleviate poverty, and achieve higher levels of selfsufficiency, 

dignity and self-determination. 

• To show responsibility for Africa's health, wealth and 

education using African indigenous knowledge as the 

foundation for understanding the complex world we 

live in today. 

• To do research and develop credible, potent and 

affordable herbal medicine to fight the diseases that 

affect African peoples in communities in Uganda, the 

Continent and the Diaspora. 

• To combine African Traditional Medicine 

(ATM), African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) 

practices and traditions with western diagnostics, 

standardization and documentation technology. 

• To provide space for seminars and workshops so as to 

sensitise, edify and stimulate the African mind. 

• To train African traditional practitioners (ATPs) so 

they can help and train others in their communities. 

Projected Outcomes of the African Traditional 

Herbal Research Clinic 

The projected outcomes of this venture are to: 1) raise 

public awareness and understanding on the value 

of African traditional herbal medicine and other healing 

practices; 2) contribute to the improvement of 

community health; 3) promote the health services of 





traditional healers and herbalists through the prevention 

and maintenance of diseases; 4) assist in the training, 

upgrade and certification of traditional healers and 

herbalists; and 5) preserve Ugandan' African traditional 

and cultural healing practices. 

Who are the Beneficiaries? 

There are benefits for all stakeholders involved in this 

effort such as the sick people in the community, 

herbalists and other traditional healers, medical 

practitioners, farmers, herb harvesters, handlers in 

processing, market and distribution, and state revenues. 

In addition, this venture guarantees an authentic supply 

sources for herbs, herbal formulas and raw materials, 

which in turn will help farmers develop a sustainable 

market for organic foods and herbs. This in turn, 

enhances our mission's objectives to connect Mother 

Africa with her children in the Diaspora by 

making African Traditional Medicines available 

to African peoples and their descendents whereever we 

are. 

African Spirituality 

The health of Afrikan people everywhere has always 

depended upon the holistic aspect of mind, body and 

spirit. Western medical concepts tend to ignore the 

spiritual needs of our people. Contrary to popular belief, 

the Afrikan Cultural Shrine is a symbol of Afrikan 

spirituality and our cultural history. 

Afrikan spirituality existed before any of the present 

modern man-made religions and does not share in their 

hypocrisy. The troubles that we have today result from 

our going against the laws of Nature, ignoring our past, 

who we are and what we are capable of becoming. Let us 

as a people develop our Afrikan consciousness of mind, 

body and spirit. This is our answer to the world around 

us. This is where our power lies. 

‘"We are an Afrikan people," simply reveals that there 

are values, traditions and a heritage that we share 

because we have a common origin. We are people of 

African ancestry living in denial of who we are. We have 

lost our strength as a people. We are losing our children 

to systems which miseducate them. Slowly, we are 

awakening to the need to claim our cultural legacy. 

Culture is a powerful tool for inspiring human beings and 

bringing them together in a concerted "family" action. 

This cultural process allows people to continuously 

affirm their connectedness through being linked to their 

origins. This is perhaps our moment of truth. We must 

come together as a family. We must do all that we can do 

to uplift our people.’ Dr. Marimba Ani 

Our Role as a Marcus Garvey Pan African 

University’s Community Site of Knowledge 

Our first seminar, in partnership with Makerere 

University and the Pan African Movement in Uganda, 

took place at Makerere University on June 26, 2006. 

Our guest speaker was the notable African historian 

Runoko Rashidi. It was there that we met Professor 

Nabudere and Justice Tabaro. Later in 2007 we were 

asked to join the Marcus Garvey Pan African Institute 

for African Traditional Medicine. Our relationship with 

Marcus Garvey Pan African Institute and Marcus 

Garvey Pan African University (in progress) has more 

pronounced since 2007: 

• Served on the University Board of Trustees 

• Served on the University Governing Board 

• Served as advisory member of Faculty of Science 

and Technology 

• Assisted in developing a syllabus and curriculum for 

African Traditional Medicine 

• Developed teaching materials and courses on History 

of African Medicine; African Nutrition; The Human 

Body; Herbal Material Medica of Uganda; Code of 

Ethics and Professional Conduct for Traditional 

Herbalists 

• Taught courses at the Mbale campus at the certificate 

level. 

• Participated in University cultural events in Lira, 

Mbale, Kapochawa and Kampala 

• Interaction with other community sites of knowledge 

• In conjunction with the University and Medicine 

Africa, Lira (another community site of knowledge), 

we are establishing a “demonstration farm” using 

traditional agricutural methods to produce food and 

herbs for local use and for export, as a teaching tool 

for students in Traditional Farming. 

History is the landmark by which we are directed into 

the true course of life. The history of a movement, the 

history of a nation, the history of a race is the guidepost 

of that movement’s destiny, that nation's destiny, 

that race's destiny. What you do today that is 

worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time 

Marcus Mosiah Garvey 

Blackherbals – A Marcus Garvey Pan-African 

University’s Community Site of Knowledge 


Mission Statement 

Our aim at The African Traditional Herbal 

Research Clinic is to propagate and promote the 

awareness in Afrikan peoples at home and abroad of 

their health, biodiversity, history and cultural 

richness. We gather pertinent information on these 

issues and disseminate these freely to our people in 

Uganda, the rest of the continent, and anywhere in 

the Diaspora where Afrikans are located…. One of 

the main ingredients for increasing poverty, sickness, 

exploitation and domination is ignorance of one's 

self, and the environment in which we live. 

Knowledge is power and the forces that control our 

lives don't want to lose control, so they won't stop at 

anything to keep certain knowledge from the people. 

Therefore, we are expecting a fight and opposition to 

our mission. However, we will endeavor to carry 

forward this work in grace and perfect ways. 

“Where there is no God, there is no culture. 

Where there is no culture, there is no 

indigenous knowledge. Where there is no 

indigenous knowledge, there is no history. 

Where there is no history, there is no science 

or technology. The existing nature is made 

by our past. Let us protect and conserve our 

indigenous knowledge.” 

☻☻☻☻☻☻ 

C ALENDAR OF E VENTS 

SPECIAL EVENT: 17 AUGUST 2013 

PLACE: MARCUS GARVEY PAN AFRICAN UNIVERSITY 

NABUDERE CAMPUS 

MBALE, UGANDA 

MARCUS GARVEY QUOTES 

“We are men; we have souls, we have passions, 

we have feelings, we have hopes, we have 

desires, like any other race in the world. The 

cry is raised all over the world today of 

Canada for the Canadians, of America for the 

Americans, of England for the English, of 

France for the French, of Germany for the 

Germans - do you think it is unreasonable that 

we, the Blacks of the world, should raise the 

cry of Africa for the Africans?” 

Let us in shaping our own Destiny set before us 

the qualities of human JUSTICE, LOVE, 

CHARITY, MERCY AND EQUITY. Upon such 

foundation let us build a race, and I feel that the 

God who is Divine, the Almighty Creator of the 

world, shall forever bless this race of ours, and 

who to tell that we shall not teach men the way 

to life, liberty and true human happiness? 

Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work 

towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed 

and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star 

among the constellation of nations. 

Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every 

race has a right to its own action; therefore let 

no man persuade you against your will, let no 

other race influence you against your own. 

Afrikan Traditional Herbal Research Clinic 

54 Muwafu Road, P.O. Box 29974 

Ntinda, Kampala, Uganda East Africa 

Phone: +256 (0) 702 414 530 

+256 (0) 782 917 902 

Email: clinic@blackherbals.com 

rglent@blackherbals.com 

http://www.blackherbals.com 

http://www.facebook.com/blackherbals

marcus garvey pan african university - Blackherbals.com

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