Indigenous Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development

The cases presented here demonstrate how communities and local practitioners use indigenous knowledge systems and practices to help increase their crop yields, educate their children, reduce suffering from HIV/AIDS, decrease infant and maternal mortality, heal the impact of conflict, learn from each other, and empower themselves. The cases also suggest that the communities are quite willing, indeed eager, to combine global knowledge and modern technology with their indigenous knowledge and institutions to obtain better results. Traditional Birth Attendants in the Iganga District of Uganda, for example, use modern walkie-talkies to refer critical cases to the public health system, thus contributing to reducing maternal mortality substantially, one of the MDGs.