INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE: A TOOL FOR RESHAPING COMMUNITY LEVEL INFORMAL LEARNING IN NORTHERN GHANA

Abstract

Africans had their own way of educating their youth at the community level before the coming of Western form of education. The youth in various communities used to learn indigenous knowledge and other cultural practices from their elders and tried to apply what they learnt but today the situation has changed. Therefore, the researcher interacted with some of youth in Bole and observed that they were not applying the indigenous knowledge they have acquired from their elders to establish any small scale businesses in the craft industry. The researcher was moved and decided to conduct this research to enable him find out some of the economic, social and cultural factors that contributed to prevent the youth of Bole from applying indigenous knowledge. After the research it was revealed that, school, globalization, , family problems, negative cultural practices and misconceptions about indigenous knowledge were amongst some of the factors that contributed to prevent the youth in Bole to learn from their elders. Therefore the researcher gave the following recommendations; integration of IK into mass media, the promotion of endogenous development and community level learning, documentation and application of IK promotion and finally the transformation of negative cultural practices to positives ones in Ghana.