Homegrown knowledge is key

Editor, RE: “Researchers urged to utilise indigenous knowledge” (The New Times, November 5). I am in full support of this call to change our individual and collective mindset. Not only in disaster related issues, but also in all other aspects of our individual and collective life. Our individual and collective security, economic growth, and happiness in life ought to be based first and foremost on home-based and home sourced knowledge and products. Quite a task though, to our youth, who, for so many reasons, are no longer inspired by our tradition, and are widely distracted by the so-called “modern” (read western) based and exclusively oriented education and ways of life. Perhaps indeed that is where we ought to be starting from, as reminded by speakers at this conference. First: recall, revitalise, and re-valorise our traditional knowledge in systematically applying it into solving our current and situated multiple life problems. We ought to constantly remind ourselves that we are situated right here in Rwanda, under the tropics; and not elsewhere in Lapland, in Florida, in Guangdong... And only if and when needed, our base capital of knowledge and products would eventually be complemented with carefully selected traits from other corners of the globe. Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga

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Homegrown knowledge is key