Text of the Keynote
9th TOYIN FALOLA ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AFRICA & THE AFRICAN DIASPORA 2019. 1 - 3 JULY, 2019.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
"KUN FA-YAKUN: THE SEARCH FOR SPECULATIVE THINKING IN POST GRADUATE AFRICAN KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION"
PROTOCOLS
Introduction
". . . the cultivation of economic and moral interdependence within a network of effective kin is one of the main goals of {African} social life."
James Ferguson in give a man a fish - Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution, 2015.
Let me begin with a personal anecdote. Some time ago I came across the title of a book written, not by an economist, but by an anthropologist. The title of the book is give a man a fish by James Ferguson. This instruction would be anathema to all liberal and neoliberal economists. Give a poor man a fish? Instead of teaching the poor man how to fish? And let him not learn to do a descent job of work to earn his living? Yes, all of these question plus give a man a fish!!!
As I began to read the book I realised that James Ferguson was seeing what was happening in South Africa and Namibia where, in the case of South Africa, about 40% of the population is on social grants, Professor Ferguson was seeing that Africa's kinship based societal stabilisation technique was changing neoliberal capitalism.
I use Africa here as scholars use Western Europe to include geographically diverse entities as far apart as Australia, New Zealand and Israel. My Africa here includes the Caribbean, African America as well as the African populations around the world.
The first point I wish to make from this anecdote and which I will refer to later in this address is that nothing in dominant Western European thought and knowledge production is set in stone.
The second point is that these African concepts that break these Western European concepts are usually 'discovered' by non-Africans. Why else would Amartya Kumar Sen win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences over us as if we knew nothing about microcredit and micro-finance? Didn't we have esusu which was carried to the Caribbean as sou-sou in the French speaking Caribbean and meeting-turn in the English speaking Caribbean? What can be more microcredit and micro-finance than esusu?
RESEARCH OUTPUT IN AFRICA TODAY
The statistics about research output in Africa today is disheartening. Africa South of the Sahara, which I call Diminished Africa, has 16% of world population but produces less than 1% of world research output. It has 198 researchers per one million persons compared to 4500 per million persons in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
In 2008 Africa produced 27,000 published papers - the same number as the Netherlands. Even this figure is dependent on international collaboration and on visiting academics. Such research output is distributed as follows: 79% takes place in Southern Africa while the rest occur in West and Central Africa. The figures for intramural-Africa research collaboration is 0.9% in West and Central Africa and 2.9% in Southern Africa.
Of all this research it is considered that only 36% is of high quality while the remaining 64% is of low quality. Many suggestions have been made to ameliorate this situation of African research output. But before looking at the suggestions let us have a look at the universities in Africa and their disposition towards research and development.
AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCH POTENTIAL
It is no news to say that the first generation universities set up in the British colonies in Africa were set up to serve the purposes of the British colonial governments. These universities were set up around the British colonial properties around the world after WWII 1939 to 1945.
The aims of these colonial colleges of British universities had nothing to do with the lofty concepts of post graduate research where research would proceed from definitions of challenges to solutions of problems. Colonies didn't have any problems that the colonisers couldn't solve, did they?
In spite of these beginning handicaps the University of Ibadan took Leadership in the area of African history through the Ibadan History Series led by Kenneth Dike, J.F. Ade-Ajayi, Adiele Afigbo, E.A. Ayandele, O. Ikime and Tekena Tamuno. University of Ife (later renamed Obafemi Awolowo University pioneered mother tongue education in an experiment that has become well-known throughout the world. That experiment established that learning in mother tongue is not only cost effective but also greatly improves cognitive development and efficiency of learning across all levels.
These achievements have been abandoned by the universities set up since the third decade after independence. Trained for conformity and ready employment in both public and private sectors, the graduates are masters of conformity and following the teacher. There was no room for creativity and risk taking. There was no training in critical thinking on the local society with innovation training.
SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT OF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH
On the assumption that knowledge should spill from the university campus into the society making the society more productive and healthier the African Union has suggested that African countries should spend at least 1% of their GDP on research and development. As at 2017 only three countries - South Africa, Malawi and Uganda - have reached this goal.
In order to improve the quality of research and researchers, there is need for platform to exist where quality research papers can be published in such a way that they would generate local and immediate critical but creative responses that would carry further the intentions of the research. This means that the present overvaluing of so-called external publication has to stop. And to make research findings relevant to the localities and to African conditions, researchers ought to be available to be questioned by the local communities where the universities are located. Thus the world of research would be democratised. And the local languages of the university would become relevant. It is only in this manner that knowledge of the achievement of technology in terms of language use and language learning can be accessible to the field of research.
Organisations such as the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa was set up by eight African universities and four African research centres.
AfricArXiV as well as Scientific African are platforms for African researchers. The first accepts publications in local African languages. Both are online peer review journals. AAS OPEN RESEARCH is also an online journal available to African researchers. Can any or all of these suggestions produce the one million ph.d.s that Africa needs to make a difference to its research and development? What can accelerate such a need? Only a fundamental self-propelled belief and confidence in one's past and one's future can make it possible. Ifa divination poetry is the only traditional system that can propelled our research programme to what we need.
IFA ALSO KNOWN AS ORUNMILA POINTS THE WAY
When the world was created, Ifa was sent to earth with Ọgbọn, Imọ and Oye that is Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding. Ifa was also endowed with mastery of the Yoruba language. After all "Èdè (language) is the Òjìṣẹ (messenger) of Olodumare, and mediates, for all conscious beings with speech, access to and acquisition of information they need." Those who followed Ifa to learn and be mentored by him/her were taught that Ifa had all the wisdom, all the knowledge and all the understanding that the earth and its people would ever need to survive to the end of time. These followers became known as Babalawo (keepers of wisdom, knowledge and understanding) who were the agents of continuity and change in the society. The Ifa priest, Babalawo was the intellectual and transformer of the society. He/she worked to avert sickness, epidemics, and natural disasters, healing physical problems and difficult personal, social, and political relationships, and offering a glimpse of the history and future of the community. To the Yoruba Ifa Priest and working public intellectual, destiny is not destination. One may ameliorate one's lot through industry and appropriate sacrifice. No wonder then that everyone from the Ọba to the market woman found their way to the home of the Babalawo for consultation about their future.
Ifa divination consists of sixteen books containing two hundred and fifty -six chapters and each chapter contains thousands of verses of divination narratives. Since the divination is cumulative, there is no end to the verse narratives. And it is not possible to say how many verse narratives the trainee must learn to graduate. It is best to say that there are some prerequisite narrative verses that must be learnt and memorised. There are chapters of the sixteen books that must be learnt. There are narrative verses of the two hundred and fifty-six chapters that must be memorised. At no point in the process of divination can the Babalawo be lost for words. Always the Babalawo must hear Ifa and relate what he/she hears. Aigbofa lanwo'ke. Ifa kan o si ni para It is at a loss for what is next that one looks to the rafters. Ifa narrative verses do not reside in the ceiling!
POST-INITIATION SPECIALISATION
The would-be priest Babalawo, physician, psychiatrist, historian and philosopher, goes to live with his teacher at the age of ten to twelve. He studies for ten to fifteen years. Besides learning the fundamentals of the 256 Books of Ifa Divination, each containing hundreds of chapters with thousands of verses in each chapter, the would-be Babalawo learns the ethics and secrets of his profession. When the Master-Babalawo is feels confident of the readiness of his student, he is taken into the forest to face a panel of "high ranking Ifa priests to examine him on the different fields in which he has received instructions." When he emerges from the forest having satisfied his examiners cum laude, he is Babalawo, father of the secrets of divination. He can now set up on his own, or with a colleague. He might also decide to travel for post-initiation training. Perhaps there is a Master Babalawo famous in the area that interests our new Babalawo living 4000 km away. He goes in search of the Master. Maybe he lives with him for five years. He is pronounced learned. He stays another five years practising in the town under the supervision of his post-initiation Master. He is now ready to practise anywhere in the world.
Just as an addendum. One of the most jealously guarded professional secrets is the various types of herbs that work as stimulants to the brain and the memory. Where are those herbs today? We have to go to India to grow CENTULLA LUJICA called and marketed as Brain Nutritional Supplement.
SPECULATIVE THINKING AND THE CONSULTATION PROCESS
When a client comes to consult the Babalawo, the Babalawo throws the divining chain and reads the position of the sixteen shells. Out of that reading the book of Ifa that relates to the issue that brought the client is identified. Further throwing of the divining chain specifies the chapter. According to Wande Abimbola ". . . once an Odun appears, the Babalawo does not exercise choice. He has to chant the odu whose signature is presented by the divining chain's pattern. He then begins to chant verses from the odu which he has seen while the client watches and listens. The priest chants as many poems as he knows from that odu until he chants a poem which tells a story containing a problem similar to the client's own problem. At that stage, the client stops him and asks for further explanation of that particular poem. The Ifa priest will interpret that particular poem and mention the sacrifice which the client must perform." Wande Abimbola, 1977, pp. 9-10.
We need to remember "that each odu contains as much as 600 narrative poems. So the process of chanting by the priest of these poems can take several days. In spite of this time consuming dimension, the Babalawo may not stop, save for fatigue, to tell the client that he as the Babalawo has decided that this is the appropriate odu for the client's problem. On the contrary, the client is the only person in this instance of Ifa who may stop the Babalawo, ask him to explain some verses or another, seek clarification and then decide that the problem spoken of in the text is the same or akin to his or her problem." Olufemi Taiwo, Kin ni Ifa wi? Philosophical Issues in Ifa Divination p. 110 IFA DIVINATION, KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND PERFORMANCE edited by Jacob K. Olupona and Rolland O. Abiodun.
WHAT DO WILL GET FROM THIS PROCESS?
Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding are to be used to solve human problems. It is a purely secular process that must be followed relentlessly and without flagging.
It is a process that goes on and on until the solution is reached.
It is a process which is consultative and in which the client is the principal participants.
As an example to researchers is it not necessary to consult the local communities to determine the problems and challenges they face? Can their challenges and problems not become the topics of the researches of the academics?
If we can consult our communities, speak to them in the language they understand and we too can comprehend, we would own our research work and it would benefit our people. It would take sometime. It would not happen immediately. We would have not only to learn new things. We would have to learn a lot of other things that continue to stand in our way and in our thinking. But once we begin again, we would see our way clearly and we will get to our destination.
Thank you.
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