http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/default.htmIK Notes reports periodically on
Indigenous Knowledge (IK) initiatives
in Sub-Saharan Africa and
occassionally on such initiatives
outside the region. It is published by
the Africa region’s Knowledge and
Learning Center as part of an
evolving K partnership between the
World Bank, communities, NGOs,
development institutions, and
multilateral organizations. The views
expressed in this article are those of
the authors and should not be
attributed to the World Bank Group or
its partners in this initiative. A
webpage on IK is available at
//www.worldbank.org/afr/ik
IK NotesWorld Bank
No. 89
February 2006
Grandmothers Promote Maternal and
Child Health: the Role of Indigenous
Knowledge Systems’ Managers
n virtually all societies, the managers of
indigenous knowledge systems that deal
with the development, care and well-being
of women and children are senior women,
or grandmothers. In that function, grand-
mothers are expected to advise and super-
vise the younger generations. However,
most development programs neither ac-
knowledge their influence nor explicitly in-
volve them in efforts to strengthen existing
family and community survival strategies.
Many discussions of indigenous knowl-
edge tend to be rather narrow, in two re-
spects. First, IK is often presented in
terms of specific knowledge and prac-
tices, or “nuggets of traditional wisdom” in
relative isolation from the community
knowledge authorities and systems of
which such knowledge is a part. Second,
many discussions of IK point to the ben-
eficial elements of traditional knowledge
and practice while completely ignoring the
harmful elements,
There is a need to broaden the concept
of IK in development programs: first, to
view IK in the context of community and
household systems, that include the IK
managers and the mechanisms they use to
communicate their knowledge to others;
and second, to consider both beneficial
and harmful practices in indigenous
knowledge systems related, for example,
to health, nut