TACKLING AFRICA'S CHALLENGE OF INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY

Given that technologically advanced countries of the world are ready to end their bilateral trade with African countries, what would become of countries on the continent of Africa which depend so much on European countries for their various technologies? I just pray that such doesn't happen because Africa would be empty of meaningful technologies. The reason simply is that most of the technologies we use are imported from non-African countries. The fact, simply, is that Africa doesn't exist when it comes to world technology. It has been widely claimed by scholars that Africa is a consumer not a producer of technology.

It usually dampens my spirit when I reflect on the fact that there is no meaningful, sophisticated, well developed and internationally acknowledged technology which I can point at and say: ‘my fellow African man created this on this same continent of Africa using materials from this same continent.’ How do we then get out of this international shame? What  do we do to develop our own technologies on this continent? People have suggested various measures which governments in African countries could take to enhance the development of our own indigenous technologies. Some people have accused governments of not showing interest in individuals who have shown their ability at inventing simple technologies. This people often say that such individuals are usually eventually discovered by the whites who usually seek to develop them to produce bigger things.

One of the basic problems that bedevil the continent of Africa is language. Language is the basis of our technological problem. The language of education in most African countries is a European language. This has created several other problems in that pupils do not properly understand what they are taught in a language which is not their mother tongue. Professor Babs Fafunwa in his popular research was able to prove that a child learns better when taught in his or her first language. His discoveries were considered by the Federal Government of Nigeria and were incorporated into the curriculum for primary school pupils. According to National Policy on Education (NPE), pupils should be instructed in the first three years of their education in their mother tongue or a language of wider coverage in their area of domicile.

            Though not enough as we may consider this policy, it is not effective especially in private schools where the teachers always instruct pupils in English language. In such schools pupils are even comported to communicate with one another in English; students who are cut speaking vernacular (as Nigerian indigenous languages are often referred to) are made to serve some punishment or pay a certain amount. Some public schools also involve themselves in this kind of ignoble practice. This is usually done in order to make sure that the pupils are able to speak English fluently and thereby increase their patronage.

No human society is an island onto itself. Every society necessarily needs to borrow ideas from another society to make meaningful developments. Africa needs to borrow ideas from other continent to develop its own independent technology. There are so many foreign ideas which we need to borrow. Most of these ideas are already what are included in the courses done in schools. We learn them but they are still not part of us. The reason is that we do not learn them directly through our first language; we learn them through a foreign tongue. Most students do not understand abstract ideas explained to them by teachers in school. They only cram them to pass their exams and this is the reason why they cannot use the knowledge to produce any meaningful thing. The ideas of how to develop meaningful technologies on our own are with us on this continent but we have not yet adapted them.

How do we adapt the ideas in order that they become part of us? How do we do it that students understand the ideas and are able to, through them, invent meaningful technologies? How do we do it that the ideas are genuinely incorporated into our various cultures? How do we do it that we are able to blend foreign ideas with ours that we may begin to create beautiful things? The road to this end is language. These scientific foreign ideas have to be made available in our various African languages. This however would generate another kind of question: can African languages express scientific ideas?

Many people have argued that African languages cannot express scientific ideas, claiming that the majority of the ideas are not found in Africa. These people often claim that most of the terms used in the sciences do not have equivalents in African languages. To me, as a student of language, this argument does not hold water. First, ideas do not need to be found in a society before they become part of it. Second, words of a language do not need to have equivalents in another language before they become part of it. Words like ‘algebra’, ‘alcohol’(both from Arabic) ,  ‘afara’ , ‘agogo’ and ‘fufu’ (from Yoruba) were not part of the English language before but they have now been adapted and incorporated into the English culture.

All of the terms used in the sciences could be made to have equivalents in African languages, if the continent is fully ready for this daunting challenge. It has been proven in linguistics that there is no one-to-one correspondence between language and what it expresses. If this is true then we can use any word to refer to anything. So, the ideas that African languages do not possess equivalent scientific terms in English should be disregarded and discouraged totally.

To make science available in African languages, both the African governments and African people, especially academic experts have crucial roles to play. Lecturers in tertiary institutions especially those in language should focus their research in this area. Since ninety percent of their job is finding solutions to human problems, the researcher lecturers in our various tertiary institutions should rise up to this challenge and find lasting solution to it. Also, African governments should sponsor endeavours in this regard and encourage scholars who are willing to champion this course. The governments should also make necessary efforts to make every student learn their indigenous language at every level of education. While the policy by the Nigerian government that every child should be instructed in his or her own mother tongue in their first three years of education is commendable, there is more to do. African languages should be included in the curriculum of secondary school pupils. Every student in tertiary institutions in Africa should be made to go through at least a course in indigenous language of choice before they graduate.

Africa’s technological challenge could be solved from several points of view but language remains an essential factor to solving it. Only when scientific ideas become an effectively adapted part of our culture can we begin to make progress in indigenous technology.