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Africa Knows! It is time to decolonise minds

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Accepted Paper: E29-09. To panel E29.

Title of paper:

Author:

Joseph Ndalilah (University of Kabianga).

Long abstract paper:
The study analyses African environmental cosmology, ecology and labour in Sirisia, Bungoma County using the concepts of innovation, adaptation and commercialization. The study applied these concepts to explain how African societal needs were dictated, initiated and sustained by the environment. The concept of innovation embraces the dynamism of African communities and therefore, contradicts analyses that portray them as resistant to change. Adaptation on the other hand was used to explain the copying mechanisms of African communities to the environment and the link between the ideas, techniques and approaches used by African communities to work the environment for survival. Commercialization presupposes the changes embraced by African households in response to market forces. A study of environmental cosmology and labour in Sirisia, accordingly is an illustration of this state of affairs. The paper holds that, commercialization disrupted African cosmology, ecology and disoriented adaptation to the environment. The paper further notes that, African societies were not only close to nature but to them the environment symbolised life, a departure from western view that 'this world is not my home.' Environmental use was therefore dictated by nature; it was a field of abundance. The paper was based on archival research, oral interview as well as analyzing literature on the impact of capitalism on environment.