Information and Knowledge Transfer in the rural community of Macha, Zambia

Abstract

Science is using methodologies to study behaviour. These methodologies are socially constructed, culture specific, and deeply affected by North American and Western language.

African cultures feature empathic processes fueled by compassion and the desire for co-existence. It operates on communal, often primary oral, cultures and uses mostly oral tradition in its presentations. Oral traditions process knowledge and verbalize data specifically.

This case of long term research in which Information and Communications Technology is introduced in a highly oral and rural culture shows that using constructs available in primary oral culture can create outcomes that are a useful function within oral tradition circumstances. Analysis of methodologies used during the eleven-year case study suggest that outcomes benefit from interactions that are aligned within oral-culture formats. The case study follows 'the flow of science' - analysing, interpreting, clarifying, constructing - primarily in the oral tradition. Outcomes appear fruitful in oral traditions.

This long term and unique approach opens the door to new ways of understanding in rural Africa, and recognition that literacy and orality exist side by side.