IK Monitor Articles (8-2)

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, July 2000

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Focus on: Agricultural development in Sierra Leone

Why agricultural development projects have failed in Sierra Leone: local farmers' indigenous knowledge the missing element

Dr Dominic T. Ashley is director of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge Fourah Bay College (CIKFAB) in Sierra Leone. In August last year Dr Ashley wrote a letter to the editor in which he pointed out that for the past nine years 'Sierra Leone has been in a state of war with rebel factions, and that this situation has greatly affected the functioning of the Centre (...).' But as Dr Ashley continued on a more hopeful note, 'with peace almost a reality in Sierra Leone, I would be grateful if you would publish this paper on the need for the Government and the agricultural authorities to recognize the importance and value of indigenous knowledge and practices in agricultural development. Such recognition is almost totally lacking in Sierra Leone.' The following excerpt sketches the situation.

Sierra Leone lies between latitude 70ºN - 10ºN, about 338 km (210 miles) and 10ºW - 13ºW, a distance of 328 km (304 miles). These latitudinal and longitudinal positions provide the country with a tropical dry and wet season. Agriculture remains the backbone of the economy and the potential for agricultural development is far greater than the efforts presently being made to develop it. Current plans focus on the expansion of agriculture, in order to reduce the country's dependence on mining and the large-scale import of rice, which is the staple food. The 39 years since independence have been dominated by the unbridled growth of agricultural development projects, agricultural research, and extension services. Since 1972 the country has been divided into agricultural development zones in which large-scale integrated agricultural development projects (IADPs) are operated. Each of these eight IADPs has its own specific goals and objectives. But upon analysis, it is overly clear that the agricultural development specialists and planners have neglected the use of local indigenous agricultural knowledge. How did this happen?

Colonial legacy
When it gained its independence from the United Kingdom on 27 April 1961, Sierra Leone-like other African countries-inherited a strong bias towards extension and international technology transfer as a means of accelerating agricultural development. This was based on the colonial premise that culture-bound local farmers needed to be educated and motivated, and that that could be done with the aid of imported models of agricultural development. This reflects a failure to acknowledge the value of the country's indigenous agricultural knowledge. The colonial period was marked by the suppression and destruction of those traditional institutions through which local farmers were able to acquire and pass on their local knowledge. Without question, one of the unreported factors limiting agricultural development in Sierra Leone is the negative attitude towards those traditional institutions, which have been branded as primitive, archaic, and tribal. Regrettably, this has suggested to agricultural development planners and extension agents that such institutions are inferior. In actual fact, such hostility flows from the specific difficulties which agricultural development planners and extension agents have in understanding traditional agriculture.

Analysis of the problem
Within development projects in Sierra Leone there is the constant hope that the new models, inputs and services will lead to significant increases in production and consumption, and that the implementation of such programmes will be relatively easy to monitor once they have been adopted by local farmers. But there are signs of resistance and sabotage on the part of the farmers. This is due at least in part to the fact that agricultural development planners and extension agents have contributed to the marginalization of local agricultural knowledge. The resistance has less to do with local attitudes, illiteracy and backwardness than to the suppression of the local farmers' resources, practices and knowledge systems. Agricultural development planners and extension agents talk and write about local farmers, but local farmers rarely get the chance to talk about themselves, still less about development planners and extension agents. This assymetry in the access to means of representation contributes to the desystematization of local farmers' indigenous knowledge. Murray Last (1981) #1 argues that local farmers themselves cultivate 'not knowing' in defense of fragments remaining to them after 'peripheralization'. Local farmers' indigenous knowledge in Sierra Leone is an especially serious casualty of such desystemization, since local knowledge and practices are always important, and sometimes crucial. Indigenous knowledge is a science of adjustment and adaptation which is produced by, and reflects, the interests of local farmers as a group within society.
Traditional farming involves the development of knowledge and skills, and the various processes that take place within the farm are generally well understood. Local farmers prefer risk-minimization strategies to profit-maximizing strategies, but they are not unaware of the value of experimental procedures. For instance, rice farmers try out new seeds now and again to test germination and fields under different methods. This requires trial and control plots. Local farmers' knowledge derives from, and is constrained by, indigenous agricultural practices. In some cases the bias and distortion directed at the indigenous agricultural knowledge of local farmers has been quite vicious. In such a climate, the indigenous knowledge of local farmers is regarded as of little practical value, and it is easy for development planners and extension agents to imagine that they are filling a vacuum in the knowledge of agricultural development. The failure of this type of programme is seen as the result of ignorance and incompetence on the part of local farmers.

Solution
Resistance and sabotage on the part of local farmers may include something as simple as failing to implement a new idea. There may be a lack of access or availability, or an excessive financial burden on farmers and other members of the farm household, especially women, who are responsible for at least 50% of agricultural production in Sierra Leone.

In view of the above, it is proposed that Government and agricultural development programmes should consider the following steps as a means of remedying the situation:

show respect for local farmers' indigenous agricultural knowledge and technology
show understanding for how the traditional farming systems work, in particular the relationship between indigenous technology and the availability of land and labor, and the relative economic returns from different crops
try to understand why farmers value their indigenous systems and practices instead of proposing that they adopt imported knowledge, models and technology, and offering them bribe-like incentives in the form of credits or free input
first ask farmers what the problems and constraints are on the utilization of their indigenous agricultural knowledge and technology. How much flexibility do the farmers have within their indigenous system? Would they welcome certain changes, such as the adoption of new knowledge and technology which would not replace, but rather complement their own local knowledge?
design programmes in such a way as to give local farmers what they want and not what agricultural development planners and administrators think they should want.

The issue of gender and its importance for an understanding of agricultural indigenous knowledge and farming systems seems to have been completely neglected by agricultural development planners. Knowledge and expertise may be divided according to gender. According to C. Warren (1988) #2 , knowledge is part of the social fabric of any society, and gender is one of the primary dimensions of that social fabric. This gender issue in agricultural indigenous knowledge calls for an awareness that men and women have different ranges of knowledge and expertise, and that it is essential to identify and understand how gender differences influence the structure of the social system. Indigenous agricultural knowledge provides men and women with a structure in which they can play their roles, allocate their various resources and deal with various constraints in the farming system. These ideas may not seem rational to agricultural development planners and extension workers who are not intimately familiar with the traditional settings of local society, but it should be emphasized that that knowledge has been developed over time, to allow both the system and society to function. New ideas must be tested against existing knowledge. If this country is to attain sustainable agriculture, future agricultural development programmes should not only incorporate indigenous agricultural knowledge, but should also see to it that both genders are included in the design and implementation of the programme.

Dr Dominic T. Ashley
Centre for Indigenous Knowledge
Department of Sociology
Fourah Bay College
University of Sierra Leone
Freetown
Republic of Sierra Leone

1. Last, M. (1981) 'The importance of knowing about not knowing', London.
2. Warren, C. (1988) Gender issues in field research. California.