African Roots of Fractal Geometry

[Arecidea Kwilemie]

The real story (or glory) of indigenous African education and knowledge ironically remains dormant in slick misconceptions about African inferiority. Hence, some of the particulars of African culture and knowledge production that would otherwise educate the populous remain hidden, unless a pro-active community of scholars rescue it, and give it new meaning and significance.

The contributions set by Africa and her people to history has seemingly remained absent in the consciousness of many, and subliminally fuel the myth that an indigenous scientific or technological community did not exists in traditional African societies.

And in compound fashion, historically, during the colonial era indigenous technology declined and in some places it was banned to entertain the importation of European manufactured products. Thus, the myth indigenous scientific or technological community backwardness was structurally perpetuated through mis-education, and social-political constraints.

YouTube - Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids

YouTube - Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids

Thus, today science education in Africa is struggling with dominating Western influences, almost killing any prospects for developing a curriculum relevant to African culture and the learner. For example, Ogunniyi (1998) in a study on malaria found that African scientist concern therein was with why some people and not others are afflicted with malaria, whereas the Western scientist searched for the causative agent in the disease. They both were working to prevent malaria in the future; however their cultural orientation to the investigation question reflected different cultural approaches. The Western concern was inanimate objects, while the African concern was for human welfare. This short example illustrates the complexity of the modern struggle of African science in its articulation of cultural ethos and scientific principles. To arrest this situation a detective approach may suffice according to Tedla in “…piecing together the continent’s experiences…to obtain a fuller picture of traditional education and its teachings of the sciences of Africa (Tedla 1995:127).”

Critical Indigenous African Education and Knowledge.pdf

[nattyreb]

Asante sana for posting this, i actually watched a good deal of it and found it really interesting. We definitely need to be educating our children outside of the western system of schooling.

[Arecidea Kwilemie]

It also goes to show that more research is needed so that we can get a better understanding of the role of mathematics in african societies both past and present.