African Traditional Religion and Indigenous Knowledge System

Abstract

In the realization of their limitations and in the face of countless inexplicable occurences, humans have sought the interventions of a higher power to strengthen their arms and guide their paths. In Africa, this is especially demonstrated in the extent of interactions between the physical and the spiritual in civil existence. The belief in the reality and power of a Supreme Being to influence human affairs has, in the course of societal development, informed the coordination of social practices around the metaphysical. Thus, in the process of social interaction between Africans themselves and their environment, experiences have been conceived through metaphysical prisms that have evolved into the cultural way of life over time. Hence, the observation of African indigenous knowledge systems would reveal a deep-seated connection with religious beliefs and practices expressed in a plethora of knowledge-creating activities-in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, medicine, agriculture, education, arts and crafts, music and literature. This is exemplified with the Yoruba, Edo and Igbo of south-western and south-eastern Nigeria, who believe in a supernatural being whose existence is divisible in the multiple dimensions of veneration in divinities and deified ancestors.