About Us

Advancing Complementarity and Democracy of Knowledge Systems in the global Knowledge Economy

1. To establish a continental Institute on Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Africa, building on the already existing national, regional and continental IKS instruments and imperatives;
2. To work towards the Institute being recognized as a UNESCO Category II Centre;
3. To use the holistic, multi-and trans disciplinary, community and cultural, ecological specific-based nature of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) including indigenous languages and home-grown philosophies, to decolonize and transform research, innovation and knowledge production/scholarship in Africa;
4. To build a critical mass of continental IKS multi-and trans-disciplinary human capital, conversant with Indigenous Knowledge (IK) worldviews, ways of knowing, value systems and research methodologies, for promoting research, innovation and knowledge creation in identified strategic areas for Africa's sustainable development;
5. To promote the use of African indigenous languages for communicating African home-grown philosophies in the domestication and localization of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa;
6. To contribute to the implementation of the African Union (AU) Agenda 2063 (The Africa We Want), through the systematization of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) as a knowledge domain in its own merit;
7. To generate AIKS-based knowledge products, services and impacts for uptake by national governments, international organizations and development agencies;
8. To communicate, market, preserve, protect and promote AIKS, as a knowledge and science system, in its own merit, contributing to national, continental and international transformation imperatives such as the UN SDGs;
9. To domesticate and localize the UN SDGs, through mobilizing and harnessing the power of AIKS including African indigenous languages, home-grown philosophies and other community-based resources through partnerships, for building the Africa We Want (AU Agenda 2063);
10. To build a self-reliant and financially sustainable Institute by strengthening and diversifying its sources of Third- and Fourth-Income Streams.