DEVELOPMENT AND PROMOTION OF AFRICAN MEDICINAL PLANTS AND TRADITIONAL AFRICAN MEDICINE IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURAL CHANGE: TRAMEDEA EXPERIENCE

• DEVELOPMENT AND PROMOTION OF AFRICAN MEDICINAL PLANTS AND TRADITIONAL AFRICAN MEDICINE IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURAL CHANGE: TRAMEDEA EXPERIENCE
  
  Francis Patrice Mudida
  Founder Director
  TRADITIONAL MEDICINE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY(TRAMEDEA)
  P.O. Box 66514, Nairobi. Kenya
  
  ABSRACT
  
  Africans have a difficult task: they must promote a form of cultural development which takes into account the present needs of the African people and at the same time safeguard their authentic original image, while maintaining economic, social and cultural balance.
  
  A dynamic cultural development must adapt to the changing conditions looking firmly towards the future and compatible with the present global realities. Any innovation must spring from internal dynamism with the objective of creating new forms, inspired by the past, and maintaining their original vitality and meaningfulness.
  
  The lack of appropriate natural resource management policies to conserve and manage medicinal plants has and continues to have far reaching consequences on the development of traditional medicine in Kenya. The present status of traditional African medicine in this country confirms that this form of health care delivery service remains compromised and discredited. Furthermore, indigenous knowledge which enables the utilisation of plants in traditional medicine is disappearing with the passing of the elders.
  
  In view of the foregoing there is a need now than ever before to push the frontiers beyond the current status of development and promotion of African medicinal plants and traditional African medicine in order for us to cope with the demands of the scientific and technological 21st centruy we are now approaching. There is also a need for national and international support for local organizations, such as TRAMEDEA, which single handedly contribute to the conservation of medicinal plants and promotion of indigenous medicine.
  
  In this paper, a brief look at how the wind of cultural change has affected Africans is presented. Some specific and more tangible strategies on how we can develop and promote both medicinal plants and traditional African medicine are given.
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  'Culture', states Abraham A. Moles, "is the accumulated whole of what we have assimilated, understood, integrated during our past which becomes an element of our present, in conflict or in conjunction with our present perception of the world outside". To understand the problem of development and promotion of African medicinal plants and traditional African medicine in the context of cultural change, we must recall the African past. The traditional African was essentially a rural dweller, living in surroundings unchanged by time and space. His ancestors, by way of history, legends and myths had bequeathed him a harmonious world in its ecological and metaphysical elements. He knew how to obtain his requirements for livelihood. He was conscious about fulfilling his task within the community.
  
  Originating in the oral tradition, the African School was caught up in the flow of the life of the community, in a state of Osmosis, where time and space had no relation. The African School prepared a man for a fixed society, finished and uncontested. Everyone was thought to possess knowledge necessary to the child or the adolescent and to know how to transmit it: practical moral lessons, lessons about the things he came in contact with in nature, in life and a philosophy as well.
  
  Knowledge gained at the African School placed the African people in harmony with their surrounding and, at the same time, permitted them to conquer in order to live. The contents and style of African education was propagated in a spirit of total democracy.
  
  The onslaught of colonialism wreaked havoc on every aspect of African Societies: Social, Political, economic and moral. Colonialists branded all the time-tested African traditions and practices as 'savage' and 'primitive' and by harassing and, indeed, often eliminating the chief exponents of these traditions, the colonialists destroyed the authority, the regulating and controlling power of all the institutions which has always ensured social sense and social efficiency.
  
  The utterly demented and immoral 'sharing out' of Africa among the European colonial powers meant not only the fragmentation of the communities which had evolved as single units for centuries but also the fortuitous agglomeration of people who, sometimes, would probably have been happy staying apart.
  
  Africans were taught a new culture and, without transaction, they found themselves immersed in the whirlwind of industrial civilization, with all the difficulties inherent in this transplant from the west. With this artificial cultural change, Africans became a product of the superposition of two cultures, and they accepted them both to live.
  
  After independence, the situation in almost all independent African states largely remained unchanged on the contrary, the systems that upset the balance of African peoples harmonious world were largely maintained. In the post-independence African states, culture, subjected along with everything else to the power of money, is dominated. Sadly, this domination takes place with the complicity of the Africans themselves. Cultures of the rich and powerful west have and will continue to suffocate African national cultures unless the African governments address this matter seriously.
  
  Africans have allowed the old values to collapse in the face of new ones, essentially based on money. The power of money also seems to have excluded the Africans from themselves. Unlike the children of the west, African children are ignorant of their natural environment and are incapable of naming the domestic animals or garden plants in their native languages. In the place of the traditional African man, western culture has created a new superficial, artificial being - the present African person. Western education has and continues to alienate the present African person from ethics that have already been formulated, established and judged 'good' by African communities. Education is no longer a methodological preparation for life, for entry into society, fashioned, balanced and proportioned by aptitude and knowledge. A new way of thinking produced by new needs is what typifies the present African person. Any ultimate goals that do not take this factor into account risk being in vain. The present Africans have been transformed by western technology. We know that technology is a cultural phenomenon. The western power exporting technology, also exports its vision of the world, its culture, which has an influence on the physical environment as well as on the man it is supposed to serve.
  
  The African today is the artificial product of two cultures, two conflicting systems of education. He has inherited 'traditional' culture, the way of life of his natural environment and a foreign culture imposed by history. He is both enriched and impoverished: Enriched on the one hand by his ancestors and his society, on the other by colonial experience, but impoverished in that he cannot dominate either of them, nor become harmoniously integrated since the two cultures are in conflict with one another.
  
  The educated, cultured, African people today impose their own new conception of culture and plan the education of the community in consequence. No longer able to recall what they acquired naturally, their own authentic culture, they are not the right people to formulate objective projects which take the cultural reality of the masses into account. With the above background information in mind, we now turn to the subject of the development and promotion of African medicinal plants and traditional medicine in the context of cultural change. One may justifiably say that our past as Africans has become an element of our present, in conflict with our present perception of the world outside.
  
  This conflict is a reality and it has direct negative consequences on the development and promotion of African medicinal plants and traditional African medicine. Imported western technology has made it possible for Africans to alter their natural environment for the better or for the worse, depending on how one looks at it. If our environment is being changed for the worse, carson reminds us that, " the creature that wins against its environment destroys itself" ( carson, 1995: 183 ). It is estimated that if the current trend continues, some 20,000 plants in developing countries used as healing agents may have ceased to exist by the turn of the century ( FAO, 1991: 6 ). In terms of their source and security, this implies diminishing availability and use, diminishing indigenous knowledge about their utility as well as poorer health for the majority of the population.
  
  The impact of Cultural change on African Medicinal Plants and African Traditional Medicine
  
  We have seen that the present African is a person of two worlds: The traditional African world and the western world. He straddles the line between the past and the present. The 20th century African models his life and needs after those of the west. It is apparent that the African has and continues to modify his modes of relations with nature, environment and other human beings in order to achieve integration in the modern world. Africans are invaded by the products and sub-products of western consumption societies. Western clothing, food, drinks, medicine, modern electronic gadgets, television and films lull the Africans with an illusion of comfort and abundance. Everything glitters that comes from elsewhere. The African is largely cut off from creation, condemned to depend on creations from foreign cultures. It is against the above realities that we now turn to some of the impacts of cultural change on African medicinal plants and development of traditional African medicine.
  
  Conservation of Medicinal Plants in Kenya
  
  In Kenya there are no appropriate natural resource management policies to conserve and manage medicinal plants which are a major element in the practice of herbal medicine. Similarly, indigenous knowledge which enables utilization of plants in traditional medicine is disappearing with the passing of elders.
  
  In a paper presented at a workshop on Profitable Herbal Medicine Business Management skills in August, 1998 Mr. J. K. Chirchir of the Kenya Resource Centre for the Indigenous Knowledge, National Museums of Kenya says:" In Kenya, with a population increase of 4.1 per year ( mutta, 1996 ), there has been an increasing pressure on forest land for agriculture and for development. The annual forest loss stands at 30 km2 because of deforestation. At loss is the diversity of life forms that hold promise for scientists to discover new medicine, crops and industrial applications. This is a threat to future development of research on and use of medicinal plants". The above remarks are confirmed by the ongoing destruction of Karura Forest where many species of medicinal plants are found.
  
  With the abundance of Western modern and even herbal medicine on the Kenyan market, many Kenyans do not even know that modern medicine is a result of research on medicinal plants. To Kenyans, the conservation of medicinal plants is not a priority. As long as someone else provides the drugs, Kenyans do not dream of manufacturing drugs from their medicinal plants. This situation obtains because the African has changed his mode of relations with nature and the environment. African people no longer live in a harmonious world and have consigned the African school to the cemeteries of time. In such a school they could have learnt the use of medicinal plants and therefore understood the importance of conserving them. In the absence of effective natural resource management policies coupled with the increasing pressure on forest land, our plants used as healing agents might cease to exist in the near future.
  
  The status of traditional African medicine in Kenya.
  In his paper entitled 'Status of African Traditional Medicine in Kenya' presented at the 'Traditional medicine Development Agency' (TRAMEDEA ) workshop, Prof Osaga Odaka says that: " Kenya has two medical systems running parallel to each other. The traditional African medical system is not only culturally based, but is very closely tied up with the African religion. It has its own principles, theories, procedures, ethical standards and methods. The system is based on the cultures of each of the ethnic groups. For this system to develop in order to become useful to the community it serves, it has to be inspired by the local culture and must operate within its own principles and theories. The other medicinal system is what has erroneously been called western medicine or scientific medicine. I say it is eroneous to refer to the medical system as being western because this would pre-suppose that the system is western. Anyone who is acquainted with the history of medicine should know that ancient Africans ( read Egyptians ) made tremendous contributions to Biomedicine".
  
  In his paper presented at the same workshop, Dr. Adbul Mongi of Associated Development and Management Africa ( ADAMA ) says that, "The traditional medical practitioner has a profound experimental knowledge of herbal treatments which has been passed on from generation to generation from traditional specialists. Today, there is danger of this innovative knowledge dying out of the country and the region. Hence, the urgent need to resurrect this alternative method of disease treatment and at the same time, facilitate promotion of exploitation of the environment, including utilisation of medicinal plants of value for the manufacture of herbal medicines for use in primary health care".
  
  Given the historical and cultural menaces African traditional medicine has survived, aware that in Kenya, there are no appropriate natural resource management policies to conserve and manage medicinal plants, remembering that the enhancement of modern medicine in Kenya was followed by deliberate discrediting of traditional medicine, it becomes clear why this form of health care delivery service has become compromised and discredited.
  
  Theoretically, African professionals are supposed to be the touch bearers of African culture using the knowledge obtained from universities; they are expected to incorporate the rich and diverse knowledge of traditional medicine in the present to fashion the future, either in the sense of continuity or in the sense of critical and creative continuity.
  
  Kenyan professionals and institutional of modern medicine are not prepared to contribute to the development of traditional medicine as an alternative health delivery system. Instead, they attempt to subordinate traditional medicine to modern medicine.
  
  Traditional doctors supply the professionals and medical institutions with herbs for laboratory analysis. Here the interest is in the active ingredients of the herbs rather than in the herbalists who understand the medicinal value of these herbs.
  
  This kind of relationship has its own disadvantages. It discourages traditional medical scientists from pursuing their own researches using principles, theories procedures, ethical standards and methods employed by traditional African medical systems.
  
  When Biomedical practitioners pass judgement as to which herbs are more efficacious than others in terms of active components, this frustrates the efforts of traditional medical specialists to develop traditional therapies. It also excludes traditional medicine from its socio-cultural context. In view of the foregoing, one may be forgiven for concluding that the kind of co-operation supported by the modern medical doctors and the institutions they represent undermines the development and growth of traditional medicine in Kenya.
  
  The best form of co-operation would have been the kind of co-operation that involves relevant changes in the area of traditional medical therapies. One of the requirements of such a co-operation would be the willingness on the part of modern and traditional doctors and the institutions they represent to work together for desirable changes, guided in the right direction. The contents of this paper so far suggest that Africans find no response to the ideals in the development achieved by western societies, which we have adopted as a model worthy of our imitation. We are already experiencing the pernicious effects of the imitation.
  
  The future of Africans and their relations with the rest of the world appears to depend precisely on their self - assertion. They must begin to act in harmony with their specific personality and live their culture, make it their own and integrate it into their daily lives by constantly reviewing it through contact with new realities of the surrounding world.
  
  The philosophy of Traditional Medicine Development Agency (TRAMEDEA), a Kenyan NGO, is that traditional methods of conservation of medicinal plants and traditional medical practices should succeed in adapting to present conditions. These traditional methods and practices should take new forms of presentation with other social meanings. Certain forms of traditional medical practices in a rural setting, for example, could take on a purely secular character in an urban context.
  
  The role of such cultural changes or evolutions is to adapt medicinal plants and traditional medicine for use in a society which is itself in a process of change due to technological and economical progress. This adaptation ends in the nationalisation of what had previously been merely local conservational methods of medicinal plants and local practices of indigenous medicine.
  
  It is against this background of problems in the management of African medicinal plants and in the practice of African traditional medicine that we now turn to the experience of traditional Medicine Development Agency (TRAMEDEA) in the conservation of medicinal plants and promotion of traditional medicine in Kenya.
  
  Experience of Traditional Medicine Development Agency (TRAMEDEA) in the conservation of medicinal plants and promotion of traditional medicine in Kenya.
  
  Traditional Medicine Development Agency (TRAMEDEA) was created in response to a need to address the issues raised in these pages. The Agency's mission is to conserve medicinal plants and promote indigenous medicine in Kenya. TRAMEDEA involves its registered members and Kenyan communities in its projects and builds on the strength of traditional knowledge. In this way, our organization utilised indigenous knowledge as a strategy to contribute to sustainable development. TRAMEDEA is a membership non -governmental organization with a majority of its members being practising traditional medical practitioners.
  As indicated in this paper, a set of what it is that needs to be done in plant conservation has yet to be formalized through any government statute. Nevertheless, local and foreign individuals and organizations carry out plant conservation with varying degrees of success. We shall give an example of one such organization. With the financial and technical support of the U.K. government department for international development, the East African herbarium is carrying out a programme on plant conservation under the programme. The herbarium carries out the following activities:
  
  1) Documenting the Kenyan flora
  
  2) Setting priorities for conservation
  
  3) Designing, funding and implementing action in the field. This involves actual doing of the conservation work in-situ.
  
  4) Securing the seeds for the future, and ensuring sufficient germplasm exists ex - situ to repair damage already done.
  
  5) Educating the community on the importance of plant conservation
  
  6) Investing in the botanists of the future through training programmes to strengthen the existing cadre of botanists.
  
  Since its inception in 1996, TRAMEDEA has prepared several proposals on the subject of conservation of medicinal plants, training of traditional medical practitioners, research on the traditional medical tools, among others. Unfortunately, the proposals have not received any local or foreign funding. The policy of TRAMEDEA is to do whatever can be done without support from any source. This policy has served the Agency well, considering that besides a small income from membership fees and from services rendered to the members of the public, this organization has survived for three years without any visible form of support from local or foreign sources. Inspite of many difficulties, TRAMEDEA continues to carry out a number of projects for the benefit of its members and the community.
  
  The Agency's Medicinal plant Conservation Strategy
  
  The Agency has a list of plants used by its members in the treatment of different ailments. The list includes rare species that need immediate action.
  Domestication of medicinal plants by Agency members is a priority project of TRAMEDEA. Using the University herbarium and the East African herbarium, the Agency has assigned botanical names to different local names on the list of plants used by its members. Members from different parts of the country use the list to secure correct plants from tree nurseries for domestication in their own gardens. Over 75% of Agency members have herbal gardens in which most of the herbs they use can be found. At this point in time, Kenya battles with the balance of providing for the ever growing population and retaining the natural resources upon which the population depends. Domestication of medicinal plants is a small, albeit important contribution by the Agency towards securing species and habitats as Kenya attempts to battle with the balance. Through this community based conservation project, the traditional medical practitioners have become responsible for the wise use of medicinal plant resources, habitats and individual species.
  
  Training programmes for traditional medical practitioners.
  
  The world Health Organization ( WHO ) Constitution of 1948 defines health as: "state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not only the absence of disease or infirmity" Going by the WHO definition, Health Development can be defined as the process of improving the state of physical, mental and social well being of an individual, the family and the community within the more general framework of socio-economic development. Custodians of our cultural and indigenous knowledge including herbalists should be involved in this kind of development. Why, because they are healing and savings lives every day although this contribution is hardly recognised.
  
  Whereas the government is committed to training modern health personnel, there is no training of any kind that has been organized for traditional medical practitioners. A look at the available training facilities shows that the way they have been designed does not take into account the training needs of the traditional medical doctors.
  
  In view of the foregoing, TRAMEDEA organizes members seminars, workshops and has opened its doors to those of it members with a desire to know more, particularly on medicinal plants and the delivery of traditional medicine. During the Agency's last training session, the workshop brought together medical practitioners on the one hand and biomedical officials and university lecturers involved in research on traditional medicine on the other. The purpose of bringing everyone together in the previous workshop and in the future training sessions was and will be to tap our society's social wisdom that would contribute to the advancement of indigenous medicine and its sustainability. In bringing everyone together TRAMEDEA aims at creating an environment for peaceful co-existence of both modern and indigenous systems of medicine. It has been observed that Kenyan medical professionals and the indigenous medical practitioners who participate in the Agency's training programme have begun to appreciate contributions of both medical systems to the common goal of bringing health to the people. In the light of this fresh start in the relationship between personnel belonging to two health delivery systems, it is expected that these men and women from systems that have been opposed to each other will gradually change their hostile attitudes to each other and recognise each other.
  
  Those of us serving Kenyans through TRAMEDEA believe that with increased contacts between the modern and traditional medical practitioners, traditional medical practice shall not remain compromised and discredited. We also hope that the peaceful co-existence of both medical delivery system shall result into the formulation of appropriate legislation in favour of the development of traditional medical therapies.
  
  In its programme of training traditional medical practitioners for the future, the Agency advises its members on proper management of traditional medicine, including proper procedures of collection of traditional medicine ( e.g. removal of part of the bark instead of stripping a medicinal plant of all its bark), processing the medicine in a hygienic manner, proper prescription, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Members are also instructed in the management of traditional medicine as a small business, quality control, production, packaging and marketing.
  
  Research in African Medicinal Plants, Traditional African Medicine and on Traditional Healers.
  
  The Agency has identified specific programmes in the area of African medicinal plants and traditional African medicine, including traditional healers and we have prepared projects in each of these areas for funding. So far, none of the Agency projects has received funding from any source. Some Agency projects are prepared in such a manner as to obtain information in the four categories shown below:
  
  1. Identification of the role played by indigenous medicine in the health of the Kenyan communities.
  
  2. Establishment of the level of perception of the local communities regarding the conservation of medicinal plants.
  
  3. Discovery of how indigenous knowledge in traditional medicine could be used in the conservation of medicinal plants.
  
  4. Review of existing policies on environmental and natural resource management in Kenya and recommendation of policy measures that would encourage the conservation and management of medicinal plants.
  
  CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
  Conclusion
  
  In this paper, I have addressed the past and present African cultural environment and the effects of western culture on the African people showing that, indeed, there is some truth in the Swahili saying that goes: " Mkosa mila ni Mtumwa," meaning " one without culture is a slave".
  I have further highlighted the negative impact of cultural change on the conservation of medicinal plants and on the promotion of traditional African medicine, showing how it occurs in Kenya, the consequences of such an occurrence, and some of the measures employed to arrest the situation in this country.
  
  My general message is that man is the means and end of development (including conservation of medicinal plants and promotion of indigenous medicine) and, in the case of Africans it is imperative that they find an equilibrium between the old and the new and adapt one to the other according to the situation in every African country. Although there are no ready-made answers in this domain, the fate of the African nations cannot and must not be left to the hostilities of Darwinian Jungle Life.
  
  Recommendations
  1) Promote a form of cultural development which takes the present needs of the Africans into account and at the same time safeguards their authentic original image, while maintaining economic, social and cultural balance.
  2) Revisit the African School and borrow from its rich Educational Content and Style, particularly in the area of moral lessons, lessons about the things we come in contact with in nature, in life and African philosophy.
  
  3) Create awareness at community and policy-making levels of the need to conserve and preserve medicinal plants for the present and future generations.
  
  
  
  4) Create awareness at policy-making level of the need for official recognition of indigenous medicine, and appeal for provision of technical and development assistance in this area in order to reinforce the fight against disease as an enemy of development.
  
  
  
  5) Strengthen the relationship between natural biological resources and people's culture, taking into account local communities' needs and their contribution to conservation and development of those resources and also considering the realities and environmental changes experienced by the communities.
  
  
  
  6) Provide funding and other forms of support to indigenous medical practitioners to enable them domesticate in their own private gardens all kinds of medicinal plants known to them, particularly those in danger of extinction. In addition, advise them to inter-crop medicinal plants with other crops grown in their own gardens.
  
  
  
  7) Discourage those income generating practices that contribute to the degradation of environment such as charcoal burning, unauthorized and uncontrolled harvesting of traditional medicine, forest clearing, over-grazing and propose broad and specific measures that would replace these practices and also take into account the needs of the people.
  
  
  
  8) Carry out studies based on ethnobotanical information on the use of plants among Kenyan communities for the purpose of reviving and developing rich indigenous knowledge systems, which have been ignored by modern development strategies and use systems in the documentation and preservation of information on indigenous medical sources.
  
  
  
  9) Set a stage for the exchange of knowledge and experience in traditional medicine at national and international levels through seminars, exhibition, workshops, lecturers, publication of books, journals and through the media.
  
  
  
  10) Encourage and support the integration of classic health systems inherited from the west with the traditional systems of medicine provided by traditional doctors, considering that consumers continue to use both medical systems.
  
  
  
  11) Popularize indigenous medicine through educational and promotional campaigns and encourage young people in schools and institutions of higher learning to become traditional Medical practitioners (TMPs) in order to perpetuate the profession.
  
  REFERENCES
  1.Danachi, Ukandi G.Leadership Ideology in Africa. N.Y: praeger, 1976
  2.Kenyatta, Jomo. Facing Mount Kenya. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1979
  3.Kerre, B. W. Traditional Technologies of Kenya.
  National Science and Technology Exhibition ( handbook ) Nairobi: Kenya Academy of Sciences, 1988.
  4.Lenner, Daniel.The passing of Traditional Societies N. Y: Free Press, 1964
  5.Lloyd, P.C.(ed ).The New Elites of Tropical Africa.
  London: o.u.p., 1966.
  6.Nyerere, Julius K. Man and Development DSM: o.u.p, 1974
  7.Rodney, W. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: East African Educational Publishers Ltd, 1989.
  8. TRAMEDEA, A workshop report on Profitable herbal Medicine Management Skills. Nairobi: published by TRAMEDEA, 1998.
  9.UNESCO PRESS,Cultural Development. Some regional experiences.
  Paris : UNESCO PRESS, 1981

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