African Traditional Medicine: Its Potential, Limitations and Challenges

This paper is a commentary on the potential as well as its limitations and challenges for African traditional medicine. The term “African traditional medicine” (also called African folk medicine or African indigenous medicine or African ethno-medicine) as used in this paper refers to the indigenous medicine of Africa, based on traditional indigenous knowledge systems (traditional medicinal knowledge) and passed down, by word of mouth, from generation to generation within the particular indigenous community either along familial lines or traditional apprenticeships. This genre/system of medicine is reported to be the oldest of all the world’s medicine systems, having existed since time immemorial; in fact long before the advent of modern medicine. It continues to be used, in the treatment of diseases and illness, by a majority of the Africa’s indigenous populations especially in rural and peri-urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa that are characterized by poverty, low literacy levels, shortage of health workers, lack of allopathic medicines, as well as inadequate allopathic health services and facilities. Despite being the world’s oldest medical system, it has remained a cropper and the least established traditional medicine system in the world as well as the most rudimentary, informal, with lack of overall public acceptance. It is also plagued by lack of adequate governmental recognition and support. Which is in diametrical contrast with for instance its Asian counterpart (Asia’s traditional and alternative medicine). While the World Health Organization (WHO) has for decades now encouraged the use of traditional medicine especially in the developing world, WHO’s support is only for scientifically-proven traditional medicine. This is a tricky balancing affair because one of the major challenges that traditional medicine suffers is lack of scientific credibility for most of its claims. Which is attributable to the fact of it being primarily founded on mysticism, superstition, deity, magic, supernatural powers, as well as its being association (both real and presumed) with witchcraft, sorcery and wizardry.