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Paper short abstract

Indigenous epistemologies from the Global South challenge dominant development models and offer transformative, community-rooted approaches. This paper shows how local knowledge reshapes sustainability, resilience, and power in development, promoting co-created and equitable futures.

Paper long abstract

For decades, development knowledge has been produced, validated, and circulated through frameworks shaped largely in the Global North, often rendering the epistemologies of the Global South as secondary, informal, or obsolete. Yet indigenous knowledge systems, rooted in lived experience, ecological intimacy, communal governance, and intergenerational memory offer profound insights into resilience, sustainability, and social organisation. This paper examines how these epistemologies not only challenge dominant development paradigms but also offer transformative possibilities for reordering what counts as legitimate knowledge in development practice.

Drawing on examples from African contexts, the paper interrogates how indigenous epistemologies have historically been marginalised through colonial, extractive, and technocratic development approaches. It highlights the tensions between universalist models and localised understandings of well-being, social equity, and environmental stewardship.

By foregrounding Global South perspectives, the paper illustrates how community archives, oral traditions, indigenous governance systems, and local ecological knowledge are actively reshaping contemporary development thinking. It explores cases where these epistemologies have informed climate resilience strategies, conflict resolution models, sustainable agriculture, and community-driven planning.

Ultimately, the paper argues that embracing indigenous epistemologies is not simply a call for cultural recognition but a crucial step toward rebalancing global power relations in knowledge production. Reordering development knowledge requires a shift from extractive engagement to co-creation, one that positions Global South voices as central architects of development futures in an increasingly uncertain world.