Paper short abstract:

East African pastoralists like Turkana, Karamojong, etc., have not only their own system of education. It is also crucial for an efficient and sustainable use of dryland resources that their right to use it is recognised in its legitimacy and its importance for the present and future of this region.

Paper long abstract:

The success of the human species is based on its ability to accumulate, transmit and adapt knowledge and capacities through individual and collective learning. Cultures are bodies of such knowledge. In the drylands of Northeastern Africa, two contrasting meta-cultures interact: an indigenous (agro-) pastoralist culture based on the sustainable use of local resources and the grass-roots democracy of ethnic communities like Turkana, Karamojong, and many others; and a culture based on global economies, formal institutions and informal networks understanding itself as 'modern', "learned" and 'superior' to "the uneducated". These notions evolved from colonial ideologies, disregard for the pastoralist world and its achievements, and an extremely ethnocentric concept of education. Yet while formal education has undeniable merits, educative systems of pastoralist cultures outperform conventional schools in a wide range of regards of crucial importance for productivity and quality of life in this region. While pastoralist cultures still inform, not least through informal pastoralist education, the social and economic practices of productive rural majorities, an increasing portion of the rapidly growing regional population is socialised into globalising knowledge economies through national education systems. Unfortunately, these systems neither incorporate the knowledge of indigenous cultures, nor do they recognise their unique importance for the efficient and sustainable use of the region's resources, the democratic regulation of local societies, the formation of proactive attitudes, etc.

This paper discusses implications, reasons and effects of this problem, how indigenous and international knowledge can be better integrated, knowledge transfer and exchange, role of technologies and cross-sector cooperation.