News — research

One of West Africa’s premier research institutions, the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), was first created by the French Government in 1938. Established in Dakar, Senegal, the organization was originally called the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire. Designed on behalf of French colonial administrators, the IFAN was to be a cultural and scientific institute that focused on the expansion of knowledge pertaining to the historical, linguistic, and sociological aspects of French colonial populations in West Africa.

Support for the venture originally arose in France during the early 1930s, at a time when the French Government was experiencing a revitalized curiosity in the nation’s colonial possessions and peoples. Additionally, the creation of the institution was viewed as a movement away from viewing French colonial territories in purely material or economic terms. IFAN followed the Dakar School of Medicine, founded in 1918, as the major institution of research and higher education in West Africa.

French naturalist Théodore André Monod (1902-2000) was the institution’s founding director. From the time of his appointment until his retirement in 1965, Monod worked to promote the inclusion of Africans to some of the institute’s higher positions of employment. However, during the IFAN’s early years, positions throughout the organization were granted mainly to white French citizens. One exception was the post of ethnologist, held by Amadou Hampâté Bâ, whom Monod hired in the organization’s formative years. World War II slowed IFAN’s growth and development, greatly reducing the number of available staff members.

After the end of World War II, the IFAN experienced a period of dramatic expansion, which resulted in various organizational branches appearing in other French possessions such as Mali and Guinea. Throughout much of the 1950s the IFAN witnessed waves of staff turnover as Africans began to occupy a larger percentage of the organization’s staff. This was partly due to the changing political climate that resulted in Senegal receiving independence in 1960, soon followed by other colonies. At around the same time control of the IFAN in Senegal was transferred to the University of Dakar (founded in 1957), which had been modeled on other French universities.

In 1986, however, when the University of Dakar was renamed Cheikh Anta Diop University (after the noted Senegalese anthropologist who worked at IFAN for decades), the institution itself became the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire Cheikh Anta Diop. The IFAN continues to publish two major academic journals: the Mémoire de l’IFAN, and the Bulletin de l’IFAN.

Motheo Koitsiwe developed his passion for indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) research, particularly indigenous astronomy, at a tender age after consuming a lot of stories about the moon and stars.

“This passion was ignited by my late grandmother, Mmamodiagane Tladinyane, when she narrated stories, poems, riddles, songs of African night skies and cosmologies around the fireplace,” he said.

After many years, these oral traditions of storytelling inspired by the cosmos would motivate him to investigate African indigenous astronomy of the Batswana in Botswana and South Africa.

Koitsiwe has so far received Africa’s first PhD in African indigenous astronomy from the North-West University (NWU), South Africa.

He received his degree on October 17 at the campus in Mahikeng, the university announced.

In centuries past, Africans had to rely on the natural world around them to keep track of the time, seasons and directions as there were no timekeeping devices like clocks and mobile phones.

Africans largely made use of astronomy to structure their lives and keep themselves going.

In rural South Africa where people depended on hunting, farming, and harvesting, celestial bodies basically told them when to “till the soil and when the growing season was about to end.”

Koitsiwe’s work, which followed a case study approach in investigating the Batswana, revealed that they “use their indigenous knowledge of celestial bodies for agriculture, reproductive health, navigation, time calculation, calendar making, rainmaking and thanksgiving ceremonies, and for natural disaster management.”

“Traditional songs, poems and indigenous games are also used as vehicles to transmit knowledge of celestial bodies to younger members of the community to preserve it for posterity,” the university wrote.

Prof Mogomme Masoga, who co-supervised Koitsiwe’s doctoral studies, said his student’s thesis has originality and novelty, in other words, it is unique in astronomy.

Koitsiwe, who also holds a BA degree in social sciences, as well as an honor’s and a master’s degree in IKS from the NWU, said he is honored to have completed his Ph.D. at the same university.

At the moment, he plans to translate his thesis into Setswana “so that it not only reflects the aspirations of academia, but the Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela and Batswana in general.”

Since 2001, the NWU’s campus in Mahikeng has been the pioneer of IKS in South Africa after starting teaching, learning, and research in IKS that year.

“It is the first higher institution of learning in the country to have a registered teaching, learning and research program in IKS, accredited by the South African Qualification Authority (SAQA),” said Koitsiwe.