AFRICAN MEDICINE

According to the World Health Organization, over 80% of Africans rely on traditional medicine in spite of other available health care practices. This implies that African traditional medicine provides a satisfactory and efficient response to their health demands. WHO, African ministries of health, and many NGO’s have begun to “develop” and “modernize” this salutary heritage to expunge it of irrationalism and charlatanism. The transformation from tradition herbal forms into improved drugs and the many invention patent application files are expressive of this process which gives African traditional medicine its pharmacological potential. However, we believe the reduction of traditional medicine in Africa to a uni-organic, biomedical and pharmacological paragon is simplistic. Africa traditional practice is complex: material and spiritual, secular and sacred, magical and religious, ritualistic and medicinal, highly prescriptive and a preventive. In a way, traditional African medicine is buttressed by a resilient and artificial humanism, and ontology limited only by the divine- man’s tenfold capacity of extraordinary and exceptional performances: crypto-communication, protection against witchcraft, accidents, poison, theft, poisoned knives and food, wet dreams, sterility as well as children’s sex determination and mastery of lightening and rain… It is strategic for traditional African medicine to tackle both current and future challenges and draw up a new road map. Among these challenges is the question of its proponents and state as well as its multivalent scientificism. Indeed, all medicines are traditional, that is, rooted in a cultural tradition. Contrary to popular belief, African traditional medicine is not exclusively unscientific (UY1, 2010).