Communication And Education In A Participatory Approach

Abstract

African societies have their own way of looking at their surroundings which stretches back through legends, religion, oral tradition and long-established know-how. In the West, human beings aspire to be the ‘owner and master of nature,’ but in Africa, as Eric Dardel has pointed out, ‘the world is seen as a unity of which human beings are an integral part - as individuals are of a tribe, as the internal blends in with the external. It’s a world of participation where humans seek out their likeness in the world’s creatures and find themselves by reference to the universe. In Africa, humans live on through plants and animals, through the earth and the sky, through the vital spark, which drives the wind and the stars, the sprouting and the maturing of things, the tides and the rain. It’s the same life which they feel in their own bodies’.