Calling: Surfacing Indigenous Medical Knowledge in Africa

The burning issue underlying this research-to-innovation is the neglect of indigenous African knowledge, most especially indigenous medical knowledge, in favor of a one-sided western exogenous knowledge system which led to an identity crises and a loss of interest in traditional culture and values among the rural population of Edo state and Nigeria, as well as to impoverished economic and political institutions.

Innovation Ecosystem: A highly engaged local Team, spanning Enterprise and Community, including the local King as a Steward

From the outset, Father Anselm built up a strong innovation ecosystem, comprised of key local and global figures engaging with him in a co-creative process to address the issue at hand. It included transformation agents within Pax Herbals and within the local Ewu village. The King of Ewu acted as a steward for the entire process. Over time, this ecosystem grew into close institutional partnerships that included Pax Herbals as an enterprise, the Ewu community and a newly developed community association, Father Anselm’s monastery and Trans4m (catalyzing the overall innovation process). At a later stage, the Lagos-based integral center CISER as well as the University of Ibadan joined this process.

Integral Innovation: Towards a new Theory called Communitalism, spanning four Aspects of Integral Healing

Integral Research was used as a transformative process to bring about integral healing. Drawing upon Trans4m’s Integral Worlds model, Adodo adopted a holistic way of research and social innovation that is built on the interaction between the four worlds of the South (nature), East (culture), North (science) and West (economy). Father Anselm combined Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Co-operative Inquiry (CI) as his action research methodologies. Through his research, he activated processes of integral renewal within his enterprise (Pax Herbals) as well as within the local community (Ewu). Regular dialogue sessions helped to identify challenges, and find a common ground to effectively proffer their own solutions rather than drawing on solutions from without.

Together with his innovation ecosystem, Adodo developed a new theory called communitalism, based on the four aspects of “Integral Healing” or Pax: Pax Communis, Pax Spiritus, Pax Scientia and Pax Economia, altogether called Pax Africana.

Communitalism affirms that some aspects of capitalism, such as individual inventiveness, are worth pursuing and supporting, but such inventiveness must be put at the service of the community, so that both the individual and the community prosper. The key philosophy of communitalism is ‘we are either happy together as a prosperous community or unhappy together’ and thereby unprosperous. For communitalism, the health and prosperity of the individual cannot be separated from the health and prosperity of the local community. Global health must start from local health, not the other way round. In the process the link between individual, community and enterprise health and whole-making will be made. Communitalism demonstrates that an institutionalized model of business and enterprise based on nature, community, spirituality and humanism is a better driver of social and technological innovation in Africa.

Integral Impact: A vibrant Community Association and a new Africa Centre for Integral Research and Development

Father Anselm and his team’s research-to-innovation led to the creation of Ewu Development and Educational Multipurpose Cooperative Society (EDEMCS), enrolling thousands of local villagers. From a local group of marginalized and underrated people, EDEMCS is becoming a voice powerful enough to challenge the status quo, and to ‘force’ a change in power relations in Edo state and Nigeria. In the CI group, Anselm introduced Heron’s four epistemologies, or “ways of knowing”, namely experiential knowing, imaginal knowing, propositional knowing and practical knowing. One of the practical transformative contributions of the CI group is the creation of the Africa Centre for Integral Research and Development (ACIRD), which aims to institutionalize knowledge creation in and for Ewu village, Edo State, Nigeria and Africa as a whole via “communitalism” as a new African integral theory.

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An Inspiring Video on Father Anselm’s Research-to-Innovation on Integral Healing