African Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Environmental Stewardship Expressed through Folktales

This study focuses on African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in relation to environmental conservation. Using a qualitative research approach, the study explores the use of folktales for environmental education in three Mabia languages and cultures in West Africa. It shows that speakers of Kusaal, Buli, and Dagaare, through their cultural beliefs and philosophies expressed in folktales, have measures that ensure environmental protection and sanctions that prevent ecosystem destruction and harm to biodiversity. This article establishes that the folktales of these people spell out rules for hunting, exhibit mutual relationships between humans and animals, and establish trees and water bodies as ecological ancestral bodies. Unfortunately, these stories are fast going extinct; this, perhaps, explains the current neglect and apathy towards environmental conservation among the region’s youth.