Understanding Indigenous Innovation in Rural West Africa: Challenges to Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Current Social Innovation Practice

Abstract

Most social innovation (SI) work done in developing countries is carried out through development agencies that focus on initiating innovations and processes, and establishing institutions that cultivate a change-oriented mindset. I offer a general critique of that approach and I link that critique with my observations from 15 years living and working among rural indigenous people in West Africa. I suggest that, not only do much of the SI processes fail to show respect for the creativity and intelligence of indigenous people, they tend to come packaged with exogenous participatory processes, encourage scaling-up, and ignore innovation that is already occurring. These arguments set the stage for an examination of a system of innovation that I discovered operating in a Hausa village in Niger. This system not only challenges the most important theory explaining the adoption and spread of ideas, the diffusion of innovations, it also demonstrates how indigenous people in one of the poorest countries on earth are innovating without intervention or support from development agencies. I complete the paper by suggesting that in some cases more sensible SI can be facilitated by discovering and supporting indigenous processes of innovation rather than by focusing on initiating change.

Keywords:

• Indigenous innovation
• Diffusion of innovations
• Social innovation
• Hausa farmers
• Niger
• West Africa
• Human development

About the Author

Joel Matthews lived in a West African village with his wife and children for about 12 years between 1991 and 2005, and taught at an East African university from 2007 to 2010. His years in West Africa were initially spent working as a development facilitator, and later as director of a development program. During his years in West Africa he developed life-long friendships with many Hausa farmers, and towards the end of his time there recognized that much of the development processes that were meant to help Rural Africans was actually harming them. This led to his PhD research, his studies on indigenous innovation, and to this present article.