Manufacturing and consuming knowledge

Overview

The article examines the problems facing African scholars and publishers, in the context of rapid developments in information technology and a deepening economic gulf between industrialised and Third World countries. Many of these problems, and conventional responses to them from libraries, publishers, and donors, are themselves a legacy of colonial relations, the most significant of which is the deepening dependence on Western forms of knowledge and systems to validate all forms of intellectual activity. Questioning the terms ‘information-rich’ and ‘information-poor’, the author stresses the need for Africans to develop the means to generate, value, and disseminate their own forms of knowledge.

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