A Framework for Indigenous Knowledge Management in Oromo Gada System

Abstract

Oromo Gada system is a traditional social organization of the Oromo people, whereby communities of Oromo practices and this institution provides codes of conduct for the society in social, economic, religious, political and cultural aspects. Gada system is a traditional governance system used by the Oromo community living in a different place of Ethiopia and other countries which has been developed from knowledge gained by society practice over generations. The Gada system was the constitution of the Oromo community through which the society administered, secured their territory, sustained, established their economy, and protected their culture. However, currently this indigenous knowledge (IK) isn’t fully utilized by the community and preserved since it isn’t supported by scientific and knowledge management approach. Depending on this indigenousness and importance of the Oromo Gada system in the different socio-political activities of the Oromo people in Ethiopia the researcher is motivated to introduce suitable knowledge management approaches that can increase the utilization and preservation of this indigenous knowledge. In this study the research investigated the current usage status of indigenous knowledge (IK) in the different socio-political activities of the community, knowledge capture, represent and sharing components was developed and finally a framework for indigenous knowledge management (IKM) was developed that used to capture, represent and share indigenous knowledge in Oromo Gada system to maximizing the use, share and preserve of this knowledge in the socio-political demands of Oromo society. To assess and develop prototypical representation of the developed framework all the necessary data and indigenous knowledge was collected from Oromo community, Gada leaders, and experts of Guji Oromo Gada system for primary data and Different published documents like books, journals, and reports was used. The performance of the proposed framework is tested and evaluated by users by developing the knowledge sharing prototype. To test and evaluate, the proposed solution ISO 9126 standard was used that have functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability and portability evaluation characteristics and the evaluation results is 67.67%, 73.33%, 60%, 53.33%, 80%, and 53.33% respectively. In general the overall performance evolution result shows that the developed framework achieved a promising result.