Abstract:
Indigenous knowledge in traditional medicine includes the knowledge, practices, and beliefs
passed down through generations within Indigenous communities. Traditional medicine plays
a crucial role in the healthcare system of many African countries, including Ethiopia. In the
Gamo communities, Indigenous knowledge is practiced to improve overall business
performance, including the creation, storage, sharing, and use of knowledge. This study aims
to design an Integrated Indigenous Knowledge Management Framework (IIKMF) for
traditional medicine to improve the systematic and organizational method that enables one to
record, explore, arrange, disseminate, preserve, use, publish, store, and recreate explicit and
tacit knowledge in a Gamo community. There is a problem in a selected research domain, the
researcher assesses the knowledge gap in IK from a technological perspective, practices of
indigenous knowledge of traditional medicine in a Gamo community have not been shared or
transferred between communities, and no technology supports IK people using medicinal
plants and practicing the mode of preparation of medications and there is no platform between
modern and traditional experts to work with each other. To solve those problems, researchers
have been motivated to fill an indigenous knowledge gap in traditional medicine in a Gamo
Community. Based on this study, the Ethiopian Health institutions, researchers, and traditional
medicine practitioners are beneficiaries. To conduct the proposed study researchers used an
explanatory research design through qualitative and quantitative approaches (mixed approach).
The researcher analyzed data from 68 respondents; 40 (58.8%) were males, and 28(41.2%)
were females. Concerning profession and specialization, 34(51.5%) traditional medicine
practitioners were traditional experts, 20(29.4%) were modern experts or researchers, and
14(21.2%) were indigenous experts. The acceptance evaluation results generally indicated that
the proposed IIKMF was designed and the developed prototype was highly applicable by
standard criteria (ISO-9126). Finally, the researchers recommend challenges and problems to
future researchers which are not covered in this study.
