DESIGNING AN INTEGRATED INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR TRADITIONAL MEDICINES IN GAMO COMMUNITIES

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.