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From Oral Lineage to Digital Archive: Preserving Yoruba Indigenous Knowledge in The 21st Century

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: In Yoruba traditional societies, indigenous knowledge is maintained by the traditions of collective memory, apprenticeship, performance, and ritual usage, as well as oral transmission. These forms remain living because communities continually interpret, adapt, and transmit them. However, when transmission is interrupted there is a possibility of loss. Also, when knowledge is digitized there is a second problem of separation from custodians, performance contexts and ethical boundaries. This paper questions the possibility of capturing and preserving Yoruba indigenous knowledge. It uses a qualitative, conceptual and policy-focused lens, informed by the scholarship of the Yoruba communities of origin and comparative literature on Indigenous data governance, with a particular focus on UNESCO documents. The paper argues that preservation should not be equated with unrestricted online access. Instead, a Yoruba-centred archive should be community-controlled and culturally differentiated. Its design should combine community-led selection, six levels of access, culturally rich metadata, multimodal documentation, continuing consent, periodic review, and collective benefit. Brief attention to Yoruba oral performance, language-learning platforms, datasets, and emerging risks of artificial-intelligence scraping demonstrates why archive architecture matters. The proposed framework does not prescribe a universal template. It offers an adaptable basis for consultation with knowledge-holders, archivists, educators, and younger users, ensuring that technology strengthens living transmission rather than replacing the relationships through which knowledge endures across generations.
DOI: 10.54117/459e7r28
Institution: University of Lagos
Language: English
Subfield: Conservation
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7225776655
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