Discuss endogenous knowledge as developed by Paulin Hountonji. Hountonji developed the
concept of endogenous knowledge at a seminar organized by him. This concept tries to look at
the knowledge system exploited by the western countries. The knowledge system is dominated
by the northern academic. In this context Hountonji while offering this idea he contextualizes it
in the larger historical context. He stipulates that the dependence on northern countries has not
happened not only in terms of economic realm but in the realm of knowledge production as well.
Even after various countries got independence, the dependence on knowledge dormancy still
continues. He criticized the whole idea of this dependency factor on the Western countries. He
stipulates that this dominancy has ruined the knowledge system. Thereby, tries to develop the
whole idea of endogenous system. With this, he analyse what is an endogenous knowledge
system? How it works? How it can offer a critique to the existing knowledge system which is
produced by the western countries? According to Hountonji, the knowledge system in African
context is highly dependent on the Northern countries. The western countries were controlling
the knowledge production in many parts of the world including Africa.
Hountonji’s works are important to understand the academic dependency of Africa to North.
Hountonji believed that the underdevelopment of Africa needs to be understood through a
historical approach and not through an evolutionist approach. Evolutionist approach understands
this underdevelopment as inevitable whereas historical approach enlighten us to the aspect of
colonial exploitation of Africa in the past. He argues that the knowledge production in Africa is
still externally oriented to cater the needs of Northern universities. Hountonji understands this
through the concepts of extraversion and endogenous knowledge. (Hountonji, 2011, p.11) though
Hountonji substantiates his arguments with the present situation of African economy and
academia, His academic contributions are relevant in the context of all post-colonial nations.
Hountonji continues his argument with an example from this dependency theory. He says that
even though countries got dependency from this colonial rule they are still continuing in a form
of economy and knowledge production. Like the mother country, they are still exploiting the
colonized countries in the form of economic, domination and …. We have seen from this
dependency analysis that many latin American in African countries the Western countries still
have their interest in the form of exploitation and economy.
We need to have African knowledge in the centre, what this means is that we must first