As the president and CEO of THPASA, Dr Jameo Calvert’s leadership work focuses on strengthening the professional standing of African traditional medicine and advancing indigenous health sciences as coherent, evidence-informed knowledge systems.
Indigenous healthcare plays a vital role in health and wellbeing on the Africa continent. Yet it still largely remains on the outskirts of formalised health management systems and research. This has given rise to an increasing need for structured engagement between academic institutions and practitioner-led indigenous health governance bodies. In recognition of this need, the Africa Centre has entered into a five-year cooperation agreement with the Traditional Health Practice Association of Southern Africa (THPASA).
Promoting and protecting indigenous health knowledge
THPASA is a voluntary association for traditional health practitioners across South Africa. Established to advance the lawful, ethical and decolonial practice of indigenous healthcare, the organisation promotes the ethical professionalisation and protection of indigenous health knowledge systems (IHKS) through standards, membership governance, collaboration, research and the responsible integration of traditional health practice into the broader health system.
According to Dr Jameo Calvert, president and CEO of THPASA, one of the most common misunderstandings about IHKS is that these systems are informal, unscientific or purely spiritual. “In reality, IHKS is a structured body of knowledge transmitted through lineage, practice, observation, community validation and cultural protocol,” he explained. Explanation alone, however, is not sufficient to rectify these misconceptions. “It requires respectful engagement, ethical research, public education and platforms where practitioners and knowledge holders speak for themselves.”
In addition to misinformation about IHKS, indigenous health practitioners also face challenges as individuals. These include “stigma, fragmented representation, limited institutional support, weak professional development pathways, limited professional mobility and the risk of exploitation or misappropriation of indigenous knowledge”. Calvert believes these challenges can be addressed through credible professional structures (such as THPASA), ethical standards, training, research partnerships, proper recognition and governance systems that protect practitioners as well as communities.
Restoring the balance in health systems through academic-practitioner collaboration
The collaboration between the Africa Centre and THPASA will contribute to filling these knowledge gaps to build on the advances that have already been made. Calvert highlights the fact that traditional health practice has become more visible in legal, academic and public health conversations in South Africa. “Another victory is the growing willingness of universities and research institutions to engage IHKS not as folklore, but as a serious knowledge system requiring ethical protection, consent and benefit-sharing.”
The collaboration with the Africa Centre is an excellent example of the increasing recognition of IHKS by reputable higher education institutions. According to Africa Centre director Dr Munya Saruchera, academic institutions have a clear role to play in promoting and supporting IHKS through respectful engagement with African indigenous health and wellbeing practitioners as equal partners in knowledge creation and translation of research.
Calvert agrees that academic collaboration is important because it can help generate evidence, build capacity, support policy engagement and create platforms for knowledge exchange. “At the same time, IHKS brings lived experience, community trust, cultural intelligence and holistic approaches to health that can enrich academic work and broaden how health systems understand care, healing and wellbeing,” he added.
The collaboration is a natural and logical step in bringing together the worlds of practitioner-scholars of African IHKS and the centre’s academic scholars in health management, for the benefit of societal healing, wellbeing and integrated health management across biomedical and indigenous health systems.
“Students, practitioners and scholars need to be exposed to the different [health] systems as these are lived realities,” Saruchera said. “African indigenous health continues to play a vital role in Africa’s healthcare system, with the World Health Organisation estimating that up to 80% of Africans still rely on traditional remedies for primary healthcare needs.”
Broadbased collaboration supports every aspect of indigenous health promotion
The collaboration will involve a range of strategic initiatives across the sphere of health management and governance:
- Advance ethical, culturally safe and evidence-informed collaboration on indigenous and traditional health practice.
- Promote joint research, evaluation and knowledge generation aligned with community benefits and appropriate indigenous knowledge governance.
- Strengthen capacity through training (e.g. short courses and workshops), seminars, mentorships and IHKS practitioner-scholar engagement and development.
- Support policy engagement and practice-informed advocacy through policy briefs and stakeholder dialogues.
- Disseminate knowledge through coproduced outputs, publications and convenings like webinars and symposia.
- Strengthen the ethical governance of indigenous knowledge engagement, including contributing to safeguards against epistemicide*, cultural extraction and the uncompensated appropriation of indigenous health knowledge.
- Support the development of professional standards, ethical practice models and culturally grounded evidence approaches that can inform responsible, integrated care.
From a research perspective, the collaboration provides the opportunity to advance research equity through the vital exchange of learnings with African indigenous health practitioners and knowledge holders. According to Saruchera, research gaps include holistic African cosmologies of health and wellbeing, collaboration between practitioners across the different systems and the role of spirituality and divination in healing and wellbeing.
“We need to investigate and explore the Afrocentric values, principles, values and philosophies of health leadership and management beyond the dominant Western scientific management approaches for Western science,” he added. “This can be done through critical management theories to challenge the dominance of a ‘WEIRD’ (Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) world of knowledge production and dissemination.”
We are excited about the impact and change that this collaboration can deliver and will report back on key milestones. In Calvert’s words: “I see this collaboration as an opportunity to demonstrate what respectful partnership can look like: one rooted in consent, cultural safety, fair value, mutual learning and a shared commitment to community benefit.” We couldn’t agree more.
* Epistemicide is the systematic destruction, silencing or devaluing of indigenous, local or non-Western knowledge systems, often replaced by a dominant Eurocentric intellectual framework.