摘要
Although African continent and Uganda in particular experienced the influence of the western economies which came with exploration, missionary work, and colonialism, and which put the indigenous design creativity to sleep, communities have continued to show resilience in utilizing indigenous design processes whenever there is a shift in the cosmetic African-West relationship. This paper describes and assesses how indigenous processes become fundamental and sustained a fragile economy of Uganda after the military takeover of government by Idi Amin in 1971. It looks at how Ugandan artisans employed their long forgotten skills in designing processes that allowed communities to function. For example artisans made spare parts for the abandoned factories, made soap, and processed salt for consumption. The paper takes a pro-vocal approach and traces how this worked, how it is still working even when the country is presumably peaceful with the majority of the population engaged in agriculture production. The author carried out an ethnographic study on 90 participants in Kiruhura district in S.W. Uganda to establish how families integrate indigenous design processes in their daily activities. The author investigated why families continue to use indigenous material cultural items such as carvings, pottery, baskets, and iron work yet government policy emphases commercial agriculture. Results indicate that most families still use indigenous design processes in agriculture, housing, and treatment because of the superficial and unstructured ability by most families to use western made technologies, and that many of them do not have the necessary resources to acquire the modern technology. Results further indicate that families have a special attachment to indigenous materials which gives them an identity and ownership and that some items work better than the Western designed products. The paper concludes that those indigenous design processes are fundamentally good opportunities for entrepreneur actions that could be viable household enterprises. In addition to improving household incomes, the author theorize that re-engaging indigenous design processes, may facilitate ownership, resilience, and creativity of indigenous African creativity and design processes that could lead to sustainable development.
