Literacy for People, Planet, and Prosperity

By Namse Udosen ON this year's International Literacy Day, the theme 'Literacy for People, the Planet and Prosperity' invites us to rethink what we mean by literacy. Literacy is often reduced to the ability to read and write in a formal language – in real terms, the colonial language. This view is Eurocentric and limiting. Across African societies, people have always developed sophisticated ways to read their environments, interpret social relationships, transmit knowledge, and make sense of the world. Literacy, therefore, is not only about decoding written words. It is also about the ability to read people, places, cultures, histories, and environments. When education disconnects literacy from the knowledge systems of communities, it risks producing learners who can read textbooks but struggle to recognise the knowledge embedded in their own cultural environments. It produces citizens who are docile and identity-less. Literacy for People We cannot speak about literacy for people without acknowledging their languages, histories and cultural knowledge. Every language carries a worldview and provides ways of naming, categorising and understanding the world. Recently, the UN passed a resolution to adopt a new map of the world that recognises the real sizes of places across the world. This has implications for understanding literacy and knowledge production. When literacy is delivered only through dominant languages and externally produced knowledge, indigenous languages and knowledge systems can become marginalised. Children may learn to read and write while simultaneously learning that the knowledge of their grandparents, communities and cultural environments is somehow less legitimate. With the new map, they can now understand the geo-spatial realities of their history. A more inclusive understanding of literacy should allow children to encounter their own cultures in educational spaces. This does not mean rejecting global knowledge. Rather, it means creating opportunities for local and global knowledge to meet, enabling learners to become confident in both their cultural identities and their engagements with the wider world. Literacy for the Planet Literacy must also help us understand and care for the environments in which we live. Indigenous knowledge systems contain forms of ecological literacy that have developed through generations of observation and interaction with particular environments. In Nigeria's Niger Delta, for example, knowledge of waterways is not simply a practical skill. Fishers, traders and other riverine communities develop sophisticated understandings of tides, currents, channels, landmarks, weather patterns and seasonal changes. As someone who has travelled on the waters from Calabar to Oron in southern Nigeria, I am often awed by how the navigators know all the bumps and trouble spots on the water and manoeuvre their boats through them. Much of this knowledge is transmitted orally through demonstration, storytelling, observation and participation. It represents a form of literacy: the ability to read the landscape and respond intelligently to environmental conditions. Recognising such knowledge in education can help children understand that environmental literacy does not begin with a textbook. Communities themselves can be important repositories of knowledge about their environments. Literacy for Prosperity Prosperity, too, should be understood more broadly than income or economic growth. Education should enable people to build lives characterised by dignity, creativity, resilience, participation and well-being. One fascinating example is Agidigbo, a Yoruba knowledge tradition associated with the transmission of knowledge through the metronym – the maternal line and networks of maternal kinship. Agidigbo should not be confused with wrestling or presented simply as a traditional sport. The significance of Agidigbo lies in the ways cultural knowledge can be embedded in music, performance, language, memory, social relationships and inter-generational transmission. The agidigbo instrument and the cultural practices surrounding its performance provide opportunities for knowledge to be learned, remembered and communicated across generations. The Centre for African Studies at Afebababalola University is doing great work in promoting Yoruba indigenous knowledge. This should trickle down to basic education. Cultural practices should not be seen merely as entertainment or folklore, but as knowledge systems. Through them, communities transmit histories, values, identities, social expectations and understandings of place. The maternal networks associated with the transmission of such knowledge are particularly important because they remind us that knowledge does not always travel through formal institutions such as schools or universities. It can move through families, kinship networks, communities, performers, artisans, elders and everyday social practices. If literacy is about the capacity to access, interpret and transmit knowledge, then these cultural practices deserve to be recognised as part of the broader ecology of literacy. Reading Communities as Texts Two examples are instructive: The Niger Delta navigation: Communities develop knowledge for interpreting waterways, tides, currents, weather and landmarks. Such knowledge supports livelihoods and environmental adaptation, and, The Yoruba Agidigbo and maternal knowledge networks: Cultural knowledge is transmitted through music, performance, language, memory and relationships across generations, including through maternal kinship networks. These and similar examples challenge the assumption that knowledge becomes legitimate only when it has been written down in a textbook. They also raise an important question for education in Nigeria: What if literacy education taught children not only how to read books, but also how to read the knowledge embedded in their communities? A child who learns to read a story about their environment, understand the language of their grandparents, interpret traditional ecological knowledge, document a craft, learn a musical tradition or record the history of a community is developing forms of literacy that connect schooling with life. From Literacy to Knowledge Justice International Literacy Day should therefore encourage us to move beyond a narrow definition of literacy. Literacy for people means recognising languages, identities and cultural knowledge. Literacy for the planet means developing the capacity to understand and care for our environments, including learning from indigenous ecological knowledge, and, Literacy for prosperity means using knowledge to build dignified, creative, resilient and sustainable communities. The challenge is not to romanticise every indigenous practice or assume that traditional knowledge is automatically sustainable or universally applicable. Rather, it is to create educational spaces where indigenous knowledge can be documented, critically examined, preserved, adapted and placed in dialogue with other knowledge systems. Literacy should not only teach children how to read the world. It should also teach them that their communities have been reading, interpreting and making meaning of that world for generations. That, perhaps, is where literacy for people, the planet and prosperity truly begins. Dr Namse Udosen is an education and development expert. He can be reached at namse.udosen@gmail.com , Tel: +2347065741425 A.I Sept. 8, 2026 Post navigation Related Posts