African healing traditions encompass an extraordinary diversity of practices across the continent — from the Nguni traditions of southern Africa to the Yoruba-influenced healing of West Africa to the herbalism of East African communities — unified by the understanding that health is relational, communal, and spiritual as well as physical. Many African healing systems view illness as a disruption in the web of relationships between the individual, community, ancestors, and the natural world, and healing accordingly involves the community, not just the individual. The botanical knowledge embedded in these traditions represents millennia of accumulated empirical observation and remains an important source of pharmacological discovery.
Dipa