“We’ve Been Exploited and That’s Enough,” Professor Calls for Embracing African Plant Medicines

“The West that thought that we were primitive with these traditions are now getting out of this traditional method. If you step out of your house in Africa, herbal medicines are everywhere. We are rich, naturally blessed, rich in herbal medicines. But then we are not conscious of what we have [....] We have been exploited, and then that is enough. Things have to be done properly. So working together, as I started talking about, working together as a team, as Africans, having some consortiums, even research partnerships, and so on, to see how we can afford that together. And I hope that we can have more and more boards and committees open to facilitate those efforts. Because looking out there, Africa is not benefiting much at all. There is so much that we can benefit [from] and stop borrowing. Because we have so much wealth and why are we borrowing? Because we don't know what we have. And so we need to work together to have this done. We're looking at policy, we are looking at research, monitoring, evaluation units, information, communication units, digital innovations, using everything [...] We must ensure that with what we have, we have the empirical evidence that this is useful, and it's there for all to see. And then people can trust, and we can do also the economic one where we can also export as a people,” the professor elucidated.