DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR GUMAA IN OROMO GADAA SYSTEM (IN CASE OF SIKO MANDO)

Abstract

Oromo society, like many African societies, is rich in IK (Gadaa system) that is used for conflict resolution, food preparation, marriage system, sheltering, and clothing in all aspects of the Ethiopian nations in general and the Oromia regional state in particular. Furthermore, Oromo Gadaa system (OGS) is a traditional governance system, which includes various assets that helps Oromo society living in different areas of Ethiopia and other nations. Among those assets OGS, Gumaa institution is one of the multitude IK institutions of OGS used for conflict resolution that have been traditionally employed to settle blood feuds or compensate those who have been victimized. Despite its wider use and multidisciplinary in nature, psychosocial analysis of this IK of Gumaa in OGS is not fully utilized and preserved by the community due to its tacit knowledge and not supported by technology and there is no framework and implementation for this IK. Therefore, by considering this indigenousness and its importance in conflict resolution mechanism in different social activities, the aim of this study is to introduce suitable KM approaches that can support how to manage and develop framework for IK management of Gumaa in OGS. To assess and design a framework for the IK of Gumaa all the necessary data were collected from Siko Mando (Arsi and Bale) Oromo community using cluster-sampling techniques and will be analyze using SPSS version 26 and Prolog programming language was used to develop a functional prototype for implementation of the desired framework for easily managing and capturing IK of Gumaa in Oromo Gadaa system. According to this research finding, the Current Status of KM process is very low in IKM task. Hence, the desired framework and prototype was designed and developed to increase performance of IKM processes. Then, the developed prototype performance was tested and evaluated by experts and users using the standard criteria (ISO-9126) for evaluation like attractiveness, simplicity, efficiency, deliverability, portability, usability, functionality and maintainability.  Based on their evaluation the results were 80%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 85%, 65%, and 50% respectively. Therefore, as the result shows, the proposed IKM framework is promising as solution for IKM processes, specifically for GUMAA in OGS conflict resolution.

Keyword: Gadaa System, Conflict Resolution, Knowledge Management, Indigenous knowledge management, Knowledge Base, AI

DOI: 10.7176/JCSD/75-03

Publication date: January 30^th 2026