A Data Mining Process In An Indigenous Knowledge Ethno Medicinal Database

Abstract Botswana is a landlocked country with diverse ethnic groups amounting to a population of around 2 million. Batswana like all the other African nations have a strong sense of culture which is expressed and strongly felt through the language Setswana traditional food traditional healing and the music which form part of various indigenous knowledge systems IKS. However the way indigenous knowledge is or should be documented properly is subject of intense debate. Hence research projects are coming up with various methods and tools to contribute to the documentation. The Ethnosurvey Research project at University of Botswanas Centre for Scientific Research Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation CesrIKi set out to contribute to IKS documentation by collecting and documenting the countrys traditional medicinal plants in Botswana. This paper presents the findings of conducting a data mining process on the collected data to uncover patterns and trends emerging from the data through a data mining technique.