Global health science needs to integrate the health traditions of local communities in Africa. Traditional medicine has a long history in Africa for treating a wide variety of human and animal ailments. This rich body of knowledge has for a long time been undervalued because of the dominance of Eurocentric mindsets and practices. But current research confirms that many of today’s medicines are derived from tropical African medicinal plants, and that traditional medicine can provide a lead to scientific breakthrough in modern medicine and drug discovery. With colonialism and modernization, traditional medicine has come to be misrepresented as obsolete and irrelevant because it does not appear to conform with the scientific principles of modern medicine, especially with respect to the spiritual and cultural aspects which sometimes involve divination, belief in witchcraft, and so on. Many scientists and government officials distrust traditional medicine, and insist on the need for to validate, codify and standardize it practice for greater safety and efficacy. They, therefore, hesitate to provide the regulatory and legislative framework for integrating traditional medicine into the national health system. Unfortunately, modern medicine, with all its obvious merits, is not readily accessible and affordable to a large percentage of the rural and urban populations where most people tend to combine traditional and modern medicines, especially during epidemics like HIV/AIDS and COVID19 for which Western medicine has not provided ready cure. The paper underscores the value and continuing relevance of many aspects of Africa’s cultural heritage, including traditional medicine; the need to promote comparative medicine and collaboration between scientists and practitioners of modern medicine on the one hand, and those who hold and use traditional medical knowledge on the other, so that the traditional and the modern will complement and enrich each other, and thus advance the prospect of attaining Universal
