The plus points

“TM has permanent cure of diseases and no side effects,” he said, emphasizing the holistic nature of the system. “It also [non-surgically] controls situations where [Western] doctors would be quick to use operations, like when babies lie in the breech position in their mother’s womb or arresting bleeding after childbirth.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the affordability of TM and a weak distribution system of Western medicine is another important factor for the use of TM. “Most pharmaceuticals in Africa are imported, which significantly increases health expenditure and leaves people vulnerable to interruption of the supply of medicines,” WHO says in a report.

Finally, there is a very strong cultural root that TM continues to enjoy. A study of TM in Tanzania published in 2015 - The Determinants of Traditional Medicine Use in Northern Tanzania: A Mixed-methods Study - found credibility of traditional practices and strong cultural identities among the five main reasons for the use of TM, including among well-off families and professionals. Wazees - elders - and family members are a primary source of healthcare knowledge. As a 44-year-old woman was quoted in the study, saying, “My family and I prefer not to go to hospitals. My grandparents taught us a lot [especially about plant roots] about healing and curing… My father still will not use any hospital medicines.”

“Many expressed a distinct ‘foreignness’ associated with biomedicines,” the study said. “The doctors of medicine (MDS) agreed with this sentiment. One MD stated, ‘The concept of taking pills on a daily basis is seen as a distinctly Western [American and European] thing,’ and a 53-year-old man went as far as to say, ‘Most of us believe that the Western people came here to undermine us and deter our local medicines. I think that they want to colonize us again.’”

Such perceptions would have been bolstered by efforts in some African countries during colonial governments to ban TM. For instance, in the 1960s, non-allopathic medical colleges were closed in South Africa. The Western media and Hollywood have also played a large role in the demonization of Africa’s TM, creating fables about witchdoctors, voodoo and black magic and deriding the system as unscientific.

Soyoye said only those practitioners who do not know what to do attribute their work to witchcraft. “I have no belief in that,” he said. “We need to have effective TM because of its low cost and [absence] of side effects.” The African College of TM also teaches its students the difference between the practice of TM and occultism.

After the wave of independence in Africa and nations seeking their own pan-african health bodies and laws, West African states signed a protocol in Abuja, Nigeria, in 1987 to found the West African Health Organization (WAHO). WAHO, while seeking “to attain the highest possible standard and protection of health of the peoples in the sub-region through the harmonization of the policies of the member states, pooling of resources, and cooperation,” is also for promoting TM.