Today there is a renewed interest in indigenous (or endogenous) knowledge partially in response to social movements and partially in response to the perception that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that we have sought to systematically exploit our natural environment. However, such interest often tends towards presupposing the necessity of adopting some form of epistemic relativism about the epistemic achievements of modern science. Hountondji does not in fact reject the significance of indigenous or, as he prefers to refer to it, “endogenous” knowledge. I suggest that Hountondji, by rejecting the use of “indigenous” as an adjective, sought to distance himself from the de-politicized celebration of indigeneity as a facet of multiculturalism in the 1990s. What is significant about Hountondji’s approach, and which makes it especially pertinent today, is that he does not reject the existence of significant epistemic achievements amongst the adherents of endogenous modes of intellectual inquiry, yet he does not succumb to the temptations of relativism. In particular, he emphasizes that there are universal goals that drive intellectual inquiry which allow us to make an evaluation of the adequacy of traditions of intellectual inquiry which are embedded in different societies (and which in turn reflect the dominance of certain social elements in those societies). Hountondji’s theoretical work should be contextualized in relation to efforts in the Global South in the 1960s and 1970s to think about the possibility of integrating some elements of endogenous knowledge with some elements of modern science and technology with the goal of creating societies that are characterized by equitable development, and with the aim of ending the curse of scientific and technological dependency. Thus, Hountondji’s writings can be seen as an attempt to provide a theoretical justification for a specific developmental policy.