What is left of our Africanness?
Fela once said Africa’s problem is that we are a lost people. We as black people inhabiting the African continent in 2020 barely have any remembrance of the true African way of doing things. Although there are fragments of original African traditions in some areas of our existence, it is almost nonexistent when compared to the influence of western civilization in our lives.
It would be impossible to ask for an African society devoid of any influence of western civilization because the global community and individual African countries have been built on western systems since the rise of western industrialization and civilization. Civilization is the stage of human social and cultural development that is considered the most advanced, developed based on the dynamic evolution of a people’s world view. Western Civilization is widespread and has almost succeeded in distorting the flow of other civilizations mostly through colonialism and more recently neo-colonialism and globalization. Although all of Africa has attained political independence, economically there’s still a high level of dependence on western produced goods, and the systems we live by are mostly those taught to us by our colonial overlords. It’s important to note that we cannot continue living through the perspective of the west(the reason why most of Africa is still considered a third world or underdeveloped).
African nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe, all dreamed for an Africa that was completely free from foreign influence. What would be true independence for Africa? The adoption of a universal African Language was a topic that hasn’t been given much attention. Now the issue of adopting Swahili as a universal language for Africa isn’t exactly a goal in itself, it is meant to serve as a bridge across all our diverse cultures(since there are identifiable similarities) to forge an active front towards a progressive African Civilization. Until we have designed our societies as Africans based on our worldview as there can be an African spirit in our adoption of the white man’s ways.
As seen with our music and art, Modern tools and techniques have been adopted by African artistes to create a unique blend of African art that carefully tells the African story. Using tools, systems, methods of the white in this sense does not strip us of the right to call an art African art, or a piece of music Afro Beats. African artistes have successfully designed this blend and are praiseworthy for it, hence the undeniable attestation that Africa’s biggest exports are contained in its art, including creative and performing arts. Now looking at virtually every other facet of our society, we still almost entirely dependent on foreign-made goods that we discovered the need for because of our colonial encounters.
For the coming years, the great minds of Africa should work on institutionalizing the remnants of our Africanness to preserve our cultural heritage and ensure that the black race is evolving to Her place of destiny. This method of uniquely blending our African spirit with the systems adopted from our colonial overlords as proven in our Arts will prove a better approach than how we have tried to embrace westernization with all its evils while we actively reject what is ours with all its good.
