I critically discuss contemporary work in African, i.e., sub-Saharan, political philosophy that has been written in English. I begin by providing an overview of the profession and discussing the aptness of focusing on African political philosophy as a distinct topic. Next, I highlight discussions that should be of interest to a political philosopher working anywhere in the world, focusing on ideas characteristic of the sub-Saharan region that are under-appreciated not merely for the purpose of comparative ethics, but also (...) for substantive ethical argumentation. In particular, I take up fascinating and underexplored approaches to political power, civil liberties and economic goods that are characteristic of this tradition. (shrink)

If contemporary African political philosophy is going to develop substantially in fresh directions, it probably will not be enough, say, to rehash the old personhood debate between Kwame Gyekye and Ifeanyi Menkiti, or to nit-pick at Gyekye’s system, as much of the literature in the field has done. Instead, major advances are likely to emerge on the basis of new, principled interpretations of sub-Saharan moral thought. In recent work, I have fleshed out two types of moral theories that have (...) a clearly sub-Saharan basis, that differ from Gyekye’s moral perspective, and that also happen to constitute genuine rivals to dominant Western theories such as utilitarianism, Kantianism and contractualism. In catchwords, these African moral theories are constituted by ideals regarding community or friendliness, on the one hand, and vitality or liveliness, on the other. In this article I sketch these two under-explored ethical perspectives and then suggest several respects in which their implications for salient political controversies are novel and revealing. Sometimes the new African moral theories—and the community-based one in particular--entail different conclusions from Gyekye's position, while other times their conclusions are the same as Gyekye’s, but they provide different rationales for them that are more compelling than his. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between the normative outlook and political philoso- phy of traditional societies on the one hand, and the crises of governance and leadership in contemporary African Societies, particularly subSaharan states, on the other. Although there are quite some differences in the quality of leadership and governance among sub-Saharan African states because of the different political and economic circumstances, this part of the globe taken as a whole remains underdeveloped in (...) terms of having the will to institute and maintain stable polities with responsive, responsible and efficient governance. (shrink)

Towards and African Political Philosophy of Needs (2021) is an edited collection of ten chapters on the topic of needs in contemporary African political and soc.

Public deliberation, highly valued by many African societies, becomes the cornerstone of a new system of African political philosophy in this brilliant, highly original study. In Deliberative Agency, philosopher Uchenna Okeja offers a way to construct a new political center by building it around the ubiquitous African practice of public deliberation, a widely accepted means to resolve legal matters, reconcile feuding groups, and reestablish harmony. In cities, hometown associations and voluntary organizations carry out the task of fostering (...) deliberation among African groups for different reasons. In some instances, the deliberation aims to settle disputes. In others, the aim is to decide the best action to take to address unfortunate incidents such as death. Through a measured, comparative analysis, Deliberative Agency argues that the best way to reimagine and harness the idea of public deliberation, based on current experiences in Africa, is to see it as performance of agency. Building a new political center around the practice places agency at the core of a new political life in Africa. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Central Questions of Political Philosophy Making Sense of Human Nature Why One‐Party Rule? Why Socialism? Conclusion.

This book focuses on the domains of moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory within African philosophy. At the heart of the volume is a call to imagine African political philosophy as embodying a needs-based political vision. While discourses in African political philosophy have fixated on the normative framework of human rights law to articulate demands for social and global justice, this book charts a new frontier in African political thought by turning from ‘rights’ to ‘needs.’ (...) The authors aim to re-orient discourses in African philosophy beyond the impasse of rights-based confrontations to shift the conversation toward needs as a cornerstone of African political theory. (shrink)

This book focuses on the domains of moral philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory within African philosophy. At the heart of the volume is a call to imagine African political philosophy as embodying a needs-based political vision. While discourses in African political philosophy have fixated on the normative framework of human rights law to articulate demands for social and global justice, this book charts a new frontier in African political thought by turning from ‘rights’ to ‘needs.’ (...) The authors aim to re-orient discourses in African philosophy beyond the impasse of rights-based confrontations to shift the conversation toward needs as a cornerstone of African political theory. (shrink)

There has been a strong impetus to set the definitional parameters of study in African political philosophy and theory. Many scholars advance the idea of a discipline intended to provide lessons that stem from “original” African moral, ideological, and political traditions. Often, these traditions and their ideas are presented as holding categorical moral substance in so far as they are seen to be specific to a culturally essentialist understanding of “Africa.” In turn, an influential part of the literature (...) estimates the normative value of the intellectual ideas and arguments afforded by a varied historical, socio‐cultural and economic African geography by the degree to which, in being tethered to a seemingly homogenous, “culturally African” influence, these ideas can be opposed to a “Western” equivalent. In this article, I argue that the effects on the discipline of attending to, and being defined by, this cultural essentialism are at best unclear, at worst detrimental. I aim to contribute to the side of those who advocate a universalist perspective to the study of African political philosophy and thought, and who argue for jettisoning an unhelpful dichotomy between “West” and “African,” in favour of a methodological, conceptual and historical specificity that allows the discipline to be truly useful to itself and to others. (shrink)

This introductory chapter explains the rationale for the publication of this collected volume and provides an overview of the general philosophical problems which these contributions confront. We characterise two distinct approaches to political philosophy which distinguish different chapters. While the first set of authors may be said to take an objective view of needs, most often grounded, in necessary features of personhood, the second set of accounts leave needs politically contested. We argue that these two distinct approaches are, if not (...) consistent, certainly complementary, while outlining and situating the major themes of the distinctively African political theories in this volume. (shrink)

In this article I critically survey non-edited books on political and legal philosophy that have been composed by those working in the sub-Saharan African tradition and have appeared in print since 2016. These monographs principally address political, distributive, and criminal justice at the domestic level, with this article recounting the essentials of these texts as well as noting prima facie weaknesses in their positions and gaps in current research agendas. My aims are to enable readers to obtain a bird’s-eye (...) picture of key works in recent African political and legal philosophy and to suggest some plausible ways to advance debates. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Edward Wilmot Blyden and Alexander Crummell James Africanus Beale Horton John Mensah Sarbah and Joseph Casely Hayford.

This book explores the salient ethical idea of personhood in African philosophy. It is a philosophical exposition that pursues the ethical and political consequences of the normative idea of personhood as a robust or even foundational ethical category. Personhood refers to the moral achievements of the moral agent usually captured in terms of a virtuous character, which have consequences for both morality and politics. The aim is not to argue for the plausibility of the ethical and political consequences (...) of the idea of personhood. Rather, the book showcases some of the moral-political content and consequences of the account it presents. (shrink)

In _African Somaesthetics: Cultures, Feminisms, Politics_, Catherine F. Botha brings together original research on the body in African cultures, interrogating the possible contribution of a somaesthetic approach in the context of colonization, decolonization, and globalization in Africa.

Abstract:This paper offers a historico-political exegesis of V-I Mudimbe’s Invention of Africa and Idea of Africa, reading how these texts respond to a post-independence African context of political and epistemic despair. This despair reflects at once the desire for a non-Western claim to knowledge and life, for political and economic autonomy from the West, and the seeming impossibilities (confirmed by the political ordinary) of enacting these. Retracing Mudimbe’s analysis of African political thought in the wake of Négritude and (...) his critique of representation, this essay works through Mudimbe’s intellectual historical methods to draw out a subtextual response to questions of historicity, political commitment, and the role of intellectual thought in Black resistant response. I argue that these questions are instantiated in the concept of “absolute discourse.” This concept reveals a theory of speech, inhabitation, and contingency critically aligned with postcolonial Marxist demands for authenticity, sovereignty and authority. Moreover, through this, and against any presumption of futility, I argue that Mudimbe constitutes a theory of politics—of resistance, claim, and seizure, and their limits—and contingency amidst seeming and real epistemic and material closures. (shrink)

The article discusses the Kenyan post-2007 elections political crisis within the framework of ‘libertarian communitarianism’ that integrates individualistic self-interest with traditional collectivist solidarity in the era of globalization in Africa. The author argues that behind the Kenyan post-election anarchy can be analyzed as a type of ‘prisoner's dilemma’ framework in which self-interested rationality is placed in a collectivist social contract setting. In Kenya, this has allowed political manipulation of ethnicity as well as bad governance, both of which have prevented the (...) building of a strong, impartial state. In Kenya, socio-economic disparities and historical injustices due to corruption, nepotism, cronyism and other forms of favoritism have maintained ethnic and other internal tensions, which exploded into open conflict after the disputed December 2007 elections.The author shows how the ‘libertarian communitarist’ politico-economic context lacks shared values and precludes forward-looking solutions for social justice that promote public good and national unity. Instead, a nation remains divided with its people set up in competitive positions, because there is public trust neither in partisan and self-interested governments nor in inefficient state structures with often (ethnically and/or regionally) biased (re)distribution of resources and unequal service delivery. The greed of the political elites and grievances of the ordinary citizenry maintain distrust across the nation and focus on past injustices rather than finding a shared agenda for future unity.The author suggests that in order to build up public trust, to strengthen the state structures and to gain national unity, it is necessary to focus on shared values and a forward-looking concept of justice, acceptable to all. (shrink)

Since the mid-1980s and especially after the early 1990s, women's organizations have increased exponentially throughout Africa as have the arenas in which women have been able to assert their varied concerns. Women are organizing locally and nationally and are networking across the continent on an unprecedented scale. They have in many countries been aggressively using the media to demand their rights in a way not evident in the early 1980s. In some countries they are taking their claims to land, inheritance (...) and associational autonomy to court in ways not seen in the past. Women are challenging laws and constitutions that do not uphold gender equality. In addition, they are increasingly moving into government, legislative, party, NGO and other leadership positions previously the nearly exclusive domain of men. In these and other ways women have taken advantage of the new political openings that occurred in the 1990s, even if the openings were limited and precarious. This second generation of activism is markedly different from the earlier post-independence generation of women's mobilization. The reasons for these shifts are varied: the rise of multi-partyism and demise of military rule; the growing influence of the international women's movement; shifting donor strategies; the expansion of the use of the cell phone and the Internet in the late 1990s; coupled with a significant increase in secondary and university educated women. The article explores the major changes in women's mobilization in Africa by contrasting the current women's movements with those that emerged after independence. (shrink)

A study of the relationship between African political theory and the politics of liberation. It elucidates the dialectical inter-relationship between the political philosophical views of these thinkers and the political, social and economic contexts of their respective countries.

When Liberia, at its inception, adopted for her motto, “The Love of Freedom Brought Us Here,” they were registering their embrace of a core tenet of modernity: the idea that freedom was the primary state of humanity and that any form of social living that turned this free being into a bonded phenomenon, forces it to obey dictates and laws not of its own choosing, to bow before rulers it had no hand in electing, and to live at the behest (...) of another must stand condemned. They were merely the latest, back then, instantiation of Africans as singers of freedom's song in the modern age. Unfortunately, neither theirs nor earlier iterations in the Haitian Revolution, much less later contributions by other Africans in the continent, are to be found routinely, if at all, in the annals of modern philosophy. In this essay, I bring to our awareness how African thinkers have domesticated the idea of freedom as a legacy of modernity in their world. This is one of the bodies of work that is obscured by the wall that I argue, in Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously (Hurst Publishers, 2022), decolonizers have erected in their mistaking, wittingly or unwittingly, modernity for colonialism and/or Westernization. (shrink)

This book looks in particular at Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, but situates these within the broader context of developments in African literature over the past half-century, discussing writers from Ayi Kwei Armah to Wole Soyinka. M.S.C. Okolo provides a thorough analysis of the authors' differing approaches and how these emerge from the literature. Okolo argues that these authors have been profoundly affected by the political situation of Africa, but have also (...) helped to create a new African political philosophy. (shrink)

The article discusses the Kenyan post-2007 elections political crisis within the framework of 'libertarian communitarianism' that integrates individualistic self-interest with traditional collectivist solidarity in the era of globalization in Africa. The author argues that behind the Kenyan post-election anarchy can be analyzed as a type of 'prisoner's dilemma' framework in which self-interested rationality is placed in a collectivist social contract setting. In Kenya, this has allowed political manipulation of ethnicity as well as bad governance, both of which have prevented the (...) building of a strong, impartial state. In Kenya, socio-economic disparities and historical injustices due to corruption, nepotism, cronyism and other forms of favoritism have maintained ethnic and other internal tensions, which exploded into open conflict after the disputed December 2007 elections. The author shows how the 'libertarian communitarist' politico-economic context lacks shared values and precludes forward-looking solutions for social justice that promote public good and national unity. Instead, a nation remains divided with its people set up in competitive positions, because there is public trust neither in partisan and self-interested governments nor in inefficient state structures with often (ethnically and/or regionally) biased (re)distribution of resources and unequal service delivery. The greed of the political elites and grievances of the ordinary citizenry maintain distrust across the nation and focus on past injustices rather than finding a shared agenda for future unity. The author suggests that in order to build up public trust, to strengthen the state structures and to gain national unity, it is necessary to focus on shared values and a forward-looking concept of justice, acceptable to all. (shrink)

This collection of meditations reformulates the experience of African studies as a concern with three thematics: Africa's place within today's intellectual, economic, and cultural configurations; the main axes that structure disciplinary practices concerned with African difference; and the possibility of understanding being-in-the-world with reference to alienation, creativity, and friendship. *** This book is highly innovative in its re-evaluation of alterity. It marshalls a broad range of theories from Adorno to Marx to Walter Benjamin, all the while "grounding" it (...) in African politics and aesthetics through the lens of Yacouba Konate. A veritable tour de force, if ever there was one. - Kgomotso Masemola, Associate Professor of English, U. of South Africa (Series: Thinking Africa). (shrink)

Since the publication of his A Theory of Justice (TJ), John Rawls has revolutionized political philosophy in many ways, including the understanding of human rights. His theory of rights in TJ is drawn from a comprehensive liberal doctrine and is limited to the domestic society. However, his account of human rights developed in his last major work, The Law of Peoples, claims to be politically free standing, following the model of his Political Liberalism. For Rawls, human rights are necessary conditions (...) for social cooperation. They are meant to serve as one of the principles of foreign policy of the reasonable liberal peoples, in their relations with non-liberal societies. Rawls believes that his category of human rights cannot be rejected by non-liberal peoples as parochial or particular to the Western tradition, because they are not based on any comprehensive doctrine. On the other hand, however, many African scholars have dismissed the current international human rights regime on the account of being too liberal, and not corresponding to the African communalist worldview. It is in that regard that The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and subsequent African human rights instruments were adopted to dress a list of human rights that take into account African history, civilization, and values. Thus, in three main sections, this article examines whether the Rawlsian account and the African view of human rights can enrich each other, or whether they are completely opposed. (shrink)

In this essay, I contend that African countries will continue to be racked by conflicts unless they develop political cultures consonant with their own traditions and accept the norm of distributing their countries' resources equitably. Dictates about “liberal democracy” only lead to disemia, a process by which African leaders pay lip service to hegemonies, but manipulate elections, or worse. Anthropologists are encouraged to challenge the prescriptions of political scientists and the biases of many others. They are also encouraged (...) to use their greater knowledge of African societies to join the debate about how these societies can best deal with what are becoming global realities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In an attempt to formulate an African phenomenological method, this article engages with existing African philosophical schools, namely particularism, universalism and eclecticism. I will explore how the positions advanced in these schools, valid in their own rights, are at the same time potentially absolutist and thus in need of reformulation. I will also test my theoretical findings by addressing the ontological implications of ontological absolutism in politics, with special reference to the situation in Cameroon and how (...) they translate to an identity crisis. I argue that an absolutist understanding of human existence has become an integral justification for the use of violence. I then proceed to propose ways of addressing the situation by arguing that this absolutist foundation is foreign to Africa in general and Cameroon in particular, and it will only further the chaos that is already ravishing the social reality in Cameroon. While addressing the problem, the aim here is to attempt a formulation of an African phenomenological approach and to bring attention to the often-neglected phenomenological and ontological dimensions in African politics. (shrink)

This collection is a study of African literature framed by the central, and multi-faceted, idea of 'mother' - motherland, mothertongue, motherwit, motherhood, mothering - looking at the paradoxical location of other as both central and marginal. Whilst the volume stands as a sustained feminist analysis, it engages feminist theory itself by showing how issues in feminism are, in African literature, recast in different and complex ways.

This study investigates the increased commercialization of African indigenous vegetables (AIV)—former subsistence crops such as African nightshade, cowpea leaves and amaranth species grown mainly by women—from a feminist economics perspective. The study aims to answer the following research question: How does AIV commercialization affect the gendered division of labor, women’s participation in agricultural labor, their decision-making power, and their access to resources? We analyze commercialization’s effects on gender relations in labor and decision-making power and also highlight women’s agency. (...) Based on a mixed method design and analyzing household-level panel data and qualitative focus groups from Kenya, we observe an economic empowerment of women that we relate to women’s individual and collective strategies as well as their retention of control over AIV selling and profits. Yet, while we see economic empowerment of women through commercialization—how they broaden their scope of action and are empowered by generating revenue—that does not contribute to a redistribution of labor or land rights, which are key for gender equality, instead it increases women’s labor burden. (shrink)

The modus operandi of this paper is centered on governance and the metaphysical forces in Ogba Land. In other words the main focus of the article is that theocracy is concomitant with Ogba metaphysics. The salient points discussed include Maduabuchi Dukor’s reflection on African cosmic environment as posited in Dukor’s four great works on African philosophy. Others include Jewish theocratic tradition, Islamic theocratic tradition and Ogba theocracy and metaphysics in the light of Dukor’s philosophy. The researcher adopted the (...) literature approach to achieve the aforementioned objectives. (shrink)

Concept of African social and political philosophy -- Faces of African freedom -- African socialism and Nyerere -- African personality : a social portrait -- Negritude : a philosophy of social action -- African tribalism : social and political implications -- Apartheid and African social experience -- The African and neo-colonial predicament -- Social self in African philosophy -- Crisis of common good and political instability -- Pan-Africanism as a concept and social (...) philosophy -- African philosophy and social reconstruction. (shrink)

This article sets out a few key questions, themes, and problems animating an Azanian social and political philosophy, with specific reference to the radical promise of undoing South African disciplinary knowledges. The article is made up of two parts: The first part discusses the epistemic and political forces arrayed against black radical thought in South Africa and beyond. A few current trends of anti-black thinking – liberal racism, Left Eurocentrism, and postcolonial post-racialism – which pose challenges for the legibility (...) of Azanian critique are outlined. Part two constructs an exposition and synthesis of key tenets of Azanian thinking elaborated upon under three signs: ‘South Africa’, ‘race and racism’, and ‘Africa’. The aim of the discussion is to illustrate the critical, emancipatory potential of Azanian thought and its radical incommensurability with dominant strands of scholarship in the human and social sciences today. The article ultimately defends the reassertion of black radical thought in the South African academy today and underscores in particular the abolitionist drive of Azanian political thought. (shrink)

All politics (i.e., a collective organised thought-practice), if it is to be emancipatory, must exhibit a dialectic of expressive and excessive thought. The absence of the dialectic implies the absence of a politics. The same point can be made by stressing that, in emancipatory politics, thought and practice are indistinguishable. The dialectic here concerns an emancipatory politics latent in excluded popular African traditions. Such latency means that a potentiality for dialectical thought often already exists within (...) African traditions. Yet it can only be activated in struggle. I show through three examples separated by long periods of time, that Africans—or more accurately some Africans—have successfully activated existing potentials into emancipatory politics by thinking against and beyond the oppressive particularities of interests, place and identity embedded in dominant cultures (such as those typical of civil society today) and have thus emphasised the centrality of universal humanity in the politics of emancipation. (shrink)