Page 18 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 12

MY AFRIKA

twentieth century, global politics gral approach, which takes account of the totality of the above, set within
and economics have been marked a particular African society, building up from Nature and community, and
by two politically, economically, embracing culture, politics, economics, spirituality and enterprise, is a surer
and intellectually divisive rather path to sustainable and integral development in Africa.
than culturally and psychologically
integrative forces. This has been re- Such an integrated approach is what I refer to as Afrikology in my latest
flected in the "East/West" mutually book. It is "Afri-" because it is inspired by ideas initially produced from the
antagonistic divide of communism/ cradle of humankind located in Africa; it is "ko (logy)" because it is based
capitalism and the North/South on logos, the word from which the world was originated, but at the same
chasm of wealth and poverty. The time, an episteme, a worldly-wise eco-logical knowledge, and consciousness.
result, worldwide, has been, to a It does not strive for superiority but reclamation and validation of its right-
considerable degree, stasis and ful position. It seeks to avoid any claim to an overarching epistemic supe-
disintegration. The evidence is riority but stands for a plurality of epistemic directions: south, east, north,
everywhere: climate change, terror- and west. Knowledge, therefore, is an interpretation that is always situated
ism, rising poverty, political tension, within a living communal tradition and our inescapable historicity. As illus-
social chaos, and food insecurity. trated in this research work, it is also co-created by individuals, communities,
The worlds of political economics and enterprises naturally and communally, technologically, and economically,
and enterprise, on the one hand, specifically out of Africa's genius, alongside others.
and scientific research and learn-
ing on the other, are dominated, Afrikology is born out of the interplay between its continent's communities,
by one cultural frame of reference their unique values and spirituality, and its multitudinous peoples' reasoning
– "north-western" - to the point and enterprise. Indeed, the rediscovery, in recent decades, by European
that the hidden strengths of other and American social science, of emic anthropology, phenomenology, action
cultures, especially Africa, are being research, semiotic economics and the range of ethno-methodologies can be
ignored by individuals, organiza- traced back to an Afrikology of methodology. There are examples of such
tions, and societies, alike. centres of Afrikological research-in-practice, through the work of 'commu-
Marxism, Capitalism, Socialism, niversities', across Africa. Through Afrikology, we see beyond the superficial
Communism, and any other politi- Western concerns of cancel culture and appropriation to dig deep into the
cal and social 'ism', while focusing soil of human society and unearth the African universe of solidarity and
on economics, technology and relationship: "Ubuntu: I am because we are". It is a wild drumbeat that the
enterprise, failed to build their world desperately needs to hear.
concepts on nature and culture,
thus leading to unsustainable and
imbalanced development. An inte-

Quotes by Thomas Sankara:

"Debt is a cleverly managed reconquering of Afrika"

"He who feeds you, controls you"

“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.”

"Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women.”

“The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation
as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the
revolution to triumph. Women hold up the other half of the sky.”

18 | we tell the true afrikan story