•  ISSUE SIX/2001  •

Rekindling the Afrocentric Essence

BY OLOLADE  BAMIDELE

F the triumph of a global capitalist culture has signaled and made
large portions of the world to be mobilized or created around  the
image  of  the  West  (and  more  so  the  U.S.A)  at  the  close  of  the
twentieth  and  into the twenty-first  centuries, it is an image vastly
disproportionate  in the dimensions it offers.

And, if the culture issuing from Western capitalism, consolidated
with its modernity, the calibrative indices of
such reveal in the notions of Iaissez faire  or
unlimited self-realization for the individual in
society, the guarantee of a space for civil law
in  the  polity,  the  participation  of  the
individual  in the formation  of  political will,
and  related  conditions  serving  the  ends of
freedom.

The translation of this paradigm, evolving
from  earlier incursion of European  interests
into Africa resolved along a contrary logic of
unfreedom,  siege  and  scarcity:  the  narrow
and often self-seebing implementations of the
idea of modernity, the insularism of one party
autarkies,  separations  along  primordial/
ethnic  cleavages,  nepotism,  economic
plunder, disintegration of social utilities, want
and other corresponding pointers  signifying
the collapse of the state.

If,  in  translation,  this  paradigm  of

development  and  social  cohesiveness  /
intelligibility has turned retroactive in Africa.
then  the  collection  of  essays  Olusegun
Oladipo  puts  together  and  titles  Remaking
Africa:ChaIlenges of the Twenty-First Century
has  as  its  incisive  raison  d'etre,  a  project
aimed  at  the  enthronement  of  a  newer
paradigm 
taking  an  hard  analytical
contemplation  of  the  factors  resolving  into
the  failure  of  an  African  modernity.  Even
saliently, it proposes ways out  of  the  mush,
toward  a  more  fulfilling  turn  in  the  new
millennium.

A piece of conventional wisdom seeming
to mark its round in this boob of essays traces
the  crests  and  trough  of  the  defaulting
paradigm to the doors of a narrowly-seeking
and insidious state, that is, when ethnicity is
not reified to the position of antagonist extra-
ordinaire. One could  then  essay or venture
a terse query (even if tentatively): was there
really a state consequent upon independence
in Africa? This becomes interesting when we
consider  that  some  definitions  of  the  state
reads  as  "the  whole  body  of  citizens  as  a
the
corporation 
administration  for  a  time  being."
When we don't conflate or confound
this  simple  act  of  definition  with
issues  of  institutional  or  political
(il)legitimacy,  we  tend  to  wonder
whether  there  was  ever  a  sustained,
continuous  or  theoretically  viable
construct  referable  to  as  the state  in
Africa? Implied in this terse elucidation
are questions involving the promotion
of  welfare,  and  essential  goodness
resulting  in  the  moral  legitimacy  of

represented 

by 

any contrived  order.

Whereas,  received  thought
equally appeals to the existence of
sovereignty,  a  constitution  and
jurisdiction  as 
indicators  of
statehood,  to which  the  presence  or
absence  of  welfare  or  essential
goodness  hardly  detracts  from,  the
script that has been regularly rehashed
in Africa testifies to: the ascendance  to
power  (since  independence)  of  a
postcolonial'  elite who  toob  on  the
reins of power, and ran some of the
more vicious forms of bleptocracies
that dispossessed a continent while
playing  up  the  worst  politics  of
interest
in cleaving to power.  This seems to be 'the

ethnicity/insularism  in  their 

Olusegun  Oladipo  (ed.)
REMAKING AFRICA:
CHALLENGES OF THE
21ST  CENTURY.  Hope
Publications,  Ibadan,
1998.296  pp.

Glendora Books Supplement

35

state" regularly referred  to. While the state is
yet  the construct  that  received  opinion  has
given 
is  however,
problematized  to  suggest  its  re-view  as a
moral  construct.

its  basis 

to  us. 

image 

its  own 

Compounding  the complex view on the
failure of a translated paradigm, as Remaking
Africa boldly  spawns  out,  are  the  intricate
machinations  of Western  capitalism  and  its
institutions which though coerces the world
around 
(multi-party
democracy/free  enterprise),  destabilizes  its
effective  participation  in a commonwealth.
Such subtle  manipulations operate  through
delimited  terms  of  trade,  trade  barriers,
foisted  perspectives  on  development
(deregulation.  SAP etc.).  a  global  "poverty
trap"  where  exchange  values  between  the
north  and  south,  the  west  and  the  rest  are
discrepant and unequal; and an asphyxiating
external  debt  burden.  These  have  been
prominently  facilitated  through  the  Wests
institutional  interactions  with  the  African
'state'.

Finding  a  leeway  out  of  this  malaise  is
integral  to the Oladipo-inspired  re-thinking
of Africa,  and  this necessarily  demands  the
reconceptualization  of  the  notion  of
sustainable  development,  regarded  as  a
crucial interlinkage between the irreducible
givens'  of  tradition  and  modernity  striving
toward  a newer sense of being.

into 

Surviving 

this  project 

is  an
affirmation  of democracy as a system for the
ordering of social relations and the state, but
not of  the pervasive variant  held on  for  too
long. While this often enabled the tyranny of
the  majority,  at  the  expense  of  numerous
ethnic  configurations,  its  need  for  re-
formulation  can  be  forged  within  the
purview of pre-modern African  principles of
'consensus'  which  would  ensure  both  the
participation of the marginal in the formation
of  political  will  and  their  increased  self-
identity  and  role  in  processes  of  decision
making. This will moreover serve the impetus

for community building.

Linked to this is the essential  requirement
of joining up the universal  quest  for  science
and  technology  as  lever  for  the  promotion
of  sustained  welfare,  even  if  with  a  non-
negotiable  bend  for  a communalistic  ethos
or humane values.

This  further  impels  the  desire  to  revise
traditional  idea  s  on  development,  which
have  erstwhile  been  construed  as  hinging
solely on science and technology. In as much
as  the  latter  are  significant  aspect  of  these,
they  ought  not  to  be  the  essence  of
development  in Africa,  in  the  absence  of a
more crucial  element

Therefore,  the  requisite  foundation  for
the  evolution  of  sustainable  technology/
science  is  in  the  development  of  a  human
resource  base  or  capacity  crucial  to  the
empowerment  of an African  future.

More  than  the  issues  observed  above.
Remaking Africa's  attempt  to  initiate a new
paradigm  for  twentieth  century  Africa  is
anchored onto the formation of a new moral
framework  of  co-operation  centered  on
identity, self-help and dignity; the privileging
of  repressed  modes  of  thought  within  the
traditional  archive  marking  a  looking  back
into  the  heritage  for  alternative  forms  of
rationality  in  experience.  Also,  the  re-
formulation  of  concepts  of  security 
to
include poverty alleviation,  the  re-appraisal
of  conditions  for  continental  economic
integration; the re-alignment of education to
the total ideals of democracy and the general
breaking  away  from  dangerous  stereotypes
in order to envision a newer  Africa.

While Oladipo's  project  cuts  its  ground
in  the  implication  of  knowledge  formation
or epistemology with peculiarities of history
and  geography,  its  thesis  advocates  the
empowering of a  new paradigm' seeking to
retract  to  memory  the  gory  spectacle  of
unfreedom  and  scarcity  defining  much  of
twentieth century Africa.  GBS

ISSUE  SIX/2001

Glendora Books Supplement

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