African Worldview Research Articles

Towards an 'African Medical Humanities': Examining Mental Health in Nigerian Contemporary Literature through an African-Centred Approach

The significance of adopting an African-centric approach when examining traditional West African medicine and cultural practices related to healthcare and the body cannot be overstated. In the fields of humanities and social sciences, there has been a tendency to prioritize Euro-centric scholarship at the expense of exploring the belief systems of people of African descent. However, recognising the West African indigenous world-view is a crucial first step in challenging Euro-American epistemological dominance and enabling a more comprehensive analysis of healthcare practices. Against this backdrop, the present research proposes the term ‘African Medical Humanities’ with the aim of deconstructing Euro-centric universalism and offering an alternative framework for studying health-related phenomena in sub-Saharan African creative writing. Specifically, the analysis will focus on the works of two Nigerian contemporary writers by examining the Abiku/ogbanje (spirit child) motif in relation to mental health and traditional African therapeutics. The study will pay particular attention to Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl (2005) and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018), investigating how these works address mental health and personhood within indigenous therapeutics among West African societies. Through this analysis, the present contribution demonstrates how spirituality is deeply embedded in traditional healthcare practices, thereby reflecting the importance of adopting an African-centric approach to understanding healthcare and the body in West African societies.

Assessing the Irrelevance of Relativism in African Philosophy in Contemporary Africa

The paper focuses on current research that has suggested that Africa is experiencing a moral decline, which has been a fact for several years. The cultural sense of African societies has also been called into doubt in the twentieth century, with many others dismissing its existence and relevance. While society is currently disregarding cultural underpinnings and challenging morality as a reality across groups, relativism is the perspective that morality and knowledge are culturally driven. Similarly, African philosophical ideas such as ubuntu, batho-pele, communalism, and so on, which serve as the cornerstone of African worldviews, have been firmly undermined and ignored by society. The article adopts a qualitative research method, using accredited books, journals, and government publications to achieve the purpose of the study. The study’s findings imply that if relativism is abandoned and African philosophy concepts are no longer relevant in society, society will perish. As a result, in the discussion, the study claims that contemporary African society is unrelated to the foundations of relativism and African philosophy, which is not the case. It concludes that to keep relativism relevant in contemporary Africa, there should be a focus on historical relativism as a tool for unity and reconciliation to address potential conflicts and restore harmony among nations. Keywords: Relativism, African Philosophy, Morality, Culture, Worldview, Communities

African Metaphysics and Praxis: Revisiting the Idea of Human Development in Yoruba Metaphysical Notion of Omoluabi

The discourse on African metaphysics as it relates to human development is centered around the notion of personhood predominantly extractable from the layers of oral and written traditions across African cultural worldviews. This research aims to critically evaluate the idea of African metaphysics in the light of inquiries surrounding the meaning and nature of human development, through an interrogation of the concept of person and personhood, expressed within the subsets of African socio-cultural conceptualisations, particularly the Yoruba notion of Omoluabi, which will form a crucial layer of engagement for this research. Basically, while (on the one hand); the tendency to see a generic theory of human personality or personhood as tenable everywhere would create a clash of realities in different climes and cultures, (on the other) the differences from culture to culture are perceived dialogically as handed on through stories and histories of human development from birth until death. To this end, this research will interrogate the concept of human development on the basis of how socialisation processes specifically seen through the agencies of local folklores and folktales, customs and traditions tend to interact with, influence as well as impact upon the individual view of self and the other as it relates to the conception of personality, and its succeeding roles within the community. Keywords: Africa, Metaphysics, Communitarianism, Personhood, Human Development.

Enriching systems practice with African perspectives

AbstractThis paper follows an autoethnographic approach that seeks to give a practitioner's reflection by exploring the intersection between African philosophies, particularly the concepts of Ubuntu and Ukama, and the practice of systems thinking. It raises concern about the absence of an African perspective in the discourse on mainstream systems thinking approaches. It argues that African philosophies, with their emphasis on relationality, community and humanness, can contribute to and enrich the discourse on developing systems thinking approaches. The main author's positionality, including his struggles with his identity as an African, his personal experiences growing up in a rural African village and being exposed to traditional African storytelling and community‐based practices, is used to illustrate the connections between African philosophies and systems thinking. As an example of this linkage and how an African perspective can enrich the practice of systems thinking, the paper applies an African worldview to Critical Systems Heuristics.

Sustainability Hermeneutics: The New Task of African Biblical Studies

As a new and emerging approach to biblical interpretation, Sustainability Hermeneutics (SH) combines aspects of the environment, economy, and society in its interpretation of biblical texts. Such an approach to biblical interpretation shows the interaction of the environment, economy and society in biblical texts in line with the understanding of sustainability. It is therefore integrative and holistic. This article argued that such an approach holds so much promise for African Biblical Studies (ABS) at a time when the African continent is faced with myriads of developmental issues. While Sustainability Hermeneutics ingrains biblical texts into an integrative African worldview, the article also argued that the urgency of the use of Sustainability Hermeneutics in African Biblical Studies lies in the fact that the Bible and its messages still make sense to many African Christians. So, Sustainability Hermeneutics, if well utilised in African Biblical Studies, will motivate many African Christians to take actions that will lead to sustainable African societies.

Christian Charismatic Movements in Modern Africa: A Meeting Point between Missionary Christianity and African Indigenous Worldviews

Christian Charismatic Movements in Modern Africa: A Meeting Point between Missionary Christianity and African Indigenous Worldviews

Hybridisation as a Normal Process of Life: A Contribution to the “Ukuthwasa” Conversation within the Methodist Church of Southern Africa

The Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) is currently engaged in a conversation on ukuthwasa (initiation into an ancestral calling). The conversation has sparked different reactions within the Church. Some are uncomfortable engaging in this conversation as it is seen as an unnecessary and unChristian conversation to have within the Church. There are also some who have gone through the ukuthwasa and feel that the conversation is long overdue within the MCSA. Furthermore, some believe in sangomas and are happy about this conversation. While this conversation is taking place within the MCSA, it is shrouded in suspicion and fear. There is fear that it might lead to the conversion of the Church to African traditional religion, which many feel is the opposite of Christianity. This paper is intended as a contribution to this conversation by using secondary or desk research as a methodology. Firstly, the paper defines the African worldview in which ukuthwasa is embedded. Secondly, it explores the meaning of hybridisation. Thirdly, it indicates areas within the Christian faith where hybridisation has become part of worship and belief. Finally, the paper concludes by recommending openness in this conversation as a likely solution that could lead to the Methodist vision of a “Christ healed Africa for the healing of nations.”

The Reception of Bantu Divination in Modern South Africa: African Traditional Worldview in Interaction with European Thought

The Reception of Bantu Divination in Modern South Africa: African Traditional Worldview in Interaction with European Thought

When political liberalism meets a communalist worldview: John Rawls and African view of human rights

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.

Demystifying the African world view – mainstream science to the rescue

A popular tradition holds that the theoretical entities that feature in explanations relative to the African world view are typical of spiritual forces. Following this point of view, a concession among some scholars suggests that the traditional African world view is inconsistent with mainstream scientific theorising and therefore the acceptance of one implies the rejection of the other. My contention is essentially to challenge this tradition, a position I consider unfounded and an instigation of unsolicited tension between the African world view and mainstream science. To make this case, I isolate for review one entrenched postulate of the African world view, witchcraft force. Through the method of concept analysis, I demonstrate how, far from opposing one another, advances in mainstream science rather lead to a better appreciation of the African world view. Because there is no contradiction but diversity, I argue that accepting mainstream science implies no commitment to rejecting the African world view.

African Impressions: How African Worldviews Shaped the British Geographical Imagination across the Early Enlightenment by Rebekah Mitsein

<i>African Impressions: How African Worldviews Shaped the British Geographical Imagination across the Early Enlightenment</i> by Rebekah Mitsein

Understanding Ourselves and Our World from the Multiplicity of World-Views: Perspectives in African Epistemological Relationality

The importance of epistemological relationality in understanding ourselves and our world has been the focus of recent attention in global academic scholarship. In times past, this has been monopolized by one or some cultures over others. However, the components of this relationality have not been exhaustively theorized from different philosophical perspectives, allowing specific Western philosophical conceptions to dominate the dimension of discuss in literatures on this subject. The impact of this has been cultural supremacy, racial relegation and deprivation. This research offers a theoretical analysis of the global connection and ontological background that informs various conceptualizations of ourselves and our world from African, Western and Eastern world-views and unloads its implication for a value driven and harmonious coexistence. It aims at broadening this conception in Western and Eastern traditions, while showing what precedes this reflection and highlighting with analysis, the multiple relational process of knowing this African ontological value. This research therefore adopts the hermeneutics and critical analysis methods. It argues that multiplicity of world-views is a reflection of relationality in the unique ways we conceptualize reality from cultural events even though in diverse and informal forms. It concludes that this multiplicity in learning and understanding ourselves and our world forms the rational foundation for a complementary interrelation and mutual respect in the world and Africa in particular. Keywords: African, Philosophy, Multiplicity, World-views, Epistemological, Relationality, Understanding ourselves, Complementary, Relation and Mutual Respect.

Crisis of Faith: Today's African Christians and Mami-Wata (Mother-Water) Spirituality

precis: This study provides an analysis of the impact of Mami-Wata spirituality on an understanding of the place and fate of Christianity in Africa today. A section of the Christian population negotiates their Christian beliefs through the prism of their traditional African religious cosmology and worldviews. This new Christian African spirituality is generating waves of faith crises. While previous scholarship has investigated the crises of African Christian faith from the dominant point of view of African culture and context, from Christian-Muslim interaction, or from the influence of Western elements, there are no works that show the multidimensional impacts of Mami-Wata spirituality on Christians and their faith, identity, and theological discourses. Departing from past works, the present work investigates how rudimentary constructs of African spirituality have engaged Christianity on several fronts, from the problem of faith crisis and the engagement of the Mami-Wata deity to how some African Christians wrestle with their devotion to the Virgin Mary vis-à-vis the traditional Mami-Wata deity. This analysis also demonstrates the indispensability of the female divine in spiritual and religious discourses, and it provides a pathway to construct a theology that is both truly Christian and grounded in African realities.

A Systemic Functional Analysis of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

This paper is about the systemic functional analysis of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, on the basis of the postulate that African classical literary works connote some significant functions. The methodology used in this analysis is the mixed method approach, which is a combination of both quantitative and qualitative linguistic data. Two extracts are therefore selected from the play on a qualitative basis, taking into account the relevance of the exchange in terms of information and the characters involved in the exchange. These are split into numbered and analyzable units referred to as clauses in which the various mood components are meticulously and quantitatively identified. The results reveal that the extracts are essentially concerned with propositions, that is, the exchange of information about the rite. Some services are realized through proposals. Modal variables are profusely used in the extracts under consideration, highlighting interlocutors’ various attitudes and judgments regarding the traditional ritual of the king’s horseman death. The analysis of the exchange has uncovered the pecking order defined by the colonial administrators whose behaviors are profoundly marked by prejudices regarding the rite. Thus, Soyinka’s play functions as a tool for information and education about the African worldview.

Development cooperation and Neo-Pentecostal churches – A decolonial perspective

Religion and development are a subject that has stimulated researchers in the recent past. Most of the religious role players in development within sub-Saharan Africa have been the historic missional churches, also known as the mainline churches – mostly founded by Euro-Western missionaries. Development with Neo-Pentecostal Churches (NPCs), who are part of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, is fairly a new area of research. The purpose of this article is to position NPCs as potential development partners that can work in cooperation with other stakeholders in advancing development in the South African context from a decolonial perspective. A literary review on Neo-Pentecostals as development actors, is the focus of this article, positioning them as ideal development partners that contribute towards social and economic capital of communities within the context of education. The article starts by defining a working definition of development, followed by a conceptual framework of Pentecostal tenets where Christ is saviour, healer, baptiser and soon coming king, together with the holistic African worldview which does not demarcate between the sacred and the secular. The outcome is that development in NPCs is spiritual development which starts from individual development that is accompanied by entrepreneurial skills and that Neo-Pentecostals have a contribution towards sustainable development as expressed in their practice of faith and theology which naturally gravitates towards development.Contribution: Education, economics, and Pentecostalism highlight the importance of flexibility and versatility of Neo-Pentecostals in the discourse of sustainable development.

A critical analysis of ubuntu as the nexus of identity development in present-day Africa

In African society today, ubuntu as a notion of African humanism has been, and still is, subject to critical discussion. In African literature, philosophy, ethics, anthropology and theology, ubuntu plays a vast role and scholars in Africa and globally find the notion highly debated. The concept of identity development on the African continent has been written about broadly. This article unpacks the ubuntu philosophies of Augustine Shutte, Kwame Gyekye and John Mbiti. The views of these scholars will be contrasted to critically engage the conceivable commonalities for identity development through cultures. The question addressed herein is: What are the similarities and dissimilarities of ubuntu as a cornerstone for identity development in modern Africa? This article also examines the divergent definition and historical development of ubuntu culture, ubuntu philosophy of identity development, environmental development and various thinkers’ understanding of this African worldview in current Africa and further afield.Contribution: This research contributes to African theological ethics of the new landscape identity and explores the ubuntu worldviews as a developmental process of identities across cultures. Since identity development across cultures is highly dynamic, the hermeneutical interpretation of the principles of ubuntu is crucial.

Wholeness for Life and Life Eternal: A Perspective from Ubuntu, Paul’s Reconciliation Theology, and the New Cosmology

The idea of cosmos unity is not recent. It has been proposed from various viewpoints throughout human history as the locus of life. To begin with, the African worldview of Ubuntu tells the story of life from the experience of a cosmic perspective that upholds the primacy of the community and asserts that a truly fulfilling and complete life is attainable only by those who belong to the cosmic whole. There is no ‘I’ without ‘we’; “Because we are, I am”. And, unless the “I” belongs to “we”, there is no life, biological or ancestral, after death. On its part, Paul’s cosmology, generally understood as proposing a two/three-tiered cosmos, has a different viewpoint when seen from a closer look. Even if he would have agreed with his religious ancestors that sin had divided reality and that diastema is to blame for the cosmos fragmentation, Paul still recounts the story of a cosmic whole. His theology of reconciliation makes that unity more evident when he suggests that through Christ, the cosmos is reconciled, and life is restored. To belong to the cosmic whole is to be reconciled with God and have eternal life. From a third perspective, today’s new cosmological investigations have uncovered the unfolding story of the grand unity and complexity of the universe, which is the only locus of life known to humanity. In this universe of connectivity and entanglement, one can scientifically appreciate the absence of fragments and observe the complexified unity of all things indispensable for living. These three stories reveal that togetherness and the experience of the cosmic whole are fundamental for life and the taste of eternal life.

Xenophobia in the context of African worldviews: A synopsis of the Nigerian situation.

This paper examines the phenomenon of xenophobia in Africa. The manifestation of xenophobia was explored within the tenets of the terror management theory which links existential concerns to the development of worldviews that help to make sense of life vagaries. We put forward that colonialism impacted the African worldview of collectivism and human connectedness and contributed to a worldview of the world as a dangerous place. The authors largely situate xenophobic attitudes of Africans toward Africans within the colonial experience which promoted ethnic discord and influenced the perception and receptivity toward strangers. The value of collectivism in pre-colonial and post-colonial African societies was compared to demonstrate the impact of colonialism. Furthermore, a synopsis of ethnic politics as a legacy of colonialism in Nigeria was provided. The authors conclude by emphasizing the importance of giving recognition to ethnic identity as one approach to managing xenophobic attitudes toward co-nationals in African countries.

Defining the Anthropocene tropical forest: Moving beyond ‘disturbance’ and ‘landscape domestication’ with concepts from African worldviews

How natural and cultural forces shaping tropical forested landscapes are conceptualised is of vital importance to Anthropocene debates. We examine two concepts: disturbance and landscape domestication. From the perspective of disturbance, humans – whether ancient or modern – are a priori negative for tropical forests, outside of and alien to nature. From this view, the Anthropocene is a planetary scale aggregation of disturbance. A more just vision of tropical forests, accepting anthropogenic influence on biodiversity, would combine ‘disturbance’ with other concepts that capture human agency and intentionality. Landscape domestication proposes that humans can shape ecology and plant and animal population demographics, making the landscape more productive and congenial for humans, upgrading or degrading the biodiversity of tropical forests. Herein, forest peoples shape the Anthropocene itself through their ‘domestication’ of the forest. Yet this approach can overdetermine culture, ignoring non-human agency, whilst human impacts can be seen as the outcome of intentional modifications to increase landscape productivity, at worst a disavowed projection of ‘economic man’. Using the convivial scholarship framework of Nyamnjoh, we argue that these ideas give incomplete views of tropical forests in the Anthropocene and can be enriched by concepts derived from African worldviews with ‘relationality’ and ‘wholeness’ at their core. These are expressed in ohanife, deriving from Igbo language, ubuntu, from the Nguni language and ukama, a notion from Shona culture. Together these concepts evince an ‘eco-bio-communitarianism’ embracing humans, God, spirits, ancestors, animals and inanimate beings in a ‘community of beings’ irreducible to the culture-nature divide (moving beyond disturbance) and allowing for the agency and personhood of non-humans (moving beyond historical ecology). This is consonant with Indigenous Amazonian worldviews, such as that of Kopenawa. Approaching human-nature relations from Nyamnjoh’s idea of conviviality, we elaborate a less incomplete and more just perspective on the cultural and natural shaping of Anthropocene tropical forests.

Paul and His Double Name: Relevance to the African Christian Pastor and Theologian Today

With examples and illustrations from the African worldview, this article focuses on the nature, meaning, and usage of the double name of Paul of Tarsus. It concludes by considering the help that a proper understanding and functionality of the same name may give an African Christian pastor and theologian, today.