African Worldview Research Articles

Spirituality as a critical component in Afrocentric social work supervision: enhancing practice and cultural relevance in supervision

ABSTRACT Spirituality is a central component of many African worldviews and is often sidelined or misunderstood in traditional Western social work supervision. Integrating spirituality into Afrocentric social work supervision can enhance the practice’s effectiveness and cultural relevance, fostering holistic approaches that respect and empower individuals within their cultural contexts. This paper explores the integration of spirituality as a fundamental component in Afrocentric social work supervision, focusing on enhancing culturally relevant practices and improving the overall effectiveness of supervision within the African context. The study adopted the qualitative approach underpinned by the interpretive paradigm and exploratory-descriptive research design. A maximum of fifteen social workers and five supervisors were purposively sampled at eThekwini and Northern districts of the Department of Social Development in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. In-depth semi-structured interviews were utilized to collect data, which was thematically analyzed. Emerging from the data were two themes pertaining to (1) spirituality as a core element in Afrocentric supervision and (2) supervision challenges of the lack of a spiritual component in supervision. The paper presents two key recommendations: the development of new Afrocentric supervisory practices and the need for further research.

An african christian appropriation of the eucharist

The Eucharist holds a significant place in the life of the Church in Africa. Beyond symbolizing salvation and reminding believers of God’s provision, it aligns with the traditional African worldview, which emphasizes the necessity and power of blood for salvation. However, despite its importance, many African Christians struggle to fully grasp the relevance of the Eucharist in addressing their daily challenges. While some scholarly works have explored the topic, a gap remains in connecting Eucharistic theology to the practical socio-economic and spiritual issues faced by African Christians. This paper seeks to bridge that gap by exploring way by which Eucharistic theology might be or has been interpreted to address socio-economic and spiritual challenges of everyday African life. Using a literature-based research approach, the paper examines data from existing publications (including journal articles, bible commentaries, books and deisertations/theses) through thematic analysis. The central argument of the paper is that Christ, through the shedding of his blood symbolized in the Eucharistic meal, provides solutions to both physical and spiritual human needs. Consequently, partakers of the Eucharist must approach it with proper understanding and faith, thereby accessing its full benefits. The paper contributes to knowledge by demonstrating how the Eucharist can serve as a transformative practice, offering theological and practical insights for the Church in Africa to engage with the daily realities of its members.

From Empire to Identity: Decolonizing Scripture through Culture: An Igbo-Centred Hermeneutics and Reinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:22

The challenge of decolonizing Scripture through culture remains a central concern in African theological discourse. While previous studies have broadly advocated for contextual and postcolonial approaches to biblical interpretation, few have offered a sustained, text-specific, and culturally grounded hermeneutic rooted in a particular African worldview. This study addresses that lacuna by advancing an Igbo-centred reinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:22, critically engaging Western hermeneutical paradigms and reimagining Scripture through the lens of Igbo cultural identity. Drawing on both exegetical analysis and qualitative inquiry, including interviews with Igbo theologians, clergy, and cultural practitioners, the research demonstrates that a decolonized reading of Paul’s ethic of adaptability aligns with indigenous Igbo values such as communal responsibility, humility, and service. Unlike broader African contextual studies, this research contributes a focused hermeneutical framework that indigenizes Scripture at the intersection of Pauline theology and Igbo cosmology. It highlights three key outcomes: (1) a richer, culturally resonant understanding of Christian faith among the Igbo; (2) the emergence of new theological expressions that affirm indigenous knowledge systems; and (3) a reclamation of suppressed Igbo religious concepts reinterpreted within a Christian ethical framework. In doing so, this study not only extends the scope of African biblical scholarship but also challenges residual colonial legacies that persist in ecclesial structures and theological education. By shifting the interpretive authority from empire to identity, the research repositions the Igbo people as active participants in the production of theological meaning. It offers a distinctive contribution to ongoing conversations on decolonization by demonstrating how a culturally embedded reading of Scripture can generate theologically sound, socially relevant, and spiritually empowering expressions of Christian faith in postcolonial Africa. Keywords: Decolonization, Igbo-Centred Hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation, Cultural Identity, 1 Corinthians 9:22

Exploring Witchcraft, Sorcery and Bewitchment Beliefs, and Social Work Responses Among Street Children in Zimbabwe

Abstract Street children increasingly shaping the urban landscape in many African countries. Their experiences of street childhood expose street children to many vulnerabilities including children’s rights violations, and social exclusion from schooling. Witchcraft, sorcery, and bewitchment beliefs appear to be both a cause and an outcome of street childhood in Africa. Despite this, there is a notable lack of research on the development of supernatural reasoning, which is central to the African world view. To further understand the role of bewitchment, sorcery, and witchcraft beliefs in the aetiology of street childhood, the current study explored the nature and perceived effects of witchcraft beliefs among street children in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 14 street children and eight key informants. Participants were recruited using purposive sampling, and the data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). A number of themes emerged from the data that link witchcraft and sorcery beliefs to street childhood, often arising in the context of strained family relationships (especially step-parenting) and prophetic revelations of bewitchment by prophets and pastors. From a developmental perspective, it also appears that African children may be socialised into making personal attributions in conflictual relational contexts. The findings also highlight the violation of children's rights in the context of witchcraft and sorcery abuse. Additionally, they reveal the social work responses, which include family reunification, access to schooling, and the reintegration of some children with other members of their extended family networks. Future research should be transdisciplinary and should seek to determine the causal reasoning development for African children, particularly within the supernatural African worldview, and conduct research on the nature and impact of harmful cultural practices on children’s rights. The authors recommend social work responses that must include helping professions such as education, psychology and psychiatry, and should design transdisciplinary strategies that encompass media awareness campaigns, parenting, schooling, and religious interventions addressing street childhood. These strategies should also address bewitchment beliefs.

The Concept of Community in African Cosmogony: Analyzing Its Implications for 21<sup>st</sup> Century Global World Order

This paper explores the African concept of community through the lens of cosmogony, positioning it as a critical philosophical and ethical framework for reimagining global cooperation, sustainability, and peace in the 21st-century world order. The data that was used to advance this argument was generated from secondary sources. The data was analyze using the discuss analysis. It foregrounds the unique relational ontology embedded in African traditions marked by communal interconnectedness, ancestral reverence, and harmony with nature and contrasts these with the dominant paradigms of Western individualism and liberal modernity. Drawing on recent scholarly engagements with African philosophy, postcolonial thought, and global ethics, the paper interrogates the limitations of current hegemonic structures while proposing African communalism as a viable model for addressing contemporary crises such as inequality, environmental degradation, migration, and fractured global solidarities. By highlighting case studies like Rwanda’s post-genocide reconciliation through ubuntu and ecological justice among Kenya’s Ogiek community, the work affirms the relevance of indigenous African worldviews in shaping a more inclusive, pluriversal global order.

Ecocritical Perspectives in Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991) and Every Leaf a Hallelujah (2021)

Abstract: Any critic familiar with the art of African writers will discover its filial link with primordial art forms. While critical responses have mostly focused on the social relevance of those forms in respect of their uses to resolve postcolonial dilemmas, more interpretations are needed which contextualise ecological texts within a framework that interrogates the relationship between man and his environment. This paper is an ecocritical engagement with Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) and Every Leaf A Hallelujah (2021). The paper gives attention to two ecological issues raised by Nigerian writers. These include the crises of oil exploration in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria and the expositions on “forest fables” which is the relationship between man and nature on the one hand and the despoliation of nature on the other hand. The article separates Ben Okri’s alignment with the tradition of presenting “forest fables” and his ingenuous use of children as heroes in his prose works. The article concludes by drawing on the novelist’s affirmation of the compactness of the African worldview. In the relationship between man and nature, the paper amplifies the perspective that nature, in the African environment, acquiesces to dignified “exploitation” for its survival and sustenance of man.

Leveraging psychometric properties of Ubuntu measures to reveal its structural components

Ubuntu is an African worldview that often shapes policy and social ethos; however, its distinct meaning remains unclear due to primarily philosophical discussions. This study seeks to define and measure Ubuntu's dimensions operationally and quantitatively using psychometric literature. Limited conceptual clarity has hampered research on Ubuntu thus far. This study aims to define Ubuntu, considering the materialisation of the concept and its components when measured, and to provide a usable measurement tool to advance research. A comprehensive review of Ubuntu measurement tools was conducted, focusing on research that included discussions of exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and measurement invariance (MI). Five Ubuntu measures were identified, revealing similar constructs but inconsistent terminology. EFA helped refine constructs, while CFA validated frameworks. MI was applied once, demonstrating cross-context adaptability. This study reveals that Ubuntu is frequently described as having more structural components than those that emerge from psychometric scrutiny and calls for a standardised framework and an agreed-upon, consistent measure of Ubuntu to advance empirical research. It provides a foundational list of items for a comprehensive measure, bridging the gap between philosophical and empirical approaches to Ubuntu.

The Future of the Study of Religions in Africa

There is a theoretically intractable argument about what we might mean by ‘Africa’. The origin and knowledge about ‘Africa’ as an identifier or a construct have continued to dictate the agenda for Africa, religions in Africa, and African Studies in Africa and the diaspora. Although ‘religions in Africa’ are receiving profound empirical and methodological attention, this article argues that they have continued to be approached from the theoretical question of what Africa might mean. It further states that the three main religions in Africa—African Indigenous Religion, Christianity, and Islam—are locked in this theoretical hole, but scholars have continued to navigate the threshold through thematic studies dictated by the names of the continent. It concludes by stating that the study of religions in Africa, though complexified, both now and in the past, will still follow the trajectories dictated outside Africa. But the article also suggests that a decolonial-pluriversal approach could help to appreciate the African worldviews in tension with other worldviews.

Reading Lyotard’s postmodern condition with an Afrocentric gaze: The nature of knowledge and Ghana’s higher education

Jean-François Lyotard explored ideas about the nature of knowledge, performativity, and other topics in ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’ (1984). On the nature of knowledge, Lyotard questioned the totalizing effect of modernity’s grand narratives and the neglect of narrative knowledge. Although Lyotard’s focus is on post-industrial Western countries, some of his ideas appear useful for non-European societies, and in the case of this article, African societies. The Afrocentric pursuit has emerged as a result of the politics of knowledge and the dislocation of African worldviews and knowledge systems. Lyotard’s discussion of the possibilities for multiple narratives and his critique of universalizing narratives align with Afrocentric claims about the plurality of knowledge and knowing, as well as the quest for African agency. The article draws on Lyotard’s expositions on the nature of knowledge to discuss the prospects for and tensions in attaining the Afrocentric goal in Ghana’s neoliberalized higher education space. On the future of the university, while Lyotard predicts the ‘death of the professor’ in industrialized societies, Ghana’s academy is still grappling with how to make both the professor and the university relevant to their societies—a central ideal of Afrocentricity.

Conceptualising the Mass Media as ‘The Social Scientific Oracle’

This study is a qualitative content analysis of three Nigerian news magazines, examined using the library (desk) research method, to ascertain the mass media’s penchant for predictions. The study analysed the selected contents of Tell, TheNews, and Newswatch magazines that reveal some salient categories of predictions in the Nigerian media. Through the data analysis that supports some reviewed literature, the researcher observed that journalists have repositioned the media institution as an authority that makes forecasts for the audience. This prompted the researcher’s conceptualisation of the media as ‘the Social Scientific Oracle,’ as the finding aligns with the putative conventional norm of conferring a nomenclatural status to the media due to what they do in their society of operation. The researcher dissected the oracle in the Greek cosmology and the term in the African worldview and recommended that the media be conceived as the ‘Oracle’ in the Africans’ conception of it. Keywords: journalism, journalists, mass media, oracle, prediction, reportage

Kumun u Tamen (Great Beyond): Heaven or Hell in the Tiv Religious World View?

Over several decades, scholars of religion around the world, including both Africans and non-Africans, have been meaningfully engaged in the debate on matters relating to eschatology: death, judgement, heaven and hell, with a particular focus on its manifestation within the African religious worldview. The present paper is anchored on investigating and establishing the truth or otherwise of Kumun u Tamen (great beyond) as heaven or hell in the Tiv ethnic denomination of African religion. The paper offers a comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon of kumu u tamen through a critical analysis of the existing literature. Two schools of thought have been identified regarding the issue of eschatology in African religion. The first school of thought affirms it, while the second denies it as non-existent in the African worldview. The study further found that, although the concept of heaven and hell is vague, it does exist in the Tiv religious worldview. Scholars who deny this are therefore wrong in their assumptions. In preparing this material, the author conducted field research, including organizing numerous interviews in different local government areas of Benue State, Nigeria. The paper calls on scholars, whether from Africa or elsewhere, to refrain from making categorical and sweeping statements denying the existence of eschatological ideas in the African religious worldview. The paper calls for further in-depth study on eschatology, especially with regard to the issues of heaven and hell, to establish the existence or otherwise of the phenomenon. The existing literature on eschatology is often tailored to death in the African worldview, with other aspects being inadequately explored.

Christian Faith Formation and Spiritual Insecurity in Africa

As early as 1930s Audrey Richards hinted at the irony that the spread of Christianity in Zambia, against all its good intentions, instead of diminishing fear, rather increased spiritual insecurity among its converts. There is scholarly evidence that the detected spiritual insecurity in the early 20th century persists up to now. The triggers of spiritual insecurity in Africa are attributed to the breakdown of traditional relationships and mutual obligation, the belief in the influence of the spirits on people for either good or bad. Spiritual insecurity shows that some of the Africans are in dilemma of Christian and African spiritual worldviews thereby struggling to fully trust the Christian approach to spiritually related challenges. This article validates the view that spiritual insecurity in Africa though highly ignored, should be taken seriously. It explores how the Church can use its faith formation system to address issue causing spiritual insecurity in Africa. Data collected through qualitative literature review and observations is engaged using the hermeneutical theory to argue for a faith formation which addresses the fissure between words about God in statements of faith and spiritual insecurity among African Christians by clarifying Christian confessions, identity and reflection.

Reclaiming the Natural World: Ecological Unconscious and Anti-Colonial Counter-Discourse in Early African Literature

This paper argues that African cultural context is fundamentally grounded in ecological materiality—both spiritual and non-spiritual. It critiques how the notion of “culture” in literary criticism has often obscured the ecological dimensions that underpin African worldviews. By unveiling this ecological substrate, the study repositions nonhuman entities as active participants in traditional African life and in the counter-discursive strategies deployed by early African writers. Previous critical interpretations have treated ecological elements as mere background to cultural practices; this paper challenges that view by foregrounding the ecological imagination as central to early African literary aesthetics. Through an analysis of literary strategies used to rewrite Africa’s image in the wake of colonialism, the study highlights the interdependence between humans and their environments as a site of cultural resilience and philosophical depth. In doing so, it not only exposes the limitations of anthropocentric readings of African literature but also demonstrates how ecological materiality serves as a powerful tool in resisting colonial narratives. Ultimately, this approach offers new insights into the literary and intellectual heritage of the continent by centering nature as a constitutive force in African life and thought.

Debunking and Demystifying Mental Health in the Context of African World View Today

Mental Health as a condition has not been fully demystified and elaborated thoroughly. In Africa, it is attributed to either curses, spiritual causes, witchcraft or some other cause due to their traditional worldview or belief systems, thus how they interpret phenomena, incidences, events and diseases included. This has led to rampant mental health cases as high as 25% of total population compared to other parts of the world. It could be factual that witchcraft and curses exist in Africa, but they are not the only causes of mental health. Proper understanding to expose the gaps is overdue. Therefore this study set out to debunk and demystify mental health by assessing reasons for limiting mental health to worldview causes and analyzing scientific and possible other causes/characteristics in Africa, prevention and healing of mental health. Mitigation of African world causes, interpretations and challenges provided multifaceted solutions to mental health today, such as clinical, psychological, cultural, and African worldview and beliefs notwithstanding. The purpose of this study is to establish why mental health is still attributed to curses and witchcraft despite modern scientific medical ways of treatment and why mental health is rampant and access to treatment not effective in Africa? The study used qualitative approaches to analyze library information: to collect and describe data, summarize, drew conclusions and recommendations made. The study found out that mental health is only skewed and shrouded in mystery and that it is a health condition like any other and not caused by curses or evil spirits, or witchcraft. It can be treated using conventional and other medical measures. Besides demystification and debunking, the revitalization of traditional methods alongside scientifically proven and conventional approaches to mental health is highly recommended in this paper.

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.

BE-Coming an African Immigrant Family: The African Oral Traditional Storytelling Framework in Practice

African immigrants in the US and across the globe are confronted with issues of language and culture retention, resistance to the loss of the same, and reconstruction of their identities while navigating the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts of the host nations. The experiences of one such family are shared through the African Oral Traditional Storytelling Framework developed on the tenets of African oral traditional storytelling techniques, African ideologies, and African worldviews, in which storying is both method and analysis. Through oral stories, poetry, proverbs, and songs, the Opokus invite readers to partake in the fireside chat as they share their lived experiences and the implications those experiences have on their identity conceptualization and that of their children. The shared stories expand scholarly discourse on the social identities of African immigrant families and youths about the global, political, and economic forces that shape their experiences. Finally, it also urges English language arts teachers to engender African-centered writing approaches to acknowledge African peoples’ linguistic ambivalence and the “power” associated with the teaching and learning of English due to colonialism.

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

Abstract This 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.

The Choral Compositional Technique of Sibusiso Njeza: An Analysis of Three Compositions

This article examines three choral works by the South African choral composer Sibusiso Njeza. The authors ask whether Njeza’s musical background introduced him to multiple musical world-views, and whether his music displays characteristics of musical hybridity. To answer these questions, the first part of the article outlines Njeza’s musical biography, highlighting key moments in his career that shaped and influenced his development as a composer. The second half of the article focuses on the matter of musical hybridity, using Mugovhani and Oluranti’s framework of symbiosis and integration (broadly within post-structuralist theory as advocated by Kraidy) as a point of departure. Five aspects of the selected compositions are analysed: structure, text, melody, harmony, and rhythm. In each case, the authors ask whether the element analysed produces music which is uniquely South African or whether it is primarily Western with African elements. The overall finding is that Njeza was influenced at a seminal level by both Western and African musical world-views, and that the analysed works are predominantly symbiotic, with short passages which could be described as integrated.