Pre-colonial African Societies Research Articles

The Aembu access to land and labour systems on food crop production and food security up to 1906

This study sought to analyse how the pre-colonial Aembu organised their land and labour systems in food crop production for guaranteed household food security up to 1906. The pre-colonial African societies had either matrilineal or patrilineal systems of land ownership, while labour was gender specific. The study employed a descriptive research design. The study was conducted in Embu East, Embu West and Embu North sub-counties of the larger Embu County. Purposive sampling with a snowballing technique was applied to get 50 respondents who were interviewed from a target population of 16,144. The study corroborated data from oral, archival records and secondary sources. The findings were that the pre-colonial Aembu food crop producers had elaborate systems of land rights and land use under clan heads. The land access system accommodated practices like shifting cultivation and intercropping; the pre-colonial division of labour in food crop production combined all household members and those other forms of labour like communal, paid and corporate were sourced from outside the household. The study concluded that the pre-colonial Aembu were food secure in spite of occasional rainfall failure, locust invasion and warfare, while the articulation of pre-colonial and capitalist land and labour systems exposed the society members to food insecurity. The study contributed to the pre-colonial social, political and economic historiography of the Aembu people. The study recommends that the post-colonial government should employ strategies that can be effectively used to mitigate food crop production insecurity by focusing on the adoption of various traditional methods of land and labour access.

Decolonisation and Downshift-Knowledge Reproduction in Africa

Colonialism established a system of racial oppression, both mentally and physically, by impeding pre-colonial African education, which was originally intended to reflect the realities of pre-colonial African societies. Before the colonial administration, Africans were already developed people with different educations for different age groups, making them functional and inclusive within the larger political sphere. Decolonisation only reflects a shift in political power and the withdrawal of colonialists from African territories, but it has not resulted in any fundamental shift in the mentality of political leaders and nation-building in the decolonised nations. The education curriculum left behind by colonial governments was designed to make African nations economically and technologically dependent on developed nations. Such a pattern of education was not geared toward African technological development, but rather conditioned African nations to be consumers rather than producers, with the resulting loss of initiative among the Africans. The curriculum is insidious in terms of principles and implementation across all levels of educational institutions, slowly destroying the economies of African nations that were once ahead of European nations during the pre-colonial epoch. Instead of accelerating the socio-economic development of decolonised African nations, the curriculum based on Western principles and ideas further subjugates African economies to imperialist influence and hegemony through the instrumentality of international financial institutions, which frequently dictate exploitative asymmetric relationships between the developed and developing African nations. African nations must therefore look inward for an African-oriented and culturally appropriate educational curriculum to meet the demand for socioeconomic advancement and growth.

Indigenous Festivals as a Tool for Forest Preservation and Cultural Revival in Nigeria

The United Nations states that more than four million hectares of African forests are being cut down annually. Policies being taken by governments to combat this scourge have continued to hit brick walls. However, in precolonial African societies, forests were significant in the sustenance of the lives of the people, insects, and animals that dwelt therein. The trees in the forests serve as medicinal herbs and also provide shelter for the metaphysical beings believed to determine the existence of the living. People lived in forested terrains as a result of the close relationship between the African and his natural environment. Festivals were celebrated to venerate the forests and solidify man’s kinship with the woods. However, a question that is pertinent at this juncture is: what could be responsible for the massive deforestation of trees and the disconnection of the African from his natural environment on the continent? What alternative solutions could be used to replace the top-down approaches instituted by the government? This study examines the trajectory of the disconnection of the African from his natural environment and investigates the factors responsible for this displacement. I argue that policies formulated by the government are not enough to mitigate deforestation and displacement of communities. The contention here is that Threats of fines and other punitive measures were no deterrent to people cutting down trees to sell. Also, with the failure of the government’s policies on the preservation of forests, indigenous communities impacted by deforestation should employ traditional festivals to promote the conservation of forests and improve traditional medicine. The Edegberode festival of the Sapele people in Nigeria is used as a paradigm of this study.

Looking back to launch forward: a self-reflexive approach to decolonising science education and communication in Africa

The imbalance in the global scientific landscape resulting from the enduring legacy of colonialism in the south and the hegemony of scientific paradigms originating in the north is immense. Our paper makes a case for employing traditional knowledge systems and paradigms as tools for redressing this imbalance in African societies. To achieve this goal, the paper argues, scholars and science communicators must actively pursue a radical, “power-literate” agenda of scientific decolonisation on the continent. Central to this mission is the need for scholars to be equipped with a keen sense of the past — including an understanding of what worked for knowledge production and perpetuation in pre-colonial African societies — without which science education and communication in those societies will remain untethered from the realities of the present and their visions for the future. Concurrently, attention must be given to nurturing home-grown paradigms and platforms for research in higher education that are rigorous yet unencumbered by the age-long tendency to refract African experiences through northern lenses.

Indigenous culture and the decolonisation of feminist thought in Africa

The existence of current feminist thought in Africa is tainted by colonialism. Colonial and postcolonial anthropological thought and Eurocentric scholarship have misrepresented Africa as a society where social and gender roles were largely lopsided. Hence, current feminist thought (which are largely Western) on oppression of women, subjugation and suppression were imposed on the historicity of Africans. In this article, we argue that the misrepresentations of feminism of the indigenous societal order in Africa should be ignored. We bring to the fore some ideas that advance the view that precolonial African society was not anchored on biology or ordered by gender, but was organised by age or seniority, and provided both men and women a sense of equality. Furthermore, we contend that embracing indigenous cultural values in the 21st century provides, on the one hand, a valuable tool for solutions to issues that women face currently, and, on the other hand, a viable means of detaching feminism from Eurocentric misrepresentations.

Wollstonecraft on Patriarchy, the Myth of African Matriarchy and Emancipation of African Women through the SDGs

The myth of African matriarchy militates against the feminist agenda of women emancipation and liberation in Africa. This paper adopts the textual analytical method of research in exploring the relevance of Mary Wollstonecraft’s views on patriarchy to unpacking the myth of African matriarchy and how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), can help to achieve effective of emancipation of African women. An unpacking of the myth of Africa’s claim to matriarchy relying on Wollstonecraft’s position on patriarchy, shows that patriarchy has been a feature of African societies from time immemorial, and not a product of colonialism. This paper argues that denying the fact of precolonial African societies being patriarchal is the reason that the ills of patriarchy persists in contemporary African societies. Hence, this study maintains that unearthing the ugly consequences of patriarchy in ancient African societies can pave way for realizing the feminist agenda in the continent. It recommends concerted effort by states in the continent towards implementing the SDGs with the idea of human rights, as the key to women emancipation in Africa.

Stimulating the Law through Ubuntu and Nagomi in Three Japanese Short Stories

Abstract Critical engagement with and intersections of Japanese and African literatures are burgeoning. In pre-colonial African society, a lawful action was that action that took into consideration the common good expressed in the spirit of Ubuntu. Interestingly, Japanese literature and African literature share this universal character in common. Ubuntu intersects with the Japanese philosophy of Nagomi which emphasises harmony and balance thereby creating a nexus of transcultural hybridity. This paper examines Ubuntu and Nagomi as transcultural motifs in stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Nagai Kafu, and Uno Koji in Akutagawa and Others: Three Japanese Short Stories to highlight ideological and law-oriented similarities. Carl Jung’s Persona-Archetype is privileged in this study because it accounts for the recurring images of Ubuntu and Nagomi in the public life of the characters. These cultural images help them to mitigate defiant conducts which violate the fundamental human rights and life purpose of other characters. In Nagai Kafu’s “Behind the Prison”, the motif of physical and psychological imprisonment is eye-catching as the narrator writes His Excellency expressing his frustration at the awful state of things in his Japanese society. Uno Koji’s “Closet LLB” interrogates the imperatives of choice and identity while Akutagawa Ryunosuke’s “General Kim” is a story based on the history of Japan and its neighbour, Korea. In the stories, the protagonists and other characters act heroically in ways that evince the tenets of Ubuntu and Nagomi. Their heroic actions allay the fears of their vulnerable compatriots and protect their fundamental human rights.

Ufipa Society Prior to the Advent of the Missionaries, 1885

Fipa society, just like other African societies have never been static as it was believed by most Europeans. The Europeans travellers, missionaries and traders, perceived the Pre-colonial African continent as Barbaric, dark region, pagan and hence a continent with no any kind of history. When the white Fathers came in Ufipa for Christianization had the same notion. This article attempts to give an alternative narratives to the perception of the Europeans about pre-colonial African societies, it carefully examines the historical social, political and economic activities and exposes how strong the sense of religiosity was to among the Fipa society. In relation to the Marxist theory of Historical transformation, this article reveals that Fipa people had a rich history before the coming of the Europeans, and that their history shows a slow but steady evolution passing through different levels of social political and economic development. Religiously, in a social aspect; the article reveals that the Fipa people had developed to the level of giving rise transcendental religious ideas which were manifested through different practices at different occasions and the way the religion had evolved from historical social, political, economic and cultural experience and became the guiding ideological tool in Fipa society.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God: The Investigation of Current Environmental Degradation

Literature in relation to the natural world and the environment is the subject of ecocriticism. The current global environmental crisis has made it urgent to examine literature from an ecological point of view. By examining the ways in which the natural world and the environment are portrayed in literature, ecocriticism seeks to identify a method to improve the current ecological predicament. The fusion of ecocriticism with postcolonialism has given new life to critical thought overall, providing fresh perspectives on concepts like race, land, environment, wildness, etc. The two African novels, Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1965) chosen for the examination haven't often been studied from an ecocritical angle, but the current paper has attempted to look at how nature and the environment are portrayed in them. This analysis aims to show that, despite pre-colonial African societies being unaffected by nature, colonialism opened the door for its exploitation while neglecting or demeaning the profound values that nature and the environment had for pre-colonial Africans.

The Salient Socio-Agentive Position of Women in the Traditional African Society: A Case of Abaluhya Women of Western Kenya

This article sought to examine the position of women in the traditional African society in Kenya before colonialism (before 1895). It narrowed down to the social organisation in the Luhya traditional society and the space women occupied in the same. It further delved into exploring the possibilities of empowerment or disempowerment for women in the social sphere among the Abaluhya. It addressed the aspect of women's agency in the Luhya social organisation, answering the question of what role women played in elevating their position socially. This article was supported by Lesley Ogundipe's African Feminist theory which holds that women had an essential role in the pre-colonial African society and that the structure of the society had room for women empowerment as opposed to the common belief that the African society disempowered women. Data for this study was collected using primary and secondary sources. Primary sources involved oral interviews, while secondary sources focused on analysing existing literature on the topic under study. The study analyzed five major aspects of the Luhya society and the role women played in them, namely: the clan and the family, initiation and marriage, informal education and apprenticeship, traditional religion and sex roles, and division of labour. The study found that women were centrally placed in the social structure of the Luhya society and that while some social aspects empowered them, others disempowered them. The study then concluded by assessing the role of women in elevating their own social status.

Precolonial African Historiography as a multidisciplinary project

In this historiographical article we analyse the three sources from which historians obtain their material for the research of the Bahurutshe (a subgroup of the Sotho-Tswana of South Africa) in the precolonial era: oral tradition, archaeological studies of Iron Age sites, and the oldest written accounts by European visitors to the Marico. We show that because the Batswana were non-literate societies before the nineteenth century, the study of their early history is a multidisciplinary project requiring the inputs of anthropologists, archaeologists and linguists. To produce a cohesive narrative of African precolonial history is an arduous task, but the history of precolonial African societies has major significance in the bigger picture of the (South) African past and informs ongoing discourses about the history of the region. We argue that Hurutshe history fits into the broader pattern of South African history and has relevance for the understanding of current debates around controversial issues such as ethnicity and land claims.

Introduction

Introduction Karin Pallaver (bio) and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (bio) KEYWORDS gender, women, labor, production, business This special issue aims to examine the participation of women in the economy of several sub-Saharan African countries by looking into multiple forms of female labor in a historical and comparative perspective.1 To do so, the authors make reference and apply the methodological approach that has been developed by the "Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations (1500–2000)," under the initiative of the International Institute of Social History (hereafter IISH) in Amsterdam.2 The history of labor in Africa became central in the field of African Studies after independence.3 Being strongly influenced by Marxist theory, the studies of the 1960s and 1970s focused on class formation and proletarianization and showed how a waged labor force developed during the colonial period and became stabilized from the 1940s onwards. This scholarship was particularly attentive to local African perspectives and experiences,4 and stressed the role of African wage laborers in independence movements, shedding light on the initiatives they developed under the power structures imposed by colonial rule.5 In this scholarship, the study of the impact of colonialism on African laborers was therefore critical. With its perpetual search for labor, the colonial state no doubt transformed labor and laborers in Africa. Nonetheless, [End Page 1] waged work never became the most important labor relation among African workers.6 As Bellucci and Eckert recently pointed out, in sub-Saharan Africa "the male proletarian does not represent the quintessential worker but is rather one among a number of categories of workers whose histories are connected."7 Among these workers, women no doubt played a critical role. Given the strong focus on wage labor, the role of African women was largely invisible in the early studies on African labor, as women, with very few exceptions, were very rarely involved in waged work. In the late 1970s, however, gender started to receive a new attention from scholars interested in the history of African labor.8 This new interest also stemmed from multiple studies by economists and social scientist who, starting from the 1960s, made important contributions to assess women's participation in the economies of western countries as well as of non-western ones, including sub-Saharan African states.9 Among them, Ester Boserup's Woman's Role in Economic Development was particularly important, as it stressed the need to include the domestic work that women performed in general studies of female labor.10 This produced an extensive volume of studies on gender and rural populations in Africa and on the role of women in economic development, that went beyond waged and urban labor and challenged universalist conceptions of labor and productivity and how Africans reinvented them.11 In the 1980s, however, studies of African female labor became critical towards Boserup's approach, in that it considered "women as pawns rather than actors."12 Preoccupied to show African women's agency and initiatives, these works stressed that women were not only victims of African patriarchy or the exploitation of the colonial state, but rather actively responded to socioeconomic changes. Works such as Judith Olmstead's on Ethiopia or Carolyn Clark's on Kikuyu women showed how women, even if working under structures of male dominance and patriarchal relations, were able to influence economic and social processes.13 Thanks to these perspectives, studies on women's labor history in Africa have significantly improved our understanding of precolonial African societies, the impact of colonialism, and post-independence trajectories.14 At the basis of the precolonial agrarian social organization was a gendered division of labor. Even if obviously characterized by local variations, men performed activities such as hunting, building houses, or preparing the land for cultivation, whereas women took care of the cultivation of food.15 Colonialism had no doubt a strong impact on African female laborers: their workload increased because men were away; they had reduced access to land and political power; their economic position often declined, both in relation to their former lives and vis-à-vis men; and they had limited access to formal western-type education and therefore to skilled and better paid jobs, due...

People and power in an African consensual democracy

Some African thinkers have argued that the governance systems in traditional precolonial African societies were democratic, and the kind of democracy they practised was consensual democracy. It was democratic because it ensured the maximal participation of all members in the governance of the society, and it was consensual because it involved the rational deliberation of issues where decisions were primarily reached by consensus. The aim of this article is to examine, on the one side, the nature of the demos and kratos in traditional African systems of governance that warrants characterising them as democratic, and, on the other side, the decision- making process that marks it as a distinctive form of democracy – consensual democracy. Reflecting on Akan proverbs and archival records of deliberations, I argue that the question of democracy in relation to the traditional African systems of governance should be pursued not from how they cherish consensual decision- making, but by how they uniquely conceptualise the demos and kratos in the political experiences of African societies. This unique conception of people-power and the institution of decisional dissensus is what distinguishes traditional African consensual democracy from both populism and deliberative democracy.

Students and Africa’s Democratization Process: From Colonial to Post-Independence Eras

Enough historical evidence abound which dispel the fast-held notion that suggests, pre-colonial African societies never practiced any form of democracy, until the advent of colonialism. Simplistic as the African democratic experiences might have been, these forms nonetheless, bore semblance to other known practices in the western world and did, indeed, conform to the basic principles of modern democracy. This research paper has briefly reviewed these pre-colonial practices; however, the focus is on Africa’s post-colonial democratic experiences and in particular, the role of students in this whole process. In the given milieu, the main objective of this work is an evaluation of students’ contributions in this entire democratic process---their achievement and also, the price they have/had to pay for. The study which adapted an analytical approach, obtained primary, secondary and tertiary data on the subject matter, having used Ghana as case study. Consequently, findings have revealed that, throughout both colonial and post-colonial eras, the activities and interventions (including peaceful demonstrations, non-violent advocacy and sometimes violent protests) of African students, have immensely contributed to the enhancement of democracy within the continent. The attendant benefits having aided the following: socio-politico-economic development of the continent; peaceful co-existence of people of varied political opinions; and the observance of fundamental human rights; inter alia. That said, lapses still persist within the context of democratic governance among African states, which students’ activism are constantly striving to address with a resulting resistance from the corridors of power. Indeed, it is also significant to mention that, one major recommendation put forth by the study is that: students’ activism should approach issues non-violently while at the same time authorities should acknowledge and uphold the potent contributions of students in that regard. Finally, the implications of this study are multifaceted as they do not only complement scholarly literature but are also relevant in respect of policy-direction and the enhancement of good democratic governance among the community of states, as spearheaded by the United Nations.

The Existence of African Jurisprudence: An Audit of Life Experience of Precolonial Anlo Traditional Society

There is a controversy about the nonexistence of African Jurisprudence fueled by a jurisprudential school of thought known as the Skeptic school of thought on African Jurisprudence. Other scholars have contributed to the debate to dispel the stance of this skeptic school. Notable among these scholars is Idowu William who described the import of these attacks by the Skeptic school as consisting in the view that African jurisprudence is at best queasy. This research was carried out using interdisciplinary approach to legal research by combining knowledge in Jurisprudence of law and anthropology of precolonial Anlo society of Gold Coast to put to rest this controversy. Secondary data on plausible theories of the jurisprudence of law were assessed and used as aids to validate what is described as laws in precolonial Anlo society in Gold Coast. The validation of the laws identified was carried through an audit of the life experience of the precolonial Anlo society from secondary sources. The study findings indicate that there exists a set of ideas surrounding the rule of law which is basically developed from experiences peculiar to Africa. These have insignificant traces of western Jurisprudence hence confirming the notion that there is African Jurisprudence. It is recommended that in order not to limit the arguments refuting the claim by the Skeptic school on African jurisprudence in the future to the legal system of precolonial Anlo society, similar audit of other precolonial African societies should be carried out to ascertain whether African jurisprudence exists. Keywords: African jurisprudence, Natural law school, Positivist school, Historical and anthropological jurisprudence, Therapeutic school of thought.

A Feminist Methodology of Age-Grading and History in Africa

Abstract Age is an essential category of analysis for African history. For over a century, social scientists have emphasized the central role of age-grading in African cultures. Whereas most people in precolonial African societies assessed age in relative terms (juniors vs. seniors), European colonialism expanded the legal importance of chronological age. Gender mattered to both definitions of age. Faced with two incommensurable systems for understanding life stages—one based on relational (male) seniority and the other on chronological age—African women growing up during the colonial period found new ways to assert a sense of belonging among generations of women. I argue in favor of a feminist methodology that recognizes the broader trend among a generation of young women in Africa who employed conflicts over age to assert their maturity, and in doing so located themselves in their own histories. Identifying female age sets and generations thus offers new perspectives on how African girls and women make and remake history.

Organizational Structures, Institutions and Administrative Systems in Pre-Colonial African States: A Discourse

Contrary to some scholars’ views, pre-colonial African societies did not lack political organization. African societies developed diverse political systems based on local needs and realities before the advent of the Europeans. Like the ‘centralized’ states, the ‘acephalous’ societies, that is, stateless societies, also evolved a decentralized government based on kinship and lineage system. There has been timeless controversy over the nature of government in what has been variously referred to as the ‘decentralized’ or ‘segmentary polities; the argument here however, is that since human societies have been seen as evolving from hunting and gathering bands to more units like the state, and since they have embodied in their very networks the seeds of strains and conflicts, societies differ in the way they try to tackle problems emanating from interactions; and therefore, the maintenance of social equilibrium, cohesions, and the all-important question of peace. This paper argues that if the purpose of government is the promotion of the welfare of the populace, then the pre- colonial African societies had all the attributes of government; the interactive dynamic process of which a balance between power and authority was ensured on the one hand, and service and accountability on the other.

Folkloric Meta-Narratives In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Following Chinua Achebe’s claim that his Things Fall Apart is a counter-narrative to Joyce Cary’s distortion of the African image in Cary’s Mister Johnson, most critics of Things Fall Apart have approached the existence of folklore in the novel from the perspective of cultural affirmation. Others see it as part of the artistic ornament used to deck the work. Be that as it may, this paper does not intend to dispute these perspectives. It rather intends to prove that Achebe’s use of folklore in Things Fall Apart is not just to affirm the functionality of folk culture in the precolonial African society depicted in this novel but also to buttress several sequence of events of the novel. It argues that the folkloric narratives within the larger narrative that is Things Fall Apart function as specialized meta-narratives which play an interesting array of roles in the novel, namely: to run commentaries on the incidents that surround the hero’s life; to show how folkloric wisdom in the novel appears to warn against certain unethical actions of the hero and to comment on the significance of some executed actions in the novel; as well as to foreshadow impending tragic situations in the life of the hero just like the chorus in Greek tragic plays. The methodology for this study is a critical analysis of the text in the light of a recontextualised and re-imagined application of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s concept of metanarrative. Unlike Lyotard’s notion of a metanarrative as a grand narrative that helps to legitimize other little narratives, we elect to read folkloric meta-narratives as related miniature versions of different sequences of the story of the novel, Things Fall Apart.

A Cultural Approach to African Management Philosophy

Despite acknowledging the existence of indigenous management capabilities and skills in Africa, management practice in precolonial African societies was seen by the colonizers as primitive management. Africans have ways of exercising power and authority at the workplace, ways of motivating and rewarding people to make them work harder. Neither the institutions nor the political structures put in place by the colonizers acknowledge these indigenous knowledge structures, but much of them have survived in the traditions and cultural values of the African people. However, unlike in Europe and most parts of Asia, the attempted modernization or Westernization after independence has completely neglected the indigenous sociocultural knowledge and tried to transplant western management theories and models to traditional African societies. This article draws attention to the relevance of cultures to management philosophy with the purpose of contributing to a culturally appropriate practice of management in Africa. It has been shown that the different management theories in the form that they have been developed in the West reflect western philosophical thoughts which may not fit culturally in Africa management practice. However, in developing theories and building models of management theories in Africa, it is unlikely to pay Africans to throw away all that the West has to offer. Rather, the approach to appropriate management theorizing is to reflect on assumptions of Western management theories, compare Western assumptions about sociocultural values with African cultural values to rebuild the theories and models. The use of anthropological and philosophical concepts in this context will help in the development of appropriate management practice.

Revisiting Africa’s “Socialist” Past to Design Africa’s Future Political Economy

The sad reality of Africa’s socio-economic underdevelopment is beyond contention. What has been vigorously debated is the choice of a suitable political economy to lift Africa out of this historical abyss. Some have prescribed the adoption of capitalism, i.e. the free market economy. Others advocate for socialism or a centrally planned economic model. Indeed, some African thinkers, especially those of the independence era, contend that some variant of the socialist creed is indigenous to the African economic culture. Yet others have advocated some form of mixed economy, one that would synthesize elements of the capitalist system with elements of scientific socialism. In this paper, we first interrogate the idea of “African socialism”. We contend that those who promote this idea operate based on a flawed interpretation of the economic arrangement of pre-colonial African societies. We then propose the adoption of a mixed economy whose content is in part composed of two ideas derivable from a critical evaluation of the pre-colonial political economy of many African societies, namely, the land tenure system and what we describe here as a socialized public sphere. Key Words African socialism, political economy