AFRICAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE QUEST FOR DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

This long essay was written by me as a graduating student from the department of philosophy in the University of Ibadan, year 2014.

INTRODUCTION

It is a truism that issues of development have preoccupied African scholars for many years; both scholars in the sciences and the humanities are presumed to be concerned with achieving for Africa development. In fact, there are those scholars who suppose that a cardinal goal of the African philosopher cum scholar is to fashion a developmental approach which would extensively respond to challenges of social transformation engulfing Africa. Scholars, like Olusegun Oladipo, defended the assumption that until African scholars cum philosophers begin to realize that their reflections as Africans should bother essentially on the plethora of challenges or developmental issues facing Africa, they may not be able to fashion a web of relevance for their philosophical explorations.¹

In this essay however, we argue that African epistemologists cum scholars who preach development as the task of African philosophy are right in raising their point, but new arguments are needed to show why that is so. After all, philosophers in defence of development as the goal of the African philosopher have not sufficiently addressed the question of whether all philosophers in Africa must be developmental in approach for same to be relevant. However, one can contend that the enigma of African epistemology cannot be solved without cognisance look into the existence of African philosophy as put by N Kaphagawani and J.G Malherbe in their work entitled, ‘Introduction to African Epistemology’.²

Consequently, by looking at the meta-epistemological concerns of the African, this paper attempts to argue that African development shares an inalienable link with Africa’s epistemological identity. In fact, the paper indicates that the sources and elements of knowledge in Africa must be re-evaluated if Africa is to transform. The paper’s main task is to pursue the kind of evaluation sought above to examine and determine how African philosophy can be instrumental to African developmental quest. This is so because to claim the existence of an African philosophy is also to imply the existence of an African epistemology, to an extent that an African epistemology is a subject of African philosophy.

References:

1.      Oladipo O., “The Issue of African Self-Definition in the Contemporary World, in Olusegun Oladipo (ed.), Core Issues in African Philosophy, Hope Publications (2006), Pp. 56

2.      Didier N. Kaphagawani and Jeanette G. Malherb, “Epistemology and the Tradition in Africa” in P.H.Coetzee And A.P.J.Roux (eds.) The African Philosophy Reader, 2002, Pp. 259-270

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