https://en.sputniknews.africa/20260519/back-to-root-decolonizing-african-identity-from-western-philosophy-1085865287.html
Back to Root: Decolonizing African Identity From Western Philosophy
Back to Root: Decolonizing African Identity From Western Philosophy
Sputnik Africa
For years, Africans were taught Greek philosophy as the foundation of human thought, while indigenous thought systems were dismissed as folklore. Now, African... 19.05.2026, Sputnik Africa
2026-05-19T17:23+0200
2026-05-19T17:23+0200
2026-05-19T17:23+0200
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Back to Root: Decolonizing African Identity From Western Philosophy
Sputnik Africa
For years, Africans were taught Greek philosophy as the foundation of human thought, while indigenous thought systems were dismissed as folklore. Now, African thinkers, scholars, and philosophers are challenging that distortion to reassert the continent's age-old worldviews into the consciousness of its people.
Before the emergence of Western philosophy, Africa was already living it. But, somewhere between the communal wisdom of Ubuntu and the cosmic order of Maat, African indigenous thought quietly answered questions the Western world is still asking: Who are we? Where do we belong? What does it mean to be human? Yet for generations, those answers were buried under borrowed identities and foreign philosophical frameworks, leaving an entire continent searching for itself in someone else's mirror.On African Currents, that search is over as we journey back in time to fetch from the fountain of indigenous ways of knowing, values, ethics, and worldviews that were never truly lost, only silenced, with Professor Olusegun Morakinyo, an Afrocentric epistemic resistance scholar who is currently a visiting research fellow in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and also at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast.Catch the full discussion on the African Currents podcast, presented by Sputnik Africa.Listen to this episode on our website or Telegram.► You can also stream the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, Pocket Casts, Afripods, Podcast Addict.► Subscribe to and explore all the episodes of African Currents.
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Back to Root: Decolonizing African Identity From Western Philosophy
For years, Africans were taught Greek philosophy as the foundation of human thought, while indigenous thought systems were dismissed as folklore. Now, African thinkers, scholars, and philosophers are challenging that distortion to reassert the continent's age-old worldviews into the consciousness of its people.
Before the emergence of Western philosophy, Africa was already living it. But, somewhere between the communal wisdom of Ubuntu and the cosmic order of Maat, African indigenous thought quietly answered questions the Western world is still asking: Who are we? Where do we belong? What does it mean to be human? Yet for generations, those answers were buried under borrowed identities and foreign philosophical frameworks, leaving an entire continent searching for itself in someone else's mirror.
On African Currents, that search is over as we journey back in time to fetch from the fountain of indigenous ways of knowing, values, ethics, and worldviews that were never truly lost, only silenced, with Professor Olusegun Morakinyo, an Afrocentric epistemic resistance scholar who is currently a visiting research fellow in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and also at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast.
"The African system of thought is not philosophy. What it became was philosophy. The whole epistemic and ontological problem of Africa is deemed to be caused by theories of philosophy, basically Western philosophy, that are the root of the problem. We have a problem of philosophy. What we have is a system of thoughts [...]. So, basically, we have to understand that the colonial primary motive is based on ontological engineering done through epistemological negation and obstruction, confusion, and distraction. Epistemological obstruction is corruption of the knowledge system of a society, which is done through the educational system," Prof. Morakinyo said.
Catch the full discussion on the African Currents podcast, presented by Sputnik Africa.
Listen to this episode on our website or
Telegram.►
Subscribe to and explore all the episodes of African Currents.
