As
we speak now, Africa is a continent endowed with vast natural resources
as well as great cultural, ecological and economic diversity and yet it remains
underdeveloped. The great number of African Nations suffer military
dictatorships, tribalism, corruption, moral decadence, civil unrest, and much more
poverty. Africa has been classified as the least developed continent in the
dinner of civilization. A lot of strategies have been taken upon in fighting
poverty and yet no fruits generated. That’s why one must asked himself, what
went wrong in Africa? What counts negative in Africa? What are the
roots of poverty in Africa? It is for this urge, that I have taken interest in
understanding why Africa is in thousands of miles behind other continents in
this planet.
Before I endeavor in this serious intellectual
work, I would like to clarify the major term “Africa” as it appears in the
title of this article. Africa, is the
second-largest continent in the world, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the
Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is divided in half almost
equally by the Equator[1]. Currently, 95% of the
people are black famously known as “Muntu proper.” In order to establish coherence
in understanding the reason behind poverty in Africa, the famous African
thinker; the great professor John Mbiti will help us to grasp the notion of
African time.
The
notion of time is understood by both Westerns and Africans differently.
Westerns understanding of time is mathematical, linear and abstract. In this case,
Aristotle defines time as number of motion according to before and after[2]. He embraces past, present
and future in the notion of understanding time. In order to "practicalize" future,
Aristotle appeals to imagination because future has no connection with the
world of experience. That’s why future for Westerns is a real entity. It is
experiential and touchable. To have a plan of sixty years to come is not a
problem. They are able to see future just as they have experienced past. This
kind of understanding time stimulated heterogeneous mentality and suppressed
homogeneous thinking. For them, solution of their problems has nothing to do
with the past. Their heterogeneous approach convinced them that future is the
only custodian of all possible possibilities. With this attitude, there was murder
of conformity to past, and cyclical mentality, and therefore people were left
free to think. This approach created room for diversity in terms of thinking.
In the understanding of professor John Mbiti,
African time is drawn from events in the sense that it cannot be unglued from
matter. African time comprises of past and the present. It is not ontological
entity but rather composed of actual events that are experiential. Time and
events are one and the same thing. He therefore, defines time as the
composition of events[3]. For him African time is experiential
and cannot be projected. African time is of two dimensions as he affirms; long
past and the passing now. Future does not exist since events can only be found in
the past and present. For Mbiti, African time begins in the past and end in the
NOW. Future has no events that composes time.
Therefore,
this notion of time affected the mind set of Africans. There was adoration of
past because ancient was understood as custodian of wisdom and solutions of all
sort problems. It was a serious invitation for Africans to conform to the past.
Anciently speaking, the solution of African poverty is to be found in the past
rather than in the future. When problems arose, Africa had two great things to
do; either to invoke the elders’ wisdom or review the past in order to relate ideas
because things were necessary related and connected. The solution of one's
problem could be applied to another problem. For Africans, knowledge was to be in
harmony with the past. In this sense, there was murder of heterogeneous thinking
and exaltation of homogeneous mentality. To publish new idea, one had to conform to
the mentality of the majority who were necessary connected with custodians of
wisdom. To think differently in African society, was to commit a sin of
alienation. Homogeneous mentality adored, lacked tool that accommodates change.
That is the reason why new ideas that embraced future, had no place in Africa and
if they existed, their practicality was impossible. That’s why when one embraced
intellectual conversion and strained to get rid of all the shells of
appeasement mentality, was immediately assassinated, rejected, deported into
exile and if in power, overthrown just as they did to great Kwameh Nkrumah. For
this reason, Africa is a predominant continent that the world had ever known. Surprisingly
the roots of the this mentality seem to co-exist with the new approach that we
have embraced. Change of mind set and to redefinition of the notion of time
will eradicate poverty in Africa.
Let people be free to think and accommodates new ideals.
[1] National
Geographic Society. “Africa: Physical Geography.” https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia /Africa-physical-geography/, Jan. 4,
2012
[2] Ursula Coope, Time for
Aristotle: Physics iv. 10-14; (Oxford Scholarship: London; 2005)
[3]
Parratt John.” Time in African Traditional Thought.” Taylor & Francis Online,7
(2011) 117-126
I wrote this article as undergraduate student of Philosophy and Education.
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