In March 2015, I wrote an article for the Guardian titled “Philosophy has to be about more than white men” in which I argued that the white-western-male bias in philosophical studies in the UK was detrimental to the study of philosophy, which should investigate all human experience. “We should not dismiss white, western, or male…
An African utopia in Ethiopia – On the need for imaginative ideas
In April this year, I was honoured to give a keynote talk at the jesuit university, Xavier University. I’m sharing a video and transcript from the talk below. On one end, the talk’s intention is to inform about Awra Amba, a utopian village in Ethiopia, but at its core it is about the need for imaginative…
On Afropolitanism and westernisation
While reading Olufemi Taiwo’s book “Africa Must Be Modern”, I came across the following: It is almost required of an African intellectual that she or he be hostile to modernity and it suppositions. It is almost as if an African like me who deliberately embraces modernity as a way of life that promises at the…
African Cosmopolitanism part I
At the 15th summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1978, then Lieut. General Olusegun Obasanjo said, “no African nation is about to embrace communism wholesale any more than we are willing to embrace capitalism.” In 2013 such a statement seems alien. Rejecting capitalism is not a real option for African nations, right?…