Africa's Critical Choices: A Call for a Pan-African Roadmap by Dunod Editeur

Author:Dunod Editeur [Editeur, Dunod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, World, African, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Commentary & Opinion, Political Economy, Globalization, Reference, General
ISBN: 9780429619694
Google: Qn6JDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

A great disruption

This idea could seem obvious to others, but it is not for our continent. Indeed, colonisation caused a huge disruption in the transmission of our knowledge and traditions. In his seminal book Amkoullel, the Fula Child,3 Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ talks about how, during the First World War, conscription stopped the transmission of knowledge in West Africa by taking a generation of young men away from their jobs. All sorts of occupations, which were handed down from father to son or from master to apprentice, did not survive four years of European war. The normal cycle of maintaining these techniques was irreparably damaged. And oral traditions also suffered beyond repair. This cultural and intellectual heritage was lost, without even mentioning the immense moral harm done with the sudden disappearance of points of reference that structured many traditional societies in West Africa.

Beyond this example of great disruption, which all colonised areas experienced to varying degrees, I deeply believe that we were numbed, even humiliated, to the point of intellectual self-deprecation. I am thinking about the first black civil servants in Belgian Congo who nicknamed themselves the “intelligent ones” and developed a troubling sense of superiority over their compatriots.4 These absurdities are no longer relevant, but absurd at they are, they had strong and serious consequences.

They contribute in part to the “resource curse” that affects many African countries. They explain why our educated young people often prefer to advance their careers outside of Africa. They are a reason why we are so poorly industrialised. Symbolically, they explain why, in short, the technique of the Nubian vault was abandoned in favour of construction using cinder blocks and corrugated metal.

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