Techno-colonialism, which I argue here to specifically mean the transfer of technology and its values and norms from one locale to another, has become a serious concern with the advancement of socially disruptive technologies1 of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), like artificial intelligence and robots. While the transfer of technology from one locale, especially economically advanced countries, to developing countries comes with economic benefits for both regions, it is important to understand that technologies are not value-neutral; they come with the values, cultures, and worldviews of their designers. However, despite the nonvalue-neutrality of the technologies of the 4IR, they are still relevant for sub- Saharan Africa’s development. Thus, using a phenomenological approach, especially the sub-Saharan African experiences of past histories of colonialism, I prescribe cautionary measures that sub-Saharan Africans ought to take in approaching the current industrial revolution and its technologies.

Corruption has traversed all lengths and breadth of the Nigerian nation. The corrupt practice is mostly ornamented with language. The present study aims to ascertain the linguistic codings used to mask corruption in educational, civil service, political and social settings. Data for the study were collected from notable online newspaper and media sources, which include: The Vanguard, The Guardian, The Punch, This Day, The Nation, The Premium, Sahara Reporters, Naira land and others published between 2015 and 2021. The data from online sources were complemented by focused group discussions, unstructured interviews and participant’s observation method. The study adopted a qualitative research design and a random sampling method in selecting a total of hundred respondents from the five states that make up the southeast zone in Nigeria. The paper anchored its analyses on the conceptual model of Sapir-Whorf relativity framework and the analyses were done using interpretative textual analysis model. Findings from the study reveal that using words, phrases and expressions which are reflected in coinages, code-mixing, reduplication, metonymy, metaphor, slang, borrowing, pidginization, lexical reversals and creative usages to mask corruption have far-reaching effects on national development. The paper recommends that in considering the fight against corruption, the government should pay attention to the linguistic embellishments that act as the lifeline of the negative practice.

In Zimbabwe, popular music, particularly the Zimdancehall music genre, has become a cultural site where Shona moral values clash with explicit sexual lyrical content despite a censorship regime in the country. This article examines the nature and cultural consequences of the moral decadence that emerges in popular Zimdancehall song lyrics by several musicians. The article illustrates how vulgar language popularises Zimdancehall songs in unheralded ways that foster identities laced with cultural ambivalences that may portray the artists as both famous and depraved. This qualitative study does textual and content analysis of 11 purposively sampled songs with sex terms to elucidate the cultural inconsistencies in Zimdancehall song narratives. Analysis is informed by the Neuro-Psycho-Social theory, which recognises how socio-cultural restrictions are challenged by an emerging ghetto culture like new wine in old bottles. Alternative unsanctioned new popular music genres can be used to permeate the sociocultural system.

One of the scholars that made sustained contributions to the development of philosophy of history is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel offers a dialectical conception of history in which the absolute spirit moves towards self-actualization. However, Hegel’s idea of history appears prejudiced and misguided because he not only derided and battered Africans using his imprudent racial schemes, he even excluded Africa from historical considerations in his uncouth racial agenda. This paper uses the critical analytic model to deleted ultimately show that not only was Hegel uninformed to comment on the ontology of Africa and Africans, but that even the system was self-defeating. That is, it was a case of Hegel against Hegel. This is the novelty of this paper since a Hegelian system that is against itself cannot muster the necessary guts and logic to lampoon and destroy another system, worse still, thoughtlessly and irrationally too. The paper also argued that the disposition to colour-brand people using racial scheme is uncritical and inhumane.

This essay will critically analyse how conquest that resulted in white settler colonialism laid the foundation for epistemic violence. Epistemic violence, which took the form of the imposition of the law of the European conqueror in the wake of land dispossession in 1652 in South Africa is the fundamental problem this essay will critically engage with. We will rely on the Azanian philosophical tradition as a theoretical framework to critique this legal epistemic violence. Our theoretical framework is in line with Afrikan jurisprudence, which is grounded in the culture and worldview of the Indigenous people conquered in wars of conquest. Fundamental to our argument is that the law of the European conqueror, which was imposed through conquest is a Eurocentric enterprise, which seeks to negate the Afrikan worldview and culture and reinforce historic injustice. It is important to note that epistemic violence commenced with the issuing of papal bulls, which undergirded conquest and white settler colonialism in South Africa. The thesis of the essay is that in the wake of conquest and the attendant imposition of the law of the European conqueror, white settlers used their law to technicalise issues of historic injustice such as land dispossession. It is in this sense that this essay seeks to contribute to the decolonisation of law by foregrounding the worldview and culture of the Indigenous conquered people.

This paper uses a declarative mapping sentence approach to explore and amend design thinking - a project development and management technique recently disseminated in Africa. We contend that there are problems in the manner in which design thinking has been exported to Africa, namely, that design thinking is rooted in the linear, binary, human-centric systems present in Western philosophy and that the exportation of design thinking is potentially neo-colonial. We, therefore, attempt to ameliorate these difficulties by decoupling design thinking from its Western philosophical perspectives. We will also seek to broaden the understanding of design thinking by adopting the more communitarian perspective found in philosophy that has been developed in Africa. The amended form of design thinking we present considers the user’s existential paradigms and facilitates a flexible and reflexive process void of deliberate finality. Furthermore, we claim that amending design thinking’s philosophical foundations to incorporate a communitarian perspective has the potential to make design thinking more ecologically-centric.

The idea of transgender identity is less perceived as a mental illness but as a sexual health condition in many parts of the Western world, while it is seen as an anomaly in most parts of Africa. Transgender identity is a gender expression that differs from the naturally assigned sex. The widely accepted reason behind transgender is unsatisfactory feelings toward assigned sex by the individual. This work sets out to explore transgender identity and family life in Africa. Several works have explored the concept but with less emphasis on family life as it relates to the African setting. Furthermore, this work sets out to demonstrate some implications of transgender identity in an ideal African family. In this work, we shall argue that once transgender identity is normalized in Africa, it will be a threat to family life. The arguments to be used are historical, analytical, descriptive as well as evaluative.

In the recent Anglo-American philosophy of religion, significant attention has been given to the nature of faith. My goal is to show that some of the recent discussion of faith can be fruitfully brought to bear on a problem for a less globally well-known version of monotheism found in African Traditional Religion. I argue that African Traditional Religion could benefit from utilizing non-doxastic accounts of faith. For a significant number of Africans questioning authority or tradition, including the tenets of African Traditional Religion is viewed as harmful to the community and hence beyond the pale. A non-doxastic account of faith would be helpful for adherents of African Traditional Religion who find themselves disbelieving yet wanting to continue in religious practice and maintain communal harmony. This is because a non-doxastic state such as hope is within one’s direct control and does not require as much evidential justification as rational belief.

In this essay, I argue that Menkiti’s normative personhood is exclusionary, and logically inadequate, especially regarding mentally disabled persons. My argument is that Menkiti’s account of personhood as a moral-political theory does not possess the resources to accommodate and account for mentally disabled persons because of its rigid process of transformation, which requires moral excellence. An inclusive moral theory, I argue, should be able to accommodate all members of the moral community irrespective of their ability, but rather, their capacity for relationships. Tapping into the intellectual resources of conversational thinking, I propose another conception of personhood predicated on moral status as the basis for personhood. With this method, I query the inclusiveness of Menkiti’s conception and demonstrate that a relational alternative option that bases moral status on the human capacity for relationships might be more inclusive. Here, personhood is anchored on the capacity for relationships, not the ability to exude moral excellence. I then contend that this moral status conception of personhood possesses the needed resources to account for all because it is inclusive and egalitarian, riding on the crest of Ezumezu logic, which is also both egalitarian and inclusive.

This critique engages with the article titled "The Question of the Nature of God from the African Place," by L. Uchenna OGBONNAYA published in Vol. 11. No.1 of this journal. This critique will employ a focused argumentative methodology to assess its contributions to the discourse on African Philosophy of Religion. It will also evaluate the article's strengths and weaknesses, emphasizing the articulation and support of key arguments. Through a systematic examination of the presented evidence and methodological approach, the critique aims to shed light on the nuanced perspectives on the nature of God within the African philosophical framework. Further, this assessment will provide a comprehensive understanding of the article's implications for contemporary religious studies and intercultural dialogue, contributing to the ongoing conversation surrounding diverse perspectives on divinity.

Literature on the radical indigenous resistance tradition, which predated the emergence of Garveyism as a form of Afrikan philosophy of liberation is scarce in South African politics and history. Robert Edgar and Robert Vinson have contributed to the literature on the influence of Garveyism in South Africa in the 1920s. However, their scholarship does not delve into the emergence of the radical indigenous resistance tradition which was a reaction to conquest since 1652 in wars of colonization in South Africa. This paper seeks to remedy this gap by discussing this radical indigenous resistance tradition which we designate as the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition. This paper will utilize the historical analytical framework to provide a brief outline of the cause and elements of this tradition. We will rely on historical research design to discuss how, upon its arrival in the 1920s, Garveyism regalvanised this radical indigenous resistance tradition. The first objective of the paper is to foreground the convergence of the intellectual and political endeavours of people of Afrikan descent (continent and diaspora) in their struggle against global white supremacy. The second objective is to contribute to the eventual hegemony of the combined radicalism of the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition and Garveyism which is a marginalized issue in the literature on Afrikan nationalism and the Black Radical Tradition in South Africa. This paper will provide a brief intellectual portrait of Lembede to argue that through his political philosophy of Afrikanism he encapsulated the convergence of the Indigenous Fundamentalist Tradition and Garveyism. This is in order to lay the foundation for the foregrounding of Lembede’s idea of Afrika for the Afrikans as an alternative paradigm regarding the national question in South Africa.

The stability of any nation depends on the harmonious integration of all its citizens. Constitutional democracy, through the rule of law, aspires to inclusive government. But populism emphasizes the sovereignty of the people, places it above the rule of law and equates the people with the majority, excluding the minority. This exposes the nation to majority tyranny, abuse of power and exclusion of some segments of the populace in governance, thereby, raising issues of legitimacy, the polarization of the population and hostilities inimical to nationhood. This paper uses historical hermeneutic analysis to examine the impact of populism on the nation-building of emerging democratic nations like Nigeria. It argues that populism is a threat to the stability of emerging plural democracies and that the rule of law based on a negotiated constitutional democracy is a better option than populism.

The issue of wedding is of immense socio-cultural and pastoral concern for the Igbo people. The challenge revolves around the question of which wedding(s) the intending couple should choose. Which wedding is cost effective or more socially acceptable? Which wedding incorporates the extended families or alienates them? These choices are often so interconnected that to choose one is to reject the other. As a result, many young people have started cohabiting as families without wedding, or have had one wedding which is considered incomplete, adversely affecting their sense of belonging and participation in their churches, or in the family and socio-cultural settings. This article intends to expose the origin, causes and consequences of the issue. It does not elucidate the rituals of traditional or church wedding, instead it explicates the nuances of both weddings vying for superiority, and the subtle, yet sophisticated contention over their values in Igboland. Then it suggests solutions to help alleviate it.

In a 2020 article published in volume 9, number 1 of [Filosofia Theoretica], Martin F. Asiegbu and Anthony Chinaemerem Ajah questioned the continued relevance of Afro-communalism. They argued that nothing about communalism makes it African. They also demonstrated how the brand of communalism presented as ‘African’, is too reductive, emphasizes conformism and therefore is against the individual and counter-productive for entire societies in Africa. For the above reasons, they summed that communalism with ‘Afro-’ is irrelevant and needs to end. In a 2021 article published in the same journal in response to the initial submission by Asiegbu and Ajah, Enweh held that their take on Afro-communalism was too harsh. He marshalled out five “issues and difficulties” regarding their critique of the concept. Although Enweh’s critique is a worthwhile invitation to a conversation, which clarifies and complements, his proposal for an interpretative rehabilitation of Afro-communalism in the 21st century is surely wrongheaded. To respond to Enweh, a review of his critique of Asiegbu and Ajah will foreground the attempt to clarify some parts of Asiegbu and Ajah’s initial position. We will assess Enweh’s arguments in terms of the relevance of the rehabilitation he suggested and question the meaning of what Enweh termed the “amity of ethnic nationalities.” We will argue that Enweh was unable to provide sufficient grounds to show that Asiegbu and Ajah’s critique of Afro-communalism was “uninformed… [and] harsh.” We will also demonstrate that his critique of their views was indefensible just as he was unable to explain what he meant by the alternative model he claimed to introduce in the discussion.

This critique thoroughly examines the scholarly article "African Philosophy of Religion from a Global Perspective: Deities, Ancestors, Relationality, and the Problem of Evil" written by Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Jonathan Chimakonam. The main aims of this critique are to examine the article's impact on African Philosophy of Religion and evaluate its merits and limitations. Employing a qualitative research methodology, this critique examines the complex dynamics that exist between deities, ancestors, relationality, and the issue of evil within the African religious framework. In assessing the article's impact on the discipline, the critique analyses the novelty of the authors’ perspectives and their capacity to propel philosophical discussions on African religious ideology. Furthermore, the paper evaluates its strengths and weaknesses, emphasizing its thorough examination of important subjects while acknowledging potential shortcomings in the portrayal of many African religious traditions. The primary objective of this critique is to present a comprehensive and well-informed evaluation of the scholarly influence of the paper in the wider context of African Philosophy of Religion. It seeks to provide valuable insights for future research and academic involvement on this particular topic.

In the 2019 work “A Sense-Phenomenal Look at the Problem of Personal Identity,” Jonathan O. Chimakonam articulates an intriguing and novel body-only perspective of personal identity that has a direct implication for our understanding of consciousness. In this article, I focus on the aspect of the work that adopts a seemingly eliminativist stance on the hard problem of consciousness. Chimakonam’s version of physicalism rejects the reality of consciousness or experience while accepting that humans have sensations. Having transferred the location of sensation from the mind (the within), and even the brain, to the sense organs (the outside) without eliminating the category of mind, Chimakonam unwittingly raises the question of whether his philosophy of mind represents an eliminativist stance or a reductive physicalist stance. In this article, I argue that while a reductive physicalist reading of Chimakonam is a plausible interpretation of his stance, the non-rejection of the category of mind and the seeming distinction between mind and brain supports the claim that sense-phenomenalism does not radically overcome the hard problem of consciousness.

The significantly enduring traditional Kasena-Nankana Bayaase or Bayaaro institution is one of the profound cultural institutions that serve its communities' spiritual and mortal needs in diverse ways. A pall-bearer ritually fortified to execute indigenous morturary and burial practices. This ritual, per its very nature and function, may appear unenticing but is indispensable when it comes to preparing the dead for final travel, and the appeasement of Mother Earth. This institution has since not received deeper scholarly attention and is currently facing challenges resulting from enculturation, sheer neglect, and conflict with adherents of the Christian faith. While the expected harm to face when a deceased person’s mortals and spirits are not properly and customarily interred has been the major discussion of some scholars, there is still the need to offer deeper traditional and cultural insights into this institution, considering the increasing erosion of most indigenous cultural institutions and with that, the unpalatable resultant effects. The paper scrutinises some of the key traditional practices, challenges, and services of the Bayaa institution through a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) of six seasoned Bayaase of high ranks within the Kasena-Nankana speaking areas of Navrongo. The study shows that the increasing Christian population and its ‘strange’ doctrines regarding traditional burial rites conflict with the age-long traditional practices of the Bayaase. The paper will show that from the dialogue with the Bayaase, it emerged that being subservient to traditional authority and incorporating elements of traditions that do not require traditional sacrifices are seen as one of the means for peaceful co-existence.

The Biakē custom, an ancient practice among the Ogoni indigenous people, refers to a system by which certain girls or women are not allowed to marry, but are legitimately allowed to raise children for their parents or family, because of some peculiar circumstances of the household, thus the idea of ‘mothers but not wives.’ However, the Biakē practice has been misconstrued with the malapropism called ‘Sira-Custom,’ implying a system in which the first daughters are not given out for marriage. This study focused on the philosophical foundation of Biakē and its implications on the Ogoni contemporary society. The study discovered that there was never a time in Ogoni history when Sira (first daughters) was denied the right to marry out. Every Ogoni daughter is eligible for marriage. The study argues that though the philosophy of Biakē emphasizes the continuity of the family/lineage, women serving under Biakē and their children may experience psychological trauma due to the absence of a “father figure” and other unmet needs. Using the prescriptive method, this paper advocated for the promulgation of laws, and regulations to modify the Biakē custom to accommodate the Ogoni modern-day reality.

This study examines J.S. Sanni’s argument on the role of religion in promoting silence and extortion in contemporary African (Nigerian) society, leveraging on the name of God, with a view to determining the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Sanni posits that religion (Christianity and Islam) have played crucial roles in promoting silence and extortion in Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria. He argues that the colonial debris of disempowerment, injustices, manipulation and extortion, using the instrumentality of religion, are still very much part of African society today. According to him, the above manipulations, extortions and injustices, perpetrated by the colonial masters on African societies using the tool of religion, is still very much part of the contemporary African society and have only assumed new outlooks and language and consequently plunged many Africans into silence in the face of what is often presented as sacred and holy. The study examines the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. The paper adopts historical hermeneutics and textual analysis methods.

This paper examines how indigenous African communities have become critical for developing epistemologies of relation and entanglement in the dominant problem of contemporary resilience understandings of adaptation in the Anthropocene imaginary. Grounded in the indigenous African epistemological philosophies, this paper explores critical alternative futural framings that directly oppose the modernist epistemological understandings of resilience imaginaries in the Anthropocene. The analysis presented here is based on understanding indigenous non-modern ways of knowing as key in the context of ecological crisis in the Anthropocene resilience. This paper argues that reductionist modernist epistemology fails to fully acknowledge how alternative futural imaginaries of indigenous non-modern ways of knowing have become central to critical Anthropocene resilience approaches in the discipline of International Relations. In contrast, this paper explores indigenous African epistemologies of relation and entanglement as alternative futural imaginaries that better capture resilience climate adaptation in the Anthropocene. The paper concludes that focusing on resilience and understandings of adaptation in the Anthropocene opens other possibilities for the development of indigenous non-modern ways of knowing.