A Yoruba proverb says if same-mother siblings enter a room to have a heart-to-heart talk and come out smiling, they have not told each other the truth. This manifesto is the unvarnished truth about the state of our continent and how to remedy the maladies. Africa’s problems are not unique to it.
However, African elites who love their “communalistic societies” and proffer “African solutions to African problems” are eager to send their children to study in higher institutions in modern societies or hide their wealth in those countries. Indeed, modernity gave us the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, the Holocaust, and racism, which continues to devalue black people all over the world.
Táíwò notes that modern individualism depends on the “idea of contract” between people, with the assumption that while “individuals may and do cooperate with one another, such cooperation is not essential to their personhood.” The rule of law guarantees that each person is treated the same under the law, that everyone has a fair hearing in court. In a modern society, process is far more important than the outcomes.
African scholars must be able to peer-review each other’s work. Every international journal is after-all a local journal somewhere, and knowledge is hardly neutral. Our universities produce little usable knowledge, that they have become diploma mills.