There is no gainsaying that the average educated African today has been raised more with Western ideologies than African ideologies. We can trace this back to colonialism and the adoption of the Western education system and we’d be very accurate, but that is not all.
The greatest impact on the acculturation of Africa is from the adoption of technology and the ease with which ideas now travel through smartphones and social media. The most remote places in Africa now have access to telephony. It has revolutionized our lives and made us a part of the global village.
More than being a part of the global village, Africa is a hybrid continent. This is not just because it has 54 countries and thousands of ethnic groups, but because they do not have a code that binds them as Africans. Perhaps this lack of a unifying code stems from not being enterprising enough, or as William Makgoba argues, from the inability to be masters of our own destinies. Makgoba contends that Africans are a people who can only succeed and realize their full potential under Western control.
However, from the early sixties to the present, African scholars have continued to argue that Africans should re-discover what it means to be African — away from Western influences — for the continent to become a sovereign state in its full strength. Two concepts come up when they talk about rediscovering our Africanness: 1) The hierarchical order of families 2) The communal sense of living
Interestingly, there has never been a time in African history when African countries came together in unison under these two concepts. These concepts were mainly survival techniques for individuals who became families, and families that became communities, communities that became countries. So, you cared for your family. Your family grows into a community and you cared for that community. The communalism wasn’t a type of “I care for your community and you care for mine”. There were pockets of communities scattered across the landscape caring singularly for themselves.
This cannot be far from the truth because, in the words of James Lassiter, it is generally recognized that conflict is more likely to arise among people who accentuate their differences and uniqueness rather than among those who acknowledge and celebrate their similarities. So, Western proliferation and acculturation were easy. It was easier to seek weaker and smaller communities and partner with them. We say the Westerners used the concept of “divide and rule”, but the question worth asking is “Were they (Africans) ever united under a singular code?”
Without a singular code, cultural infiltration was bound to happen. So, we became mixed by the sharing of ideas with foreign bodies. The weaker communities bargained their way into becoming stronger. They gave away their carved idols and some of their people in exchange for weaponry. They became stronger. Soon after, we adopted their educational system. We were taught to look like them, to look better than the neighbouring community.
Sadly, many decades later, we look like them but they don’t think of us as one of them. So, we neither look like them nor do we look like us, because what is “us”? We have no reference for that. If at all we did, we cannot reconcile it with modernity. This is how we became a hybrid continent, a hybrid people.
One of the reasons why the African Union was established in 2002 is “to promote the unity and solidarity of African countries, defend state sovereignty and eradicate colonialism”. While it appears to be a good step in the right direction, the premise on which it is established is not just a sinking ground, but a sunk ground.
We are still not united and we are defenceless, but let’s take a deeper look at “eradicate colonialism”. It is a presumptuous goal because you can’t. You can fight for your independence, gain your independence (which we have done), but you cannot “eradicate” the impact of colonialism when your mode of educating your younger generation is based on a template from your once-upon-a-time colonial masters. It is ignorant to think so.
This is easily observed the further away we look from the older generations to the newer generations. The newer generations continue to look more and more Western. They cannot help it because they don’t know any better.
Their parents and society try to teach them about the moral fabric that guides Africans and the concept of communalism, but they learn more from Hollywood, leading them to a state of cognitive dissonance. They want to listen to their parents but because what they are offered does not reconcile with modernity, they end up not listening. So, we see rebels.
Rebels of faith, of morals, of culture, of life. Some have dug into their ancestral traditions. Some have explored all the Abrahamic religions, looking for answers, an identity, a progressive identity. Even though the weather conditions in Africa are different from Europe, some still go through the pain of dressing like Europeans.
They are scared to challenge these life issues but they beat their chest and “do it afraid” nonetheless. This cuts across every area of their lives. From the way they show respect to elders – to start with, which elders deserve their respect and why? – to their benefits and what they’re entitled to, to their views on relationships and marriages.
These quests were easily managed before the cultural and psychological infiltration. They were easily managed before the mass adoption of technology (mobile devices especially) and the influence of social media. All everyone knew was what was happening within their community as access to the rest of the world was limited. We are far gone from that era, but where does this lead us?
There are 2 pointers:
1. We are going to see more minorities and factions spring up in Africa who will begin to think differently about what it truly means to be African and how the continent can become a sovereign state under a unifying code.
2. As the older generations in Africa continue to pass on, the newer generations will be starkly out of touch with their “roots”. They will be so out of touch that they will become another West.