Towards an Understanding of the African Experience from Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

By Festus Ugboaja Ohaegbulam

Publisher: University Press Of America, New York. 1999

Pages: 285. Price: not stated

Reviewer: Kofi Akosah-Sarpong in Montreal, Canada

In a continent whose history and culture have been brutalised, maimed, demeaned and received all kinds of bad talk and bad press such as "primitive", "pagan", "backward", this book by Nigeria's Festus Ugboaja Ohaegbulam of the University of Florida attempts to roll back such ignorance with a pinch of sympathy for the African culture and history. The relevance of this book is its ability to mirror the changing faces of African culture in an era intense globalisation.

The also attempts to "provide a realistic and sympathetic understanding of that experience which, until recently, either had been omitted from the curriculum institutions of learning offered to their students or distorted in written and oral literature," writes the author. Of recent times African journalists increasingly becoming aware of the dearth of African history and culture in African schools, and even in the mainstream media outlets, are waging a quiet educational campaigns to re-educate the African peoples, especially the youth, about their culture and history.

In chapter three, for instance, the author analytically looks at Africa and development of human civilisation and laments how Africa is now described as "developing" or "Third World" and lagging behind in technology whereas before, before Africa in the forefront of human civilisation and made impressive contribution to humanity's general mastery of the universe. Writes Ohaegbulam, "They have created cultures and civilisations, evolved [sophisticated] systems of government and systems of thought, and pursued the inner life of the spirit with a consuming passion that has produced some of the finest arts known to man."

But through colonialism and its off-shoot globalisation African culture is increasingly being eroded, more so, as Mr Y K Amoako, the executive secretary of the UN's Economic Commission of Africa, wrote in the of Our Continent Our Future (1999), Africa is the only region in the world where foreign theories and models are dominant. And this is increasingly eroding the African culture more noticeably in the area of the extended family system, communalism, the need for balance between the spiritual and physical, and the quest to live in harmony with all beings in the universe.