AFRICAN ENLIGHTENMENT

History of Africa. (n.d.). [Photograph]. History. https://www.history.com/topics/africa

Let us start with the word Africa, what is Africa and what does Africa mean to people who live in the continent? According to google basic searches, Africa is seen as the second largest continent after Asia with a population size of 1.3 billion people, and accounts for about 16 % of the world’s population with a magnitude language size of an estimated 1200 to 3000 native languages and several others not recorded. Africa is huge and extremely diverse even differences on our shaded melanin aka skin colour. Our bodies, heights, even hair textures are all unique, but we all are Africans.

In this article, it is stated how everything started in Africa from the father of mathematics known as Emotepe, an Egyptian scholar and pharaoh’s advisor, to the first C-section performed in Kahura, Uganda by indigenous doctors, to the first heart transplant that took place in South Africa. To the unique African knowledge of metallurgy, mining, and astronomy such as the Mali community called the Dagon people that discovered the Sirius B star through indigenous African astronomy.

I, as an African, personally think we should start writing our stories, re-introduce our languages, our education and embrace our cultures. Preserving culture is embracing it, showing off our patterns and prints, our languages, cuisines, and cultures.

Even as simple etiquette rules such as why certain cultures remove their shoes when they enter a house, or why we eat with our hands. African cultures are all unique but there are similar attributes that makes us African, which is we all come from the same continent of Africa.

It should be exposed or rather showed off our Africanity, what makes us true to our roots. We have a sad past but another way to restore and heal our past is writing, painting, sculpturing, inventing and uplift ourselves from the chains of our past. As we are in the 4th industrial revolution, Africa has tried to get some of its dignity back. Many of the poor countries in Africa have no access to banks due to the low value of money in their countries that they started using digital cash to send to their families and they will often get it in cash at a local store.

Agriculture has very much developed in Africa. Many communities have returned to small scale farming to feed their families and have also introduced methods such as mix method crop livestock farming to survive when the governments started being unstable.

Technology has also greatly positively impacted Africa, channels such as YouTube have opened the eyes of the world to see Africa as more than a Dark continent. Places such as South Sudan for example is a country many people have been sceptical about and were terrified of going but through the documentaries of youtubers such as WODE MAYA, many people are able to see the gems of Africa that no one ever thought of exploring.

Economic empowerment has been the plan of many African states and many countries have been open to the idea of an open trade amongst African countries and people such Dr Arikana Chihombori continue to encourage Africans in the diaspora to invest in Africa.

Top 10 Largest African Countries. (n.d.). [Image]. Indo African. https://www.indoafrican.org/top-10-largest-african-countries/

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wide man respects them — Miriam Makeba

Africa needs to invest time in writing their languages. Many Africans do not know how to read or write in their native language. Until recently, most of the languages ​​of people living in the Africa were not written. Many languages ​​only wrote a few topics, such as language and history, but there are a few if not any African science books written in African languages according to the understanding of Africans.

A definition of indigenous knowledge system, knowledge is based on experience, generally after hundreds of years of use and testing, adapting to the local culture and environment, science and mathematics should be written in relation to African people in their language context. Rather than marginalization of one system, there should be an integration of education and language that way Africa can preserve their heritage and better their future.

I dream of an Africa, which is in peace with itself — Nelson Mandela

References

• Brooks, H., Ngwane, T. and Runciman, C., 2020. Decolonising and re-theorising the meaning of democracy: A South African perspective.

• Carey, M., 2021. Peacekeeping in Africa: Recent evolution and prospects. In Peacekeeping in Africa. Routledge.

• Clapham, C., 2020. Decolonising African Studies?. The Journal of Modern African Studies

• Kalinichenko, L.N. and Morozenskaya, E.V., 2021. Clusters in Africa's Economy as a Perspective Model of Production. Outlines of global transformations: politics, economics, law.

• Murdock, G.P., 1959. Africa its peoples and their culture history.

• Petzold, J., Andrews, N., Ford, J.D., Hedemann, C. and Postigo, J.C., 2020. Indigenous knowledge on climate change adaptation: a global evidence map of academic literature. Environmental Research Letters, 15(11).

• Rayne, A., Byrnes, G., Collier‐Robinson, L., Hollows, J., McIntosh, A., Ramsden, M., Rupene, M., Tamati‐Elliffe, P., Thoms, C. and Steeves, T.E., 2020. Centring Indigenous knowledge systems to re‐imagine conservation translocations. People and Nature, 2(3).

• Sithole, P.M., 2020. Indigenous knowledge Systems in Crop Management and Grain Storage in Chimanimani District of Zimbabwe. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 36.

• R. (2021b, May 10). 200+ African Quotes | African Proverbs | Inspired by Africa. A RAI OF LIGHT. https://www.araioflight.com/african-quotes-sayings-proverbs-africa-life-love-family/