Africa and the Challenge of Modernity

• Published in: Endangered African Knowledges and the Challenge of Modernity pp. 8 - 48
• Main Author: Ude, Donald Mark C.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2024; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• ISBN: 9781032705682; 9781032705705; 1032705701; 103270568X
• DOI: 10.4324/9781032705712-2

This chapter places the book within the purview of scholarship on Africa and its attempt to grapple with the challenge modernity presents, drawing on the insights of such key thinkers as Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong' O, Pauline Hountondji, and Kwame Gyekye. The key point argued in this chapter is that the fateful clash between African cultures and Western modernity has had an all-ramifying disruptive effect on the former, particularly endangering Africa's epistemic resources and ways of life, and leaving identity crisis in its wake. This crisis has defined Africa's modernization. This chapter thoroughly discusses the issues thrown up by modernity in Africa, namely the race question, leadership crisis and the problem of petit-bourgeois elite, the nation-state question, the shattering of traditional social fabric, and the subjugation of indigenous epistemic resources. Drawing on the writings of Achebe, it is also shown that the Igbo experience resonates with the larger African experience. This chapter analyzes the various intellectual attempts by African scholars to address some of these challenges, showing their merits but also pointing out their shortcomings. These shortcomings necessitate a more robust epistemic response that the book sets out to provide.