Toyin Falola

Africanity connotes a sense of recognition of the Africanness of the African, the essence of being an African, and an awareness of mental decolonization. The concept of Africanity arose as a response to various attempts on the part of the West to deny the contributions of Africa to world civilization, and to demean its great institutions. African identity has been the severely and exceptionally assaulted, maligned, denied, and manipulated by external forces, including by colonizing and neocolonizing epistemologies. The porousness and emptiness of such denials, betraying breathtaking distortions of historicity in their argumentation were, to say the least, racist.

It is in the context of the deliberate usurpation and denigration of African subjectivity that Africanity occupies a central position as an indispensable tool for a redemptive epistemological rebellion, resistance and negation. Archie Mafeje, who popularized this concept, notes that ‘Africanity, if properly understood, has profound political, ideological, cosmological and intellectual implication’. As such, Africanity is an imperative in the search for the reaffirmation, rediscovery and renaissance of Africa and indigenous knowledge systems.

What constitutes Africanity?

The conference will provide a platform for intellectual debates on how Africanity is an imperative in the search for the reaffirmation, rediscovery and renaissance of Africa and indigenous knowledge systems.