Afrocentricity And The Future Of Ghana

The 2012 election and the post-verdict inter-party friction clearly expose the nascent weaknesses in our democracy and state institutions. This observation has compelled us to ask ourselves whether electoral politics and the exercise of democracy are the gateway to Ghana's political and economic success.

Coupled with these observations are the human excesses and imprudence that are brought to bear on the institutional processes. By their very nature, electoral politics and democracy are humanhuman in the sense that they are processed via human agency. And human agency is by definition a conflation of incompatibilities: Stupidity and prudence, comeliness and ugliness, infallibility and errancy, and the like. Obviously, perfection is not one of them. It is, therefore, not surprising to see our institutions exhibit a clinical symptomolgy of social and political Manichaeanism. In that regard, the question we are forced to ask ourselves is: Are there viable alternatives?

I do not think there is necessarily a linear response to that question. And we may not, however, want to deploy the mathematical philosophy of Dedekind cut heregiven that numerical rationality and irrationality are assigned the same status in the logical universe of mathematical science. Besides, the internal self-regulating proclivities of human agency do not operate in like manner.

We are also aware that it is a given that human agency is more complicated than the psychological mechanics of numeration. So, in that case, what do we do? Again, the answer is not a linear one. Given the fallibility of human agency, how do we successfully transform our fallible human institutions? Can the 'infallibility' half of human nature usurp its alter ego, fallibility? I belief the answer partly lies in the utility of Ockham's razor: Compromise. Consensus is another.

Does it, therefore, make sense to propose that the institutionalization of reform must begin with human agency? But exactly where do we start? Human psychology, I suppose. But human agency is also a contextual function of culture, religion, language, education, geography, ethnicity, pedigree, sexuality, race, peer politics, wealth, and social station. So, why don't we look at our churches, mosques, homes, schools, and playgrounds where the genesis of psychosocial and cultural development of human agency gets its rooty nourishment? What sort of education do we give our children in our schools? Churches? Mosques? Homes?

Respectively, are parents and pastors doing a good job of inculcating cultural morality and ethos in their children and congregation? If so, why is corruption so entrenched in our churches? Why are so many of our children reprobate these days? Why has malfeasance become a populist catchword? What sort of training did Kwadwo Afriyie, Kennedy Agyapong, and Asiedu Nketia get while growing up? Have Christological and Mohammedological civilizations and Western pedagogy and libertine wisdom suddenly become the bane of our existenceour confused psycho-culture?

Are our institutions teaching our children to be highly critical of received wisdom? To illustrate my point, let's consider a few ideas. Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam adopted Marxism-Leninism and imposed them on the people. How many people died as a result of this imported idea? What would have become of the idea if Mariam had rooted his Marxist critique of the African state in the context of theoretical Afrocentricity? And where does Idi Amin come in?

The social phenomenon and geopolitical utility of Idi Amin were themselves imposed on Africa from without. According to Andrew Rice's The Teeth May Smile But The Heart Does Not Forget: Murder And Memory in Uganda, the interplay of Zionism, terrorism from Sudan, and the geopolitics of the Middle East constituted the driving force behind Israeli and British involvement in the manipulation of Ugandan politics, in that they clandestinely assisted the collaborationist Amin to set up an army, a fifth column, if you will, within Uganda's national army.

Amin's army would later overthrow Milton Obote whom the West didn't like anyway. Obote's open Marxist critique of Western capitalism dug his political grave. And then Mobuto Sese Sesean American invention! Add Afrifa, Busia, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Inocêncio Kani, JB Danquah, and Kotoka to the mix, and you have a stale politico-historical salad. What makes it so pornographically easy for others to manipulate us for their exclusive economic and political gain? The question for Ghana and Africa is: Do we prefer outward-looking dependency to inward-looking progressiveness? Your answer is as good as mine.

Next, have we looked at our educational system? Is it tailored to the exigencies of technological and scientific modernism? If not, what are we doing about it? If yes, why are we not where we are supposed to be? Tactically, Akufo-Addo's free education was not the answer, either. Quality education is. Rev. Mensah Otabil was right on that score. That said, the electioneering tendency on Akufo-Addo's part to associate his educational freebies with Albert Einstein was shamefully misplaced.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes' Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist, Hans C. Ohanian's Einstein's Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius, and Ronald W. Clark's Einstein: The Life and Times are beginning to shed new light on Einstein's real contributions to relativistic physics. The India mathematician Dr. Chandra Kant Raju, one of the world's leading critics of Einstein, for instance, shows in his brilliant exposé, 'Einstein: From Icon to Con-man,' that Einstein was neither the seminal author of special relativity nor general theory of relativity (See his piece at the link: http://ckraju.net/misc/Einstein.html#mistake1). Moreover, a chorus of authoritative voices is challenging the commercialized orthodoxy of Einstein's role in relativistic physics. So, where did Akufo-Addo's history and philosophy of science come from? Those sentiments aside, are we ready to scientize and technologize our educational system yet?

That brings us to the next question: Why don't we give our reputable men and women scientists and men and women of lettersCheikh Anta Diop, Francis Allotey, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, to name just threethe opportunities to develop our falling educational systems? These globally respected scholars sell like hot cakes in the West, and I wonder why we don't indigenize their revolutionary ideas, let alone contract their expertise. Why must we idolize foreign figures whose ideational contributions to knowledge economy and to history of knowledge are being questioned, brought into disrepute? The leading French archeological EgyptologistJean Vercoutertried unsuccessfully to lure Diop to France; Thiong'o is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Director of the University of California's International Center for Writing and Translation. Allotey's considerable contributions to physics, mathematics, and science are common knowledge; it requires no belaboring here. Why did Kenya chase away Thiong'o? Why does Ghana refuse to use Prof. Allotey? Is it because our psychologically dislocated leaders fail to see any good in our men and women of profound intelligence? If that is the case, then they need to get rid of their psychological constipation with Thiong'o's Decolonizing the Mind; Chinweizu's Decolonizing the African Mind! Finally, I believe Diop's African Origin of Civilization and Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State may also assist in the psychological de-constipation process. Africa must learn to make good use of her vast human resources!

Have we considered the relationship between African sociology and economic theory? I believe we must also look at some of the economic models we teach in our African-based schools. My concern here is the smooth transitional equation between theory and praxis. It is certain that the economic theories of Milton Friedman, Karl Marx, John Mayard Keynes, Adam Smith, Jeffrey Sachs, et al, are not strange to African students of economics. But are we tapping the talents of the Yaw Nyarkos and the Dambisa Moyos? Why don't these Eurocentric theories translate linearly into the praxes of material and social comfort on the continent? Is the issue possibly one of ideological friction between African culture and Western thought? And why is it that Westerners themselves are finally beginning to question the moral efficacy of capitalism as a useful thermometer for measuring the temperature of the economic activities of a given polity? Is it because of the Libor scandal? Corporate tax invasion and 'illegal' offshore banking? The subprime crisis? The problem of 'insider trading' on Wall Street? Don't we think decolonizing our universities may be an idea in the right direction? Given the place the agency of human masks has on these financial crimes, do we still teach our African students of economics to subscribe to the so-called 'invisible hand of the market' of Adam Smith?

What role did Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' play in the Libor scandal? What role does it play in 'insider trading' on Wall Street today? This is why our educational system must strike a clear balance between theory and praxis, carefully and clearly delineating their sometimes oppositional merits and demerits. Theories help but over reliance on them breeds unnecessary impracticalities. It's true that our national economies are tied in with international economics through no fault of ours, which explains why a mere spark or cough in, say, America's or China's economy potentially sends a conflagration or tuberculosis down the spine of African national economies.

It also explains why we need to develop internal economic fireproofs within an African context. Finally, it also explains why we must introduce our students of economics to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped the World, and Amos Wilson's Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political, and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century. Meanwhile, the questions of graft, of cronyism, and of public corruption in general must be rigorously addressed. The political sociology of nationalism vis-à-vis inter-ethnic ghettoization must not be put on the back burner either; it must see the light of day! Official incompetence and bottlenecks and bureaucratic juggernaut must be reduced as much as possible. Operational research analysis and econometrics indicate that there is a high collateral cost society pays for such unnecessary official and administrative encumbrances.

Finally, we may also have to revisit our past and see what is there which may be beneficial to African modernism. The Dogon of Mali knew about Sirius B before the West (See Griaule's The Pale Fox). Isaac Newton, for instance, credited ancient Black Egyptians with 'discovering' Newtonian gravitation, given his understanding that Egyptian advances in cosmology anticipated his theory of gravity. The ancient Black Egyptians also laid down the foundations of philosophy, of science, and of mathematics (See Diop's Civilization or Barbarism; James' Stolen Legacy; Bernal's triumvirate collection Black Athena; Ben-Jochannan's Africa: Mother of Western Civilization and African Origins of Major 'Western Religions'; Sertima's Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern; Obenga's African Philosophy: The Pharaonic Period: 2780-330 BC; Eglash's African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design; Asante's and Abarry's African Intellectual Heritage; Zaslasky's Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures; and Asante's Classical Africa. Indeed, Africa has never been a geopolitical or epistemological backwater of transformative ideas.

Therefore, I ask five simple questions: (1) Where did Ghana (Africa) go wrong? (2) Which of the fictionalized accountsAchebe's Things Fall Apart, Dangarembga's Nervous Condition, and Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Bornportray(s) a powerful African society? (3) Does it make sense to retrace one's historical steps when confronted with the Chronological cul-de-sac of futurism? (4) Didn't ancient Africa have constitutional monarchies in place a thousand years before the first of its kind ever appeared in Europe (See Diop's Pre-colonial Black Africa)? (5) How come ancient Africa sustained and fed empires and states for thousands of years and Somalia can't seem to recover itself from its 'failed state' status?

As for me, I know one thing for sure: The Theory of Afrocentricity is the future of Ghana (Africa)! My gift to you is Asante's Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Read it!

Brothers and sisters, let's join our hands in building Ghana and Africa!

Thank you.