What is knowledge? Is knowledge as objective as mountains, valleys, oceans, lakes and rivers, or is what constitutes knowledge determined by culture? We usually presume that knowledge has to do with understanding the world as it is rather than as we might imagine it to be. Many of us assume that the more academic certificates one has, the more knowledge one possesses. Yet scholars now point out that knowledge can only be properly understood if we consider insights from a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, psychology, economics, politics and philosophy, among others. In ancient Athens, “politics” was understood as the management of the affairs of the city-state (polis). However, in line with the thought of Niccolò Machiavelli, many now understand politics as the activities of acquiring and retaining coercive power, and it is in this latter sense that I speak here of the politics of knowledge production. “Economics” comes from the Greek words oikos (“household”) and nomos (“law”, “management” or “principle”), literally “the law, management or principle of the household”, but has come to refer to the management of a society’s resources.

Knowledge production directed by politics and economics

As I pointed out in “Concrete Data and Abstract Notions in the Philosophical Study of Indigenous African Thought”, knowledge production is an integral part of social processes, and therefore necessarily laden with social, moral, political, and, most importantly, economic considerations. As the late Nigerian social scientist Claude Ake observed in Social Science as Imperialism, science in any society is apt to be geared to the interests and impregnated with the values of the ruling class that ultimately controls the conditions under which it is produced and consumed by financing research, setting national priorities, controlling the education system and the mass media, and in other ways. Thus, the choices of subject matter and methodology are heavily influenced by priorities identified in specific economic, social and political contexts: this set of dynamic interactions with economics as its foundation is what the late Egyptian economist, Samir Amin, following Karl Marx, referred to as “political economy”.

Besides, the transmission of knowledge reflects a society’s economic structures. In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire memorably highlights the distinction between “banking education”, in which the learner is a docile and passive recipient of knowledge from the teacher, and which therefore reflects the capitalist power hierarchy, and “problem-solving education” entailing a dialogical approach in which both “teacher-students” and “student-teachers” teach and learn. Tragically but not surprisingly, six decades after formal independence, most schools and universities in Africa continue to deploy banking education in line with the capitalist power relations characteristic of the societies in which they function.

To illustrate the point that the production and transmission of knowledge are greatly influenced by politics, Leonhard Praeg, in A Report on Ubuntu, presents a hypothetical conversation between a South African philosophy professor of European descent and a young African postgraduate law student who is considering registering for a second master’s degree in philosophy. At one point, she challenges the professor’s presentation of philosophy as an objective and universal enterprise by highlighting the fact that the choice of who to include in any philosophical discourse is itself a political one:

Well, it seems obvious to me . . . that the most fundamental starting point for any philosophical conversation should be questioning the mechanisms that decide who is included and who is excluded from that conversation and whose traditions of thought will or will not be invoked in that conversation. Perhaps the most fundamental questions, the questions that every conversation should start with are political, questions such as: How is the difference between the included and excluded legitimized and what kind of institutional arrangements exist to safeguard and perpetuate certain kinds of knowledge at the exclusion of others?

Colonial devastation of indigenous systems of knowledge

In The Invention of Africa, the Congolese philosopher V.Y. Mudimbe explains that colonialism and colonization basically mean “organization”, “arrangement”. The two words derive from the Latin word colere, meaning to cultivate or to design.” He goes on to point out that the Western colonisers organized and transformed non-European areas into fundamentally European constructs:

[I]t is possible to use three main keys to account for the modulations and methods representative of colonial organization: the procedures of acquiring, distributing, and exploiting lands in colonies; the policies of domesticating natives; and the manner of managing ancient organizations and implementing new modes of production. Thus, three complementary hypotheses and actions emerge: the domination of physical space, the reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective. These complementary projects constitute what might be called the colonizing structure, which completely embraces the physical, human, and spiritual aspects of the colonizing experience.

Indeed, the Western imperialists only left their colonies in Africa and elsewhere after putting in place numerous structures to ensure their ongoing, albeit covert, control of the economies of the said territories. For example, in the late 1930s France created the CFA Franc Zone, comprising 14 West and Central African countries as well as the Comoros, bound by a monetary cooperation policy ostensibly to ensure the financial stability of its members, all of who used one or other of the two versions of the CFA Franc as their currency. Both CFA Francs have a fixed exchange rate to the euro —real evidence of what I would refer to as “chains that bind”. Similarly, in the 1950s, the Swynnerton Plan in Kenya sought to mitigate the unpopularity of the British colonial regime by creating an African land-owning petty middle class that would be driven by an imperative to protect its property, and thereby view itself as having shared interests with the European settlers after the country’s independence.

Furthermore, the Western imperialists “left” only after ensuring that their former colonies adopted liberal democratic constitutions based on individualist capitalist values rather than on the communalistic outlooks of the peoples of Africa. They also ensured that the colonial territories embraced Western legal systems. For example, on 12th August 1897, the British invaders declared what they called The Reception Date, referring to the decree that the English statutes of general application passed before 12th August 1897 are law in Kenya, unless a Kenyan statute, or a latter English statute made applicable in Kenya, has repealed any such statute. In short, the British invaders declared the legal systems of the peoples of present day Kenya null and void, or, at best, relegated them to the status of “customary law” presumed to be inferior to the British legal system. This situation still holds to date, as evident in the way in which advocates and judges in Kenya frequently refer to English law, but very rarely to the jurisprudence of Kenya’s various peoples. No wonder “customary law” remains a highly marginalised area of study in most universities in Africa decades after independence.

Both CFA Francs have a fixed exchange rate to the euro —real evidence of what I would refer to as “chains that bind”.

Similarly, the colonisers demeaned the diverse intellectual inventions and innovations of the peoples of Africa in areas such as medicine, environmental conservation, culinary arts, and creative works (such as songs, poems, fables and legends) among others. For example, they used the paradoxical and pejorative term “witch-doctor” to refer to indigenous healers, thereby deliberately conflating the restorative roles of healers with the destructive acts of wizards and witches. Indeed, due to that outrageous deliberate colonial conflation, most Kiswahili speakers in Kenya now do not appreciate the distinction between mganga (“healer”) and mchawi (“witch/wizard”), thereby failing to appreciate that even a medical doctor trained in a Western-type medical school is a mganga, and only refers to him or her as daktari from the English word “doctor”. No wonder it has been so easy to convince most people in Africa that their own indigenous systems of medical care are utterly hopeless in the face of COVID-19, or that any innovations they might develop to manage the scourge must be validated in Geneva, Washington DC or elsewhere outside the continent or under the direction of institutions based outside the continent.

No wonder it has been so easy to convince most people in Africa that their own indigenous systems of medical care are utterly hopeless in the face of COVID-19.

A crucial component of a people’s culture is their language; apart from being pivotal to their group identity, it is the storehouse of their accumulated knowledge and wisdom. The colonial establishments therefore systematically downgraded indigenous languages, referring to them as “vernaculars”—a term used to denote languages spoken by “uncivilised” communities and contrasted with “literary” or “cultured” languages. Thus, the typical child in Africa undergoes instruction at school using English, French, Portuguese or German, thereby losing his or her cultural grounding through the lack of proficiency in his or her mother tongue; and it is much worse than that, for he or she begins to disparage indigenous languages. Many of us have heard the claim by our compatriots that the languages of the peoples of Africa are incapable of mediating scholarly discourses. This claim is oblivious to, or deliberately ignores, the fact that the Western languages with which many associate academic discourses have acquired their proficiency in scholarship only because of borrowing heavily from a variety of languages, and nothing, except a colonised mentality, prevents speakers of the indigenous languages of Africa from enriching them in similar fashion.

Unshackling contemporary scholarship in Africa from Western hegemony

In The Invention of Africa, V.Y. Mudimbe is particularly unhappy that, long after political independence, African studies continue to be conducted within the colonial framework that views African systems of thought and practice as primitive and savage:

The fact of the matter is that, until now, Western interpreters as well as African analysts have been using categories and conceptual systems which depend on a Western epistemological order. Even in the most explicitly “Afrocentric” descriptions, models of analysis explicitly or implicitly, knowingly or unknowingly, refer to the same order.

This sorry situation, Mudimbe tells us, is partly due to the fact that “[S]ince most African leaders and thinkers have received a Western education, their thought is at the crossroads of Western epistemological filiation and African ethnocentrism.” He also points out that the structures of the colonial establishment remained firmly in place after formal political independence:

In the early 1960s, the African scholar succeeded the anthropologist, the “native” theologian replaced the missionary, and the politician took the place of the colonial commissioner. All of them find reasons for their vocations in the dialectic of the Same and the other.

Mudimbe further observes that colonialism creates an imaginary African past in a bid to fabricate “the other”, perhaps best exemplified by tourist art. He notes that in this subjugating environment, any solid evidence of science or philosophy in Africa is dismissed by the colonisers, as illustrated by the case of Dogon astronomy which holds that the planets rotate around their axes and revolve around the Sun, but which Western authors such as Carl Sagan explain away as knowledge obtained from a Western visitor to the Dogon. Mudimbe is emphatic that anthropology was specifically designed as a tool of Western imperialist domination with which to paint the peoples of Africa as frozen in a stage of “development” long transcended by Western societies.

A crucial component of a people’s culture is their language; apart from being pivotal to their group identity, it is the storehouse of their accumulated knowledge and wisdom.

According to Samir Amin, current academic programmes in the social sciences in African Universities have been prescribed by the World Bank and allied authorities in order to destroy any capacity to develop critical thought. Unable to understand concrete existing systems that govern the contemporary world, the brainwashed cadres are reduced to the status of “executives” implementing programmes decided elsewhere, unable to contribute to changing that world rejected by their own people. Similarly, Claude Ake observes, “The West is able to dominate the Third World not simply because of its military and economic power, but also because it has foisted its idea of development on the Third World through the institutions and activities of knowledge production.”

The humanities (such as literature, music and philosophy) are not doing any better, as the Western canons continue to enjoy an exalted status in the various disciplines under this category: many philosophers from Africa still take great pride in their knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and so on, while thinking very little of philosophical works by scholars from their own continent, and much less of the intellectual creations of their compatriots with no Western-type formal education. In like manner, many literary critics from Africa enjoy a sense of great accomplishment from their mastery of European literary classics while tacitly believing that nothing of similar grandeur is to be found among their own peoples. Besides, many scholars in Africa take great pride in having their works published in Western Europe and North America by what they happily refer to as “international journals” and “international publishers”, while considering publications from university presses in places such as Kigali, Dar es Salaam or Harare as of inferior status, thereby continuing to lend credence to the almost hegemonic Western system of knowledge production decades after formal independence.

Yet another important aspect of the hierarchical process of knowledge production has to do with the way in which events are reported. Many think that reports in media such as books, print and electronic news outlets are objective sources of knowledge. However, scholars of critical discourse analysis have repeatedly illustrated that such reports promote the interests of the economically dominant classes. Thus in a capitalist context, the bulk of mass media promotes the interests of the owners of capital. For example, where the police violently stop a workers’ demonstration, the media are likely to report “Four Demonstrators Shot” rather than “Police Shoot Four Demonstrators”, thereby suppressing the fact of who shot them. Similarly, school textbooks covertly and overtly promote capitalist values and advance the view that any challenge to such values is a threat to “stability”.

Long after political independence, African studies continue to be conducted within the colonial framework that views African systems of thought and practice as primitive and savage.

In Fourth Industrial Revolution: Innovation or New Phase of Imperialism?, I pointed out that humanity is currently confronted by a world dominated by artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things and blockchain, resulting in a fusion of technologies that is integrating the physical, digital and biological spheres. Think of how all manner of people can determine where you are if you forget your mobile phone “Location”  function on, or listen to your conversations and view your actions if you unwittingly allow an app to access your microphone and camera. Already phone manufacturers are including contact tracing apps in their devices, and many phones now have the option of a fingerprint instead of a series of numbers for passwords. Through the enormous power of artificial intelligence (“AI”), all these data are quickly analysed to produce detailed profiles of phone users—where they go, what they like listening to and watching, what they buy, among others. In short, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (“4IR”), privacy is now an illusion. Yet the bulk of these new technologies are owned by large corporations domiciled in the West and East, reducing the peoples of Africa to mere consumers subject to the whims of the owners of the technologies. All this raises the real possibility of a global dictatorship headed by the owners of these technologies reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, and it boils down to who controls knowledge production.

In Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, Miranda Fricker argues that there is a distinctively epistemic type of injustice, in which someone is wronged specifically in his or her capacity as a knower. This is precisely what Western imperialism has subjected the peoples of Africa to. Similarly, in the preface to his celebrated work, Epistemologies of the south: Justice against Epistemicide, Boaventura de Sousa Santos indicates that he seeks to defend three important postulates:

First, the understanding of the world by far exceeds the Western understanding of the world. Second, there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice. Third, the emancipatory transformations in the world may follow grammars and scripts other than those developed by Western-centric critical theory, and such diversity should be valorized.

Nevertheless, there are several encouraging initiatives to address the epistemic injustice in Africa. The valiant struggle of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who has consistently pointed out that using African languages in creative writing is an act of decolonising the mind, Kwasi Wiredu, who advocates for the same approach in African philosophy, and the six African philosophers who wrote book chapters in their mother tongues for the edited volume Listening to ourselves: A Multilingual Anthology of African Philosophy, are all efforts at challenging the hegemonic Western system of knowledge production. Besides, the research and teaching projects in African languages, African oral and written histories, African oral and written literatures, African music, African art, African philosophy, among others are evidence that a sizeable number of academics in Africa have perceived the problem, and are determined to contribute to the turning of the tide.

Yet several intellectuals who have raised their voices against global capitalism and the attendant hegemonic Western system of knowledge production have borne the brunt of state violence: Samir Amin was forced into exile from his native Egypt in 1960 for his Marxist but anti-Stalinist views; Paulo Freire’s success in teaching Brazilian peasants how to read landed him in prison and a subsequent long and painful exile; Walter Rodney’s exposition of the damage inflicted on Africa by European mercantilism that evolved into capitalism in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa resulted in his imprisonment in his native land of Guyana, and his death as a result of a car bomb blast in Georgetown, Guyana, remains a mystery, as does the plane crush that cut short Claude Ake’s life during the autocratic reign of Sani Abacha in Nigeria; Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Sani Abacha regime in Nigeria, and Wole Soyinka escaped Abacha’s murderous hand by a whisker; Ngugi wa Thiong’o spent time as a detainee without trial in a Kenyan maximum security prison for organising a peasants’ theatre group to perform his anti-capitalist plays, and later went into decades of exile, and the list is much longer than this. Nevertheless, the intellectuals of the exploited and oppressed peoples of Africa must continue to innovate in a bid to contribute towards the true liberation of their continent.

Genocide is a heavy word. It not only tells us that crimes have been committed but it is a word specifically designated to describe crimes that are committed because one party has declared that another group of people are less human, and as a result, not only should they not be allowed to continue living, but their capacity for inter-generational existence should be entirely exterminated. Where there is genocide, there is the worst expression of humanity, a hatred that makes perpetrators of genocidal violence believe that they are doing themselves, their communities, and the world at large a service by actively working to kill off the people they have designated as less than human because of their skin colour, their way of life, their ethnicity or other identity.

It was in the wake of a genocide that the United Nations and the other international instruments of political and social accountability that we know today were born. It was not the first genocide that had ever occurred on earth, but a chapter of violence in human history, the Holocaust, that involved a systemic, calculated, and long-term effort to exterminate people from the earth because they were labelled as un-human. 

Designers of genocidal campaigns often see themselves, as being, by some intrinsic quality, more worthy and more capable of operating within human faculties such as thinking, feeling, deciding, processing, planning, and dreaming. Although some have argued that the legal definition of genocide refers solely to the physical destruction of all, or part of a group, in the Ethiopian context the term has been used to include the act of destroying a community’s cultural, economic, social, and political power in order to subjugate it to another. This is the sense in which I will use the term in this article.

The word genocide has proliferated in popular Ethiopian political discourse since November 2020, namely because of the war in Tigray, where events in the region have been termed a genocide mostly by the Tegaru diaspora. This essay will attempt to unpack the complicated ways that acts or perceptions of genocide have been utilized by the Ethiopian state and its ideological allies to support its goal: the creation of a unitary state. I will explore Ethiopia’s history of genocide and the present institutionalization of this history; the events that occurred in Oromia in the wake of Haacaaluu Hundeessaa’s assassination; and the collective and institutional denial of the genocide in Tigray.

Ethiopia’s history of genocide

Contrary to the narrative that Ethiopia is the only country on the African continent that was never colonized, Ethiopia itself is a colonial state built on a colonial legacy that involved, like other imperial states, genocide. The process of forming the Ethiopian state involved a power-hungry monarch backed by several European powers expanding into the southern, eastern, and western independent territories and imposing a cultural, social, political, economic, and even spiritual hegemonic order over a vastly diverse people. This required an attempted eradication of already established ways of life—in other words a genocidal pursuit. Where there was resistance, people were simply wiped out. One example of this is the Calanqo massacre of 1887. On 6 January of that year, Menelik II’s army invaded eastern Oromia and indiscriminately killed thousands of Oromo and non-Oromo people. Another example is to be found in the events that took place in Aanolee in 1887.

In the case of the Ethiopian empire, there operates an ideology that purports that Ethiopianism, an Amhara-centred cultural, spiritual, and political worldview, is the superior existence and you can, as a non-Amhara, experience semblances of belonging and power in this paradigm if you do not oppose it with a counter-existence. The goal of the Empire was and still is the control of land and exploitation of resources, and despite the presence of a belief that those that are of a given identity are inherently entitled to manage the economy and rule, the Empire can integrate those willing to assimilate.

The idea of Ethiopia was resisted since its inception. For example, in his book Conquest and Resistance in the Ethiopian Empire, 1880 -1974: The Case of the Arsi Oromo Mohammed Abbas Ganamo describes various military resistances that emerged in response to Menelik II’s efforts to consolidate the lands of southern Oromia into the Ethiopian state. This kind of resistance will continue until there are fundamental changes in the way the state relates to the people, or until the state no longer exists. This is not lost on the architects and beneficiaries of Ethiopianism, and although seemingly unable to forfeit their unitary and ultra-capitalist ambitions, the institutionalization of inclusion and progress is an effective tool used in Ethiopia today to facilitate a real and ongoing genocide.

The most obvious example was the hyper-focus on Abiy Ahmed’s Oromo ethnic identity when he was appointed leader of the transitional government. His appointment was touted as a win for the Qeerroo movement and an antidote to the oppression of the Oromo mass at large. His existence as an Oromo became (and still is) a pacifier used when anyone dares to point out that extrajudicial killings, detention, and other war crimes are taking place with the intention of eradicating Oromos who resist assimilation, refuse silence, and embody a counter-existence.

Another example is the institutionalization of the Oromo thanksgiving festival, Irreechaa. A celebration rooted in the Waaqeefata religion, Irreechaa is celebrated by Oromos of all walks of life, representing the heart of Tokkummaa (unity) amongst the Oromo nation. Being such a strong display of culture, identity, and national unity, Irreechaa has been targeted with violence by previous Ethiopian governments, including, for example, the Irreechaa massacre of 2016. However, in 2021, Irreechaa was turned into an exclusive event that took place in Oromia’s capital Finfinnee. People bought expensive tickets and a special ceremony was held by some small body of water (the Irreechaa ritual requires the wetting of leaves in water). As this took place, the Oromo mass who were trying to participate in the day’s events outside of the bubble created by the state were arrested, beaten, and altogether obstructed from commemorating the event. For Ethiopia to continue as one polity without reckoning with its need to fundamentally change its posture towards the people who live within its borders, genocide will remain an existential need of the state.

The institutionalization of inclusion and progress is an effective tool used in Ethiopia today to facilitate a real and ongoing genocide.

In the early hours after the assassination of singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist Haacaaluu Hundeessaa on 29 June 2020, a myriad of events began to unfold in a number of Oromo towns, including Shashamane and Dheera. What happened in the final hours of 29 June and into the morning of 30 June would form the bedrock of a narrative that associates all expressions of Oromummaa (Oromo nationalism) with hatred and violence towards the minority Amhara ethnic group. Eyewitness accounts suggest that the rampage that consumed the town of Dheera was not merely visceral rage ignited by the killing of a hero, but a coordinated and curated campaign involving largely, people who were not from the town itself.

According to an investigation conducted in the days following the incident, eyewitnesses recount that young people involved in the violence were not locals and had access to information that could only have come from local government officials. Who exactly was behind the attacks and what the intended consequences of the attacks were can only be speculated at, but there have been obvious and enduring impacts on the towns in question and on the position of the Oromo and Oromummaa within the state’s larger narrative.

Shashamane was a booming economic centre with investments flowing directly from the international market into the heart of the city, rivalling the country’s capital, Addis Ababa, which is an urban site that has been manufactured to serve a small economic elite. The destruction of Shashamane, a space that exists outside of Ethiopianist cultural and religious hegemony, severely impacted the town’s representation in the international community and successfully diverted investment. As for the social and political impacts, Oromummaa was henceforth marked as a precursor for genocidal violence, as the violence in Dheera and other places was labelled a massacre of a Christian-Amhara minority by a fanatically nationalist, even religious-nationalist, Oromo majority (Oromo being a majority Muslim nation).

Eyewitness accounts suggest that the rampage that consumed the town of Dheera was not merely visceral rage ignited by the killing of a hero.

Although these assertions completely ignore the fact that the violence also targeted Oromos themselves and the fact that Oromo and Amhara communities have been living together peacefully in these towns for decades, this assertion has manipulated the truth that there is dormant social and political unease between these communities that is rooted in unresolved historical trauma and if triggered, violence could erupt.

The creation of perceived genocide sounds like a conspiracy theory, and many were painted as conspiracy theorists whenever analysis suggesting that something strange was going on was offered. But the truth is that there is a pattern. Where Oromo nationalistic ambitions are represented, whether by armed struggle, peaceful resistance, or the act of counter-existence, evidence to suggest that the ambition of the Oromo is to exterminate Amhara people from Oromia emerges in the form of actual dead Amhara civilians. Although impossible to refute an eyewitness statement recounting Oromo people killing non-Oromo people because of their identity without sounding like a callous brute, the truth is that there have never been independent investigations into these killings, and where the accusations have fallen on the Oromo Liberation Army, the group has itself called for such investigations time and time again.

It is also true that this kind of genocidal violence taking place is not a far-fetched idea. The state is aware that what has created a fabric of relative peace and cooperation between Oromo and Amhara people in Oromia is a willingness, at a grassroots level, to live day-to-day life beyond historic trauma. This, though, does not mean that the trauma has been addressed or that it has no present-day impacts on the dynamics of equality and marginalization in the context of the wider Ethiopian state. Instead of taking steps to heal this trauma, the state is using the perception of genocide to create a vacuum that only its unitary, supposedly ethnically transcendent political ideology, can fill.

Conversely, it is difficult to hear the first-hand testimonies that have come out of Tigray and not refer to what has gone on in the region since November 2020 as a genocide. And yet the Ethiopian state and its supporters have pushed to frame the conflict as void of any actors that are targeting Tegaru people because of their identity. If it were to admit that such a thing has occurred, then the very logic that the Prosperity Party’s unitary politics rests on, the logic suggesting that Ethiopia does not care for ethnic identity, would come undone.

What has created a fabric of relative peace and cooperation between Oromo and Amhara people in Oromia is a willingness, at a grassroots level, to live day-to-day life beyond historic trauma.

In the conclusion of the first essay in this series, I noted that the obsession Ethiopia has with a falsified self-image, where it simply cannot do or be wrong, has made denial feel like the only way that it can survive. The other option would be to give up on the dream of a hegemonic nation, but that would require reckoning with deep-seated shame and guilt over what has been done thus far in pursuit of this dream. The collective denies that there is a genocide going on in Tigray because doing the opposite would mean accepting that the unitary Ethiopian polity as envisioned by the Empire of old and its ideological descendants can only come to be through genocide, an act that Ethiopian exceptionalism suggests that the Ethiopian human being is just not capable of.

Not only does the desire to avoid confronting generations of shame and guilt make the Ethiopianist collective unable to call out crimes for what they are, but it also plays a huge role in the cyclical nature of genocidal violence all across the country. I believe that state violence in Ethiopia is viciously perpetual because it is fighting to keep shame at bay. When we cannot release ourselves from the shame of any given past, we do more of the thing that we are ashamed of, with grandeur and excess, in order to normalize these acts to the parts within us that are reeling in shame and to tell the world that “there is no shame here”. What the empire has done to the Oromo over decades, what it is doing to the Tegaru today and the manner in which it is using the lives of innocent Amhara people as the political game is simply genocide weaponized to build economic and political power.

In the last century, many African states have experienced political decolonization and witnessed the spread of democracy. Considering the global political economy, African states fall within the purview of the Washington Consensus and Bretton Woods institutions, and abide by international laws and regulations regarding economic development. African states are heavily influenced by foreign institutions and nations, and even relegated to secondary status under the current international system. As a result, since WWII many African states have either pursued a pro-capitalist path towards economic development, or in a few instances, a non-capitalist or socialist path towards economic development.

Whatever the path adopted toward development, however, African states (their respective governments and economies) exist in a state of perpetual underdevelopment, especially in relation to developed nations. Despite their underdeveloped state, African nations continue to implement economic and public policy recommendations prescribed by developed nations and international organizations and continue to pursue political development that reflects and supports the state apparatus of Western nations, namely European nations and America. This study examines democratization – the spread of democracy – in Africa and the progress of African capitalist and socialist states that have instituted democratic principles while adopting welfare state policies for economic development. The intent is not to advocate for democracy or another form of governance in African states, nor is it to condemn African states that have adopted welfare state policies for their path toward economic development. The study aims to analyse whether the application of democratic principles in African governance, combined with welfare state economic development policies, can be considered a viable option for development considering the structure and function of the global political economy.

Often, the narrative of African states on the path to capitalist economic development is told from a perspective of Western dominance where the incentives African states could receive are overemphasized. However, capitalist development in Africa has led to conditions of economic deterioration. Instead of considering the impetus of capitalist development and pro-West political and economic activities in Africa as the “consumerism development” that African leaders learned from Western nations, I would suggest that Western influences are just as present as they were in previous centuries. It is widespread knowledge that any economic or political reforms to international economic systems enhanced the control of said system by Western powers. The aforementioned fact, combined with the fact that historically society has been stratified based on a social hierarchy of racialism – which was instituted by false narratives and pseudoscience, both of which were dominant factors in the decisions European leaders (first monarchs and clergy members, and eventually politicians and businessmen and women) made regarding the economic exploitation of African states – should not be underemphasized. With the underpinning racial subjugation as the driving force of the global political economy, in my opinion, neither capitalist nor socialist development would lead to economic development that would benefit African citizens and descendants, unless said subjugation was eradicated and outlawed. Furthermore, relationship between Africans and European Socialist states notwithstanding, Africans could also reach pro-socialist and communal paths of economic and political development without Europeans, due to African philosophy.

The conditions that led to the perception of Africans as derogatory are all present in modern capitalist countries. Therefore, examinations of African state reactions to the global political economy and newly instituted economic order created in the post-1948 (World War II) society are critical. With the conclusion of the Second Great War and the development of capitalist nations such as Germany, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and others, as well as the United States’ increasing role as a global superpower, African states became the focus of an “extraction-based” global economy based on commerce, that sought to convert Africa’s many resources into financial capital that would in turn be used to develop the “developed” nations. As a result, many leaders of African nations found themselves in a position where they had to participate in the global system of capitalism and accept foreign oversight or administration of their economic and political affairs. Although Africa is known to have experienced political liberation due to the independence movements of the 1950s and 60s, the economic systems that were instituted by the colonial nations were maintained under the new global economic order. In other words, African nations were nominally “liberated” under the guise of political freedom as African leaders showcased their power and privilege internally among Africans, but were exploited, subjugated, and manipulated economically and socially by foreign powers and the overseers of the global political economy.

African Philosophy and Epistemology

This article seeks to identify if African theory can contribute to development in Africa, considering the nature of the global political economy and the respective approaches to political and economic development in Africa. The development of democratic political systems and institutions is considered a strong political tactic, and the application of welfare state policies combined with increased consumerism is considered the economic model for sustainable development in Africa. This is problematic and frustrating because the spread of democracy and the application of economic policies championed by Western and foreign powers has not led to economic and political development that benefits Africans en masse. The article examines the potential for African philosophy and thought that is independent of foreign guidance to contribute to the development of African states. The impetus for modern African philosophy finds root in similar circumstances:

In Plato’s Theaetetus, Socrates suggests that philosophy begins with wonder. Aristotle agreed. However, recent research shows that wonder may have different subsets. If that is the case, which specific subset of wonder inspired the beginning of the systematic African philosophy? In the history of Western philosophy, there is the one called thaumazein interpreted as awe and the other called miraculum interpreted as curiosity. History shows that these two subsets manifest in the African place as well, even during the pre-systematic era. However, there is now an idea appearing in recent African philosophy literature called onuma interpreted as frustration which is regarded as the subset of wonder that jump started the systematic African philosophy. . . ‘Frustrated’ by colonialism and racialism as well as the legacies of slavery, they were jolted onto the path of philosophy—African philosophy—by what can be called onuma [emphasis mine].

Modern African philosophy was produced by the African’s frustration with slavery’s legacy, colonialism, and both historical and contemporary racialism. Considering the distinct schools of thought that approach ontological and epistemological theorizing differently, it is important to place the approaches to economic and political development in Africa within context with respect to African philosophy. African states are more than capable of leading their own development based on the knowledge, theories, thought, and actions of Africans and the diaspora.

There are various forms of ontological and epistemological approaches to scientific research and theorizing, and as a result, there are distinct schools of thought that approach ontological and epistemological theorizing differently. In “An African Epistemological Approach to Epistemic Certitude and Scepticism”, by Jimoh and Thomas, the authors provide a demonstration of the various forms of ontological and epistemological approaches to scientific research. The authors peruse certainty and scepticism within the context of African epistemology and conclude that culture is the greatest determinant. By juxtaposing African and Western conceptions of epistemology, one can understand the polarity that exists in discourse. Jimoh and Thomas uphold that man and nature, material and metaphysical, are “sacredly united . . . so the African world is a unitary world as against the analytical and pluralistic world of Western thought”. Said differently, African theories of knowledge do not separate subjects and objects but believe both subject and object exist in a continuum and share an interdependent relationship where both subject and object interact and influence each other.

African nations were nominally “liberated” under the guise of political freedom as African leaders showcased their power and privilege internally among Africans.

Considering the nature of development in Africa, as well as the legacy of slavery, colonialism, and contemporary issues of racialism, it is important to consider how Africans’ unique way of creating, surviving, and thriving under extreme conditions can be applied to political and economic development in Africa. Development in African states under the guidance of international organizations and developed nations with either capitalist or socialist economic systems benefits foreign nations and international organizations more than it does Africans. This relationship should be mutually beneficial for African states to experience uninterrupted development.

African development under capitalism and socialism

In Chinweizu’s “Africa and the Capitalist Countries” published in General History of Africa, Volume VIII Africa since 1935, the author discusses various aspects and key points in history that have affected African states that pursued the capitalist road to development. The “Atlantic Charter”, was outlined by the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and instituted multilateral organizations to maintain political, economic, and military control of designated regions of the world.

The Charter led to the development of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1945, where several economic institutions were created such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank system, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to manage international economic and political affairs, as well as the United Nations Organization and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which were established to manage world affairs and secure the collective defence of American and European powers, respectively. Despite their attempts to lead their own economic development in alliance and aligned with capitalists’ interests, African nations ultimately maintained a position similar to colonial times, and remained the source of economic growth for foreign nations while their economic conditions deteriorated. 

In Iba Der Thiam, James Mulira, and Christophe Wondji’s “Africa and the Socialist Countries”, the authors outline the relationship between socialist countries and African states dating back to the early 20th century during the Bolshevik revolution. During this time, African anti-colonial movements were encouraged to combat colonizers and align with the anti-imperialist front, so Lenin’s Comintern established mutual agreements with nationalist organizations including the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), the Kikuyu Central Association and the African National Congress (ANC). Other instrumental organizations that supported communism in Africa were the Red International of Labor Unions, RILU), the United Front from Below (UNFB) and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), for which Jomo Kenyatta was a correspondent. Despite the economic downturn, Marxism continued to spread throughout Africa as Marxist intellectuals trained in Portugal via communist linkages such as Agostinho Neto and Amilcar Cabral.

After WWII, the socialist world began to take an interest in African states – this coincided with the increasing/looming Cold War – and in the period between 1945 and 1960 there was an increase in anti-colonialism, and the independence movement in Africa began to take shape. During the struggle for independence, several African nationalist parties in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Tunisia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and Somali were supported by socialist states. In Southern Africa, the USSR and Eastern Europe assisted the ZAPU movement in Zimbabwe, FRELIMO in Mozambique, and the MPLA in Angola, as well South Africa’s ANC and Namibia’s SWAPO.

The welfare state and democratization in Africa

Some students of social policy see the development of ‘The Welfare State’ in historical perspective as part of a broad, ascending road of social betterment provided for the working classes since the nineteenth century and achieving its goal in our time. This interpretation of change as a process of unilinear progression in collective benevolence for the classes led to the belief in the year 1948 ‘the Welfare State’ was established. Since then, successive governments, Conservative and Labour [parties], have busied themselves with the more effective operation of the various services, with extension here and adjustments there and both parties, in and out of office, have claimed the maintenance of the ‘Welfare State’ as an article of faith . . . An analysis of the more important writings on the subject since 1948 lends support, for the dominant note, far from suggesting that social needs have been neglected, has been that the ‘Welfare State’ was ‘established’ too quickly and on too broad a scale. The consequences, it is argued, have been harmful to the economic health of the nation at its ‘moral fiber’. – Richard Titmuss

Simply defined, a “welfare state” is a state or nation that consist of a central government that provides social services for the nation’s citizenry. This form of public policy is based on the economic output and productivity of a nation, as the aggregate labour of citizens is transformed into wages, income, savings and, hopefully, investment by the government in order to improve public welfare. In “Essays on ‘The Welfare State’” Richard Titmuss offers a series of public lectures and speeches on the efficacy, potential, and purpose of the welfare state in the global political economy. Whereas most of the speeches took place in the 1950s and 1960s, Titmuss’ central argument and takeaway remains in 2021, as the author asserts, that “the social services (however we define them) can no longer be considered as ‘things apart’; as phenomena of marginal interest, like looking out of the window on a train journey. They are a part of the journey itself. They are an integral part of industrialization.” This statement is crucial considering the economic policies and models of development that African states utilize in modern-day society. Readers can observe by Titmuss’ tone that he considered the administration, model, and review of social services provided by a government a key issue considering the divisions of class and labour in British society.

African states are more than capable of leading their own development based on the knowledge, theories, thought, and actions of Africans and the diaspora.

Should we use the maxim provided by Titmuss and multiply the sentiment based on the scope of African states and the global political economy, we would also consider the administration, model, and review of social services provided by African governments important. Yet, the context of African governance can be distinguished from British governance because the United Kingdom does not have a colonial history, which lends itself to cater to its former colonizer in contemporary society via international regulations based on economic policy. Said differently, Britain operates independently (or with its allies) under the current international economic order, while African nations operate as an appendage of the international economic order and their former colonizers.

The underdevelopment of African states cannot be considered to be a product of African governance and leaders as if they operate independently, of their own volition, when in fact, said African leaders have been under the “guidance” and influence of international economic organizations, alliances, and developed nations as they instituted “prescribed” economic policies. The problem with African states implementing welfare state policies for their populations is that the current international economic system does not allow African states to opt out and seek African development as a primary goal. Unfortunately, African nations are only allowed to engage in economic development efforts via the facilitation of international overseers such as the IMF, the OECD, the European Union, and the United States. This point can be further exemplified when considering developments in the international economic order such as the G20 Conference, which features a single African nation, South Africa.

Economic development and policy reform are boosted by political liberation, yet Africa’s new democracies continue to experience economic underdevelopment. In Democratization in Africa: Progress and Retreat, Peter Lewis considers this the “democracy-development disconnect” in his essay “Growth Without Prosperity in Africa”. Lewis notes:

Officials and average citizens alike often note the ‘disconnect’ between macroeconomic indicators and microeconomic performance . . . data on poverty and human development are showing few significant improvements, and citizens report discouragement when surveyed about attitudes and economic conditions . . . This paradox presents a basic challenge for Africa’s new democracies. However desirable democracy may be in its own right, political liberalization does not ensure economic regeneration or improved popular welfare . . . the tension between democracy and welfare is evident. . .

Lewis suggests that while early observations of democracy in Africa did not outperform non-democratic African governments economically, a recent study by Brian Levy assessed 21 African states between 1975 and 2000 and found that African states pursuing democracy and economic reforms were more successful than non-democratic states. Despite the metrics used to assess economic growth in Africa, (GDP growth, income per capita, etc.)  – which led to Levy’s assertion that democracies in Africa were economically successful – such metrics are deceiving as they conceal that African states are under the purview of the international economic order, which ensures that non-African states benefit from African labour more than African states due to the extraction- and commodity-based economy. Secondly, democratic African states that experienced “economic progress” according to Levy, also suffered from welfare state policies, as the public welfare of citizens did not improve, which further illustrates Lewis’ point of “growth without prosperity in Africa”.

As the end of the colonial era gave rise to the independence era and movements that saw Africans vie for nationalist leadership within their respective states and various forms of political development took place, the new international economic order continued to benefit from former European colonies in Africa. African states experienced politicization and liberation movements that lead to political development, whilst foreign states and the international system of economic governance maintained the extraction-based economy. After independence, African states began to implement welfare state policies and pursued economic development models under the tutelage, supervision, and oversight of developed nations and agents from international bodies such as the IMF, World Bank, OECD, and EU. It can be said that African states’ relationship with former colonizers merely changed to one of idolization, as the global political economy expanded at the expense of African labour. However, is the decision to prioritize the economic and political recommendations of non-African states a rejection of African philosophy? Can African philosophy and thinking that is absent of foreign guidance and interference enhance the efficacy of democracy in Africa?

African nations ultimately maintained a position similar to colonial times, and remained the source of economic growth for foreign nations while their economic conditions deteriorated.

If the present conditions in African states are due to poor African leadership, management, and administration of public services and economic development, one must consider the influence of foreign states. Foreign states and international institutions have driven the increase of democratic institutions in African governance, yet economic development that benefits Africans has been absent. Beyond this fact, should we analyse the behaviour of African leaders and elites and their pursuit of economic policy that does not prioritize Africans through a particular lens, say Pan-African, one could consider their actions indicative of notions they were taught via colonialism. By neglecting the needs of African citizens, have African elites and leaders in fact treated their fellow citizens in ways similar to how colonizers treated Africans during colonialism? Can this be considered benign neglect? Was the purpose of implementing democratic institutions in African states post-independence movements and pursuing economic policies that benefit welfare state economies that are non-African supposed to contribute to political and economic development in Africa? Based on this treatment, I believe the answer is, at best, “not exactly”.

Using this conclusion as a driving and creative force, those who believe in the potential of African states should unquestionably be interested in the capacities of African states to facilitate and lead their own political development, democratic or non-democratic, as long as the economic activity improves the welfare of Africans and their relative economic status in the global political economy.