By Oluwole Ogundele
It is a truism that today’s Africa has almost completely fallen from grace to grass. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence has it, that ancient Africa made great strides in the search for scientific and technological progress. These peoples also had challenges which they tried to manage with much success. Therefore, we are not giving a romanticized picture of the African past here. Salute to our remote ancestors for crafting an extraordinarily rich and varied heritage during the pre-European period! Thus, for example, these African societies practised cultural astronomy beyond the sphere of “knowledge for knowledge” sake. Early sailors depended on the behaviours of stars and the moon for a wide range of navigational operations. This celestial knowledge was also applied to agricultural and medical practices.
Unknown to most Africans today, our remote ancestors were also great soil management experts. The contributions of ancient Egypt to astronomical studies on a global scale cannot be sufficiently appreciated let alone appropriated, without some critical analyses of the roles of the peripheries with a special emphasis on West Africa.
Apart from the above, African societies (up to the early European period) engaged in mathematics, medicine, and metallurgy among others. In this context, the Ishango bone with some evidence of mathematical calculations in Congo was dated to over 22,000 years ago. Similarly, a discovery of a bone artefact with evidence of the use of numbers (by the settlers of the Lemombo hilltop site between South Africa and Swaziland) was made. This was dated to 35,000 B.C.E. These traces of mathematical calculations pre-dated the Egyptian civilisation. However, the earliest textbooks on mathematics were written by Ahmes and others around 1650 B.C.E.
Again, a lot of ancient Africans were masters of iron metallurgy-a scientific and technological exercise involving the separation of slag (impurities) from iron ore, inside a combustion chamber otherwise known as a furnace. In this regard, Lejja and Umundu were some of the most popular smelting sites in eastern Nigeria in antiquity. Isundunrin and Taruga in western and northern regions of the country respectively, also had robust archaeological evidence of large-scale iron metallurgy. These were authentic African accomplishments. They were a symbol of evolution from stone age culture to iron age civilisations. These were just a few of ancient Africa’s contributions to science and technology on a global scale. Africa was not static before Europeanisation.
These facets of African history have been deliberately buried by the powerful colonial/neo-colonial oligarchs. Most Africans are oblivious of their true cultural selves and/or identities despite the numerous university degrees they possess. Maximum historical ignorance is an anathema to progress. Africans must try as much as possible to capture the drama and excitement among other things, of the different forms of ancient heritage of the continent.
Africa (the original homeland of all humans, regardless of skin colours and geographical locations) also doubles as the richest continent in the world. This is with respect, to natural resources. It is on record, that about 40 percent of the world’s gold and 90 percent of chromium and platinum are found in this continent. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Africa has about 65 percent of the world’s arable land. But painfully, today’s Africans (with the exception of the greedy, corrupt leaders and their gluttonous business associates), are desperately hungry. Indeed, Africa is now the poorest continent in the globe.
Our robust and diverse natural resources are being cheaply harvested by the developed regions of the world. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions! From the slave trade era to colonisation, and later neo-colonisation, the narrative has remained fundamentally the same. Political and economic exploitation and oppression in new forms continue to bedevil Africans. Africa’s ancient epistemologies and/or knowledge systems were deliberately paralysed by Europe in order to keep the peoples of the continent in a perpetual state of underdevelopment. This paves the way for Europe, US, and Asia to continue to exploit our natural resources. African leaders consistently fail to appreciate the centrality of continental cooperation otherwise called, pan-Africanism. Some of these local leaders are afraid of the West, well known for assassinating or frustrating charismatic African leaders. On the other hand, some of these African leaders have a genetic make-up, engineered with threads of insane greed, reactionary ideologies, and callousness. They do not bother about the robust survival of Africa. Looting the public treasury like lunatics is their stock in trade.
Sometimes, African followers were/are used by the West, against the few serious leaders. That was how Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was finally mowed down after five assassination attempts. He was an irritation to the European political oligarchy for fighting against neo-colonial tendencies. Time has now vindicated this pan-Africanist colossus. Indeed, today’s Africa faces fiercer neo-colonisation due among other factors, to the rise of China to global power.
African peoples are not yet in control of their destinies in the face of over-dependence on the developed nations of the world. Therefore, Africa’s independence is an illusion. The continent remains a farmland for the powerful foreign countries. Africa must unite in order to wrestle neo-colonial machinations to the ground. No individual African nation can successfully accomplish this. A divided Africa is a blessing to the developed countries. Even at the sub-regional level, there is no practical demonstration of seriousness. In this context, the ECOWAS is thoroughly disunited. Some former French colonies like Burkina-Faso and Niger are now approaching Russia for all kinds of imaginary assistance. From the frying pan, into the fire! According to a Yoruba proverb, “the cane that was used for beating the senior wife has been kept in the ceiling of the house for the new wife.” Time will tell! The motive of the developed world is to continue to rape Africa.
After several decades of paper independence from Europe, African leaders have woefully failed to craft critical Africanisation agendas critically rooted in the continent’s epistemologies. In most cases, they (African leaders) are merely running errands for the neo-colonial overlords.
Africa has no voice in such global institutions as the World Bank and IMF which are indeed, a Westernisation agenda.
Historical and cultural education must not be glossed over in the scheme of things. Charity begins at home. Outsiders will continue to treat Africans with disdain, so long as our education is not indigenous culture-loaded, in a critical fashion. That is the basis for self-confidence and creativity. Sankofa (an Akan word in Ghana) means a critical assimilation of the past. In this context, Africans have to exhume or re-capture their deliberately buried glories, in order to remain afloat the turbulent ocean of modern globalisation. Currently, the more educated (in the Western sense) an African is, the more detached he becomes, with respect to his heritage and history. We have refused to appreciate and appropriate the extra-ordinary and of course, transformative capacity of history and culture. Today’s Africa is like a house without a strong foundation. This has to change through the lens of thoroughgoing de-colonisation and by extension, Sankofanisation. Our leaders should shatter the stereotypical image of backward Africa, as the political clock ticks. No more time for empty rhetoric!
•Professor Ogundele is of Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Ibadan.
