Abstract
The question about the existence or non-existence of African philosophy has almost
died a natural death in the past few years. It is now a question of African and non-African
thinkers putting their attention on actually doing African philosophy instead of
“flogging the dead horse” by continuing to grapple with the question about whether
African philosophy exists or not. However, in that quest for doing African philosophy,
only recently has there been some growing consensus on the thinking that the content
and curriculum of philosophy in Africa ought to be transformed and Africanised.
In this article, I critically interrogate the question of what Africanising philosophy
ought to reasonably entail. Much of the discussion on Africanisation eventually leads
towards somewhat anthropological and ethno-philosophical interpretations of African
cultural heritage. However, I transcend these interpretations as I seek to critically
situate African philosophical thinking within universal philosophical discourse.
Although I admit the danger of romanticising African indigenous value systems in the
pursuit of the agenda of Africanisation of the philosophy curriculum, I seek to argue
that the idea of Africanising philosophy ought to be understood as being compatible
with, and consistent with, the requirement of philosophy as a critical discourse. Also, I
argue that an Africanised philosophy curriculum must be relevant to the African
condition. Overall, I propose some possibilities and ways by which the agenda of
Africanising the current philosophy curriculum in Africa could be pursued.