TOWARDS AFRICA'S TRANSFORMATION IN THE TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY: A DIALECTICAL APPRAISAL OF AUTHENTIC NATIONHOOD

Abstract

The economic, political and socio-cultural realities among African nations reveal a gruesome picture of inauthentic nationhood. That is, nations that lack the capabilities for genuine transformation, creativity and innovativeness. It is against the backdrop of these crises that have bedeviled the African societies that this paper proposes to examine the problem of attaining genuine development in the continent. This paper reveals the need for Africa to liberate itself from the bondage of perpetual exploitation and underdevelopment. It emphasizes the imperative for Africa to re-assert its being and redefine its identity. This paper advocates the adoption of the philosophy of dialectics as a process for occasioning the desired change in Africa. It considers the logic of dialectics as the appropriate philosophical method for appraising the trend of genuine development with a view to creating authentic platform, which would guide the thoughts and activities of African nations in order to have rapidly improving societies. It concludes that Africa must rediscover itself and fashion out a new philosophical ideology from the background of its cultural experience in order to evolve a meaningful development. This is the way towards the objective realization of genuine development and authentic nationhood; it is the path leading to meaningful and sustainable transformation of Africa in the new millennium.