AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY IN A SCIENTIFIC AGE: ITS RELEVANCE AND CHALLENGES IN RESPONSE TO THE CRISES OF DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA.

Abstract

Trailing behind the backwardness of Africa in the spheres of modern science and modern technology, this paper is tailored to explicate the relevance and challenges of African philosophy in the contemporary world driven by modern science and technology. Against this backdrop, the paper seeks to unveil the greatest challenge of Africa’s quest for scientific technological development in the 21st century and the indispensable role African philosophy ought to play in order to overcome it. It also avers that this perception of knowledge via science and technology influenced the intellectual response to the crises of development in Africa. The question that logically erupts at this point is whether African philosophy has anything to offer towards the repositioning and transformation of the derogatory condition of contemporary Africa. The answer to this question could be said to explain the intellectual response to the crises of development in Africa. To wit, it is germane we examine the plausibility, relevance and challenge of African philosophy in the contemporary world. Against this backdrop, we uphold the view that the relevance of African philosophy to Africa in the age of science lies in its ability to generate and disseminate worthwhile ideas that will liberate Africans from all factors that have hitherto held them in bondage. Prominent among these factors are political instability, incompetent leadership, economic hardship, cultural alienation, brain drain and ethno-religious crisis in the destruction of African traditional institutions and values and the superimposition of inadequate Western institutions and values on Africa by the colonialist which not only led to cultural alienation but also the mis education of African elites; which give birth to the , the uncritical acceptance, nay implementation of Western ideas in Africa. For African philosophy to be able to achieve this aim, it must be critical, deconstructive as well as reconstructive. I therefore present Afro constructivism as the ideal method and systematic philosophy that is very relevant to the repositioning of Africa in the Age of Science.