Nnadiebube Journal of Philosophy

Africa since her contact with the colonizers has remained at a crossroad with her values and western values in an attempt to modernize. The African conception of modernization is grossly disillusioned and conflated with westernization. The African conception of modernity has severely hampered its development in addition to its negative influences on power, economy, science and technology and morality. A significant features of modern society is the presence and manifestation of modernization concepts on the indigenous/native community (traditional society), characterized by the interchange of ideas, clashes of culture and spread of materialistic values. Due to the impacts of colonialism, neocolonialism and globalization, modernization is conceived, by Africans, as synonymous with westernization or Europeanization. This in turn, led African countries to lose their identity and indigenous cultural values. Consequently, as the reconstruction and development programs (policy and strategy formulations in various aspects) did not take these indigenous values as their anchoring point, many African countries could not reach the level of development where they can feed their people, keep their health and facilitate the development of infrastructure. It is on this basis that the paper argued that Africa must begin to relate with countries that have "de-westernized" and have attained some level of appreciable economic development. The focus is to evolve viable options for truly African culture.

Open Full Text (PDF)