AFRICAN ECO-SPIRITUALITY: NATURE AND SOURCES

The world in which we live has been wounded by the current ecological issues staring us all at the face. Carbon dioxide emissions are still with us. Sulfur oxides still bring acidic rains. Misuse and subsequent depletion of natural resources have not stopped. Floods, draughts, outbreak of diseases emerging from ecological changes are yearly experiences. The seas are constantly being polluted leading to the death of sea animals. Rivers, seas, canals, etc., are shrinking and drying up. Scientific discoveries and advances in the area of technology cannot adequately attend to the problem of ecological crisis in our globalized world. There is the need for alternative perspectives and models or approaches in such a manner that it works for all peoples and in all places. While developing solutions to ecological problems there is the need to put into consideration the categories of particular people, and to use languages that people understand. It is in this regard that a discourse on African eco-spirituality becomes very important, not only to show the contribution of the African worldview to ecological discourses but to show that solutions to ecological problems need to be packaged within categories that the African will not only understand but respect. While there are a few papers written on African eco-spirituality, there is hardly literature that discusses its nature and sources in a profound manner in relation to the African worldview. This paper, therefore, discusses African ecological spirituality with the purpose of bringing out its distinctive characteristics and the sources of its perspective. For the purpose of this study, the phenomenological and analytic methods of inquiry ware employed. It submitted that African eco-spirituality is an indispensable dimension in the effort towards finding and articulating alternative solutions solution to the present ecological crisis.

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