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In the closing decades of the last century, Professor Akínsolá Akìwowo, in a series of seminal papers, inaugurated what Jìmí Adésíná later dubbed 'the Akíwowo project'. This project involved (1) showing that there are resources in an African culture – Yorùbá – for doing sociology in ways that are as good as the dominant tradition to be found in Western sociology; and (2) offering some original ideas regarding some explanatory framework that could enable us to make sense of social phenomena. In this essay, I advance the Akìwọwọ project by showing how, despite previous criticisms, Akìwọwọ remains a keen identifier of theoretical possibilities lurking in his Yorùbá heritage for doing not only sociology, but also philosophy and other theories with African idioms. I show how those criticisms enhance the practice of sociology in Africa that will be a powerful presence in the discipline and in the world of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education in South Africa, and Africa at large, has always been construed from Eurocentric perspectives despite Africa being rich with indigenous philosophies and knowledge systems such as the Ubuntu philosophy. In this paper, we bring forth the viability of Ubuntu pedagogy, which draws from the indigenous Ubuntu philosophy, for the promotion of co-existence, social cohesion and inclusivity in education. Drawing from the Collective Fingers Theory, we examine the extent to which the principles of Ubuntu philosophy can cultivate and restore African indigenous values and cultures in diverse educational settings. We draw from literature to position Ubuntu pedagogy within educational practices. Themes emerging from the subject literature are: Collective Fingers theory, Ubuntu philosophy, principles of Ubuntu pedagogy. As a transformative approach, Ubuntu pedagogy, when embraced with the understanding and dignity it deserves, has a potential not only for reconnecting students with their indigenous values, heritage and cultures, but it also has a capacity to cultivate Ubuntu social values of solidarity, co-existence, respect and cooperation among students. We recommend Ubuntu pedagogy as a transformative and decolonial approach that promotes inclusion and social justice. The paper provides principles that guide the possible and effective implementation of Ubuntu pedagogy in diverse educational settings and implications for practice. The paper contributes to the ongoing debates on the decolonisation of education and the role of Ubuntu philosophy in the restoration of African values in the South African education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here I introduce the symposium issue of the South African Journal of Philosophy that is devoted to critically analysing my article "Toward an African Moral Theory." In that article, I use the techniques of analytic moral philosophy to articulate and defend a moral theory that both is grounded on the values of peoples living in sub-Saharan Africa and differs from what is influential in contemporary Western ethics. Here, I not only present a précis of the article, but also provide a sketch of why I have undertaken the sort of project begun there, what I hope it will help to achieve, and how the contributors to the symposium principally question it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state is a specific modality of class domination, a generic phenomenon in capitalist and socialist formations. The unique feature of the socioeconomic formations in post‐colonial Africa is that the state, if we can properly talk of such an existence at all, has very limited autonomy. The state in Africa is only a particular modality of class domination. In the social formations of Africa that are supposedly capitalist, we find a rudimentary autonomization of class domination. In the African social formations that are purportedly socialist, we find a limited possibility of class domination being mediated and autonomized effectively by commodity production and exchange. As far as the state and social forces are concerned, we can state that much of postcolonial Africa remains essentially an enclave capitalism marked by the class domination typical of capitalism. Journal abstract [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]