Back To The Roots: Why African Civilization Is Unnecessary

 

Africa has the longest and oldest economic history, from our way of life, agriculture, dressing, actions, and respect for religions among other factors. The African culture is diverse, cutting across regions and countries.

One day in our history, colonialism came up, colonialism which is the imposition of foreign rule over indigenous traditional political setting and foreign dominance and subjugation of African people in all spheres of their social, political, cultural, economic and religious civilization.

Africa is a blessed continent, enriched with things that are necessary for us to function as humans. Africa in it's original form is a whole package; ranging from its agricultural provisions, livestock's, appropriate weather conditions, mineral resources, and what have you.

Africa has its own cultures, traditions, rules, and customs that dictates the way people live. The coming of the White men rendered everything empty. They came to impose their civilisation on us terming us "barbaric." African civilisation is of course unnecessary. We are civilised in our way, and we are comfortable. We had everything a continent could have. It is unnecessary, we don't need it. We never needed it. Their intention to colonise us was disguised under showing us a new faith. We were pleased with our gods; Ani- our beloved mother earth, Amadioha- god of thunder, Ogun- god of iron, amidst others. We were happy. We were doing well, and well enough.

Our occupations were hereditary. We knew them so well, and we did well with them. There were no big big sickness caused from inhaling gas, and other harmful chemicals. We either go to the farm for agriculture, forest for hunting animals, or river to fish. We had other interesting works like tie and dye, pottery making, hair dressing. The works were less stressful, and they pay well; compared to what civilisation is giving us today.

Western civilisation and culture began to creep into African socio-cultural milieu, first, with the contact of Europeans with Africa, a consequence of Berlin conference in the quest for imperial pilfering of African resources and, later, consolidated by the unstoppable wave of globalisation. It is important to stress that colonialism distorted and retarded the pace and tempo of cultural growth and trend of civilisation in Africa.


One of the most profound consequences of colonization has been how the political and economic rape of the colonies has also led to what sometimes seem to be an unbridgeable cultural gap between the nations that were the beneficiaries of colonization and those that were the victims of the colonial assault. The era of colonial pillage and plunder led to the relative stagnation and often precipitous decline of traditional cultural pursuits in the colonies.


With Africa subjugated and dominated, the Western culture and European mode of civilisation began to thrive and outgrow African cultural heritage. Traditional African cultural practices paved the way for foreign way of doing things as Africans became fully ‘westernised’. Western culture now is regarded as frontline civilisation. African ways of doing things became primitive, archaic and regrettably unacceptable in public domain. Not only were certain aspects of the material culture in the colonies lost or destroyed, colonial societies also lost the power and sense of cultural continuity, such that it became practically impossible to recover the ability to strive for cultural progress on their own terms.

Civilization has done a lot more damage to our African culture, so there is need for the flogging of the negative impact of Western civilisation and culture on Africa in all fora; so that policy makers can begin to see the need to reappraise their policies that contribute to the cultural dearth of Africa or the ones that negate the principles of cultural revival. We need to have a holistic appraisal of culture and Western Civilisation to the extent of distortions and retardation it caused to Africa and its pace of development, and also, by the same measure, illuminate into the options that are left for Africa.