On his return to Earth from his flight in space in 1997, the astronaut, Michael Foale gave an interview that was broadcast on National Public Radio. He reported that throughout the 137 days of his sojourn in outer space, he kept in close and constant touch with events on Earth. This was of course a normal preoccupation on his part, since he looked forward to returning to the company of fellow mortals on our planet. What is notable about his interview, however, is that he referred specifically to Africa, to the effect that he had been kept fully informed of the situation of general chaos that prevailed on the continent. This statement from an astronaut who, presumably, should have had other things on his mind during his flight than the state of Africa, comes as yet another indication of the surprising and perverse turn that Africa’s hold on the western consciousness can sometimes take. Indeed, a remarkable feature of the current discourse on Africa in recent years is the predominantly negative character it has assumed, contrasting sharply with the expressions of goodwill that we enjoyed at independence. Given the insidious power of imagery, and the objective force of the symbolic in interpersonal relations, it is well to consider the nature of this discourse, in order to place the contemporary situation of Africa within the general perspective of historical experience which gives it meaning, and thus to move the debate on Africa forward.

As was the case during the colonial period, imaginative literature serves today as a significant channel for the negative representation of Africa in the West, with the difference that where, in the past, a certain exotic interest was determined by cultural preconceptions, there is now an intense focus on the political situation, presented as the most telling manifestation of the nature of the African. This is clearly the tenor and intent of V. S. Naipaul’s In A Free State and A Bend in the River, works for which Africa serves as a setting, and which provide him the occasion to give free rein to a spiteful bigotry that has been for too long a constitutive element of his fictional imagination. John Updike’s The Coup and Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day are also directly centred on the political phenomenon in Africa, with both conveying the impression that events in contemporary Africa do not merely reflect the institutional dilemmas of African polities in the post colonial era, but an existential condition hardly amenable to human solutions. The tone of Stoppard’s play is especially revealing, spanning the full scale of a derogatory language that provides its keynote, from the blatantly racist "uppity niggers" to the vicious irony of the following passage:

The passage is given to the African President in the play to speak, in an outburst against an officer of his country’s army plotting a coup; its unlikely context thus makes it fully expressive of the profound attitude of contempt towards Africans held by Tom Stoppard and his like, such as Paul Johnson, to whom the play is dedicated: men whose nostalgia for empire renders them unable to imagine a world in which Africans can exist in any but an unequal relationship with Europeans. ¹

Works such as those I’ve cited have little claim to literary merit. What they do indicate is the baleful image of Africa that continues to haunt the western mind up to the present time. Thus, reviewing a book entitled The Coming Plague, a certain S. Hall presents the following scenario, as the point of departure for his reflection on the crisis of world health that is the subject of the book under review:

As the passage makes clear, our reviewer did not have to exercise much imagination, for events related to the crisis in Rwanda, and extending into the Congo, provide both the factual basis and the dramatic elements of his scenario.³ It is important to note, however, that the sensational thrust of the passage depends not merely on its reproduction of the tendentious style of reports in the popular press about current events in Africa but on the standard stereotype of a "pestilential" Africa, for so ready to hand is disease as a metaphor for Africa in the western imagination that author can rely on this image to do all his work for him. It provides him with the symbolic ground for the rhetorical move in the passage, in which the universal menace of "the coming plague" is massively evoked by the simple reference to Africa, a move guaranteed to stir up deep fears lurking in the western consciousness around the image of the continent as the "heart of darkness." The details of the evocation are not, however, redundant to the overall message conveyed by the passage, in which the pathological and the lurid combine in such as way as to reinforce what one might call a primal response to a reference invested with a powerful negative significance. The passage thus derives its validating force for its intended (American) audience from the same order of discourse as that constituted by colonial ideology, which worked towards the symbolic devaluation of Africa as a functional aspect of imperial domination. It provides one more demonstration of the persistence of the menacing image of Africa in the West, highlighted at the present time by the gratuitous attribution to Africa of the origin of AIDS. ⁴ Even more significant in Hall's review is the fact that the standard metaphor that governs western perception of Africa as an area of danger and contamination is both expanded and updated, so that the very idea of disease becomes associated with the political and social situation in post-independence Africa. It is in this way that the intersection between the factual and the symbolic is established in the current discourse on Africa.

The discursive trajectory traced above leads directly to the phenomenon now being referred to in western academic circles as "afropessimism," a buzz word that has its origin in France, and is associated with the work of Jean-François Bayart. ⁵ The term has made its way to North America, and serves to designate a general mood of despondency that pervades current scholarship on and reporting about Africa. It is employed to translate in a summary way what is thought to be a well-founded despair arising from a contemplation of the desperate turn of events and the tragic human situation in Africa since the era of independence. In this sense, "afropessimism" represents a reversal of the bouyant spirit displayed by an earlier generation of western Africanists, exemplified by scholars such as the late James Coleman and currently upheld by Basil Davidson: scholars whose approach to African Studies was animated by a deep understanding of African aspirations and the conviction of the continent's potential for positive development. In the case of Basil Davidson, as is demonstrated his reflections in The Black Man’s Burden, this has not precluded a critical analysis of Africa’s problems in the post-colonial period, the complexities of which are stressed as much as the human failures that have compounded them. In contrast, the current language of western scholarship invites rather to an unremittingly bleak view of Africa, now perceived as a continent without a future, racked as it is thought to be through its length and breadth, by the twin demons of political instability and economic deprivation.

A typical example of this dismal vision of Africa is offered by the article entitled "Africa: The Long Goodby" by David Ewing Duncan. Remarking on the progressive marginalization of Africa since the mid-eighties, (what he calls "a not so splendid isolation"), Duncan goes on to observe: "There is every indication that conditions in Africa will worsen in the 1990's, and that Africa's position in world will become even more peripheral." One cannot help but wonder if the wish isn’t indeed father to the thought here. It is perhaps no coincidence that it is in the same journal in which Duncan's article appeared that Robert Kaplan's now celebrated essay, "The Coming Anarchy," was also published, an essay in which he speaks disdainfully of a return to "premodern formlessness" in Africa, a continent that features prominently as the centerpiece of his apocalyptic vision of a worldwide disorder which, according to him, poses a dire threat to contemporary humanity. ⁶

In reality, Kaplan has simply recalled and expanded upon long held prejudices about Africa on the part of many western scholars. Typical among them is John Dunn who, commenting on varieties of nationalism, distinguishes a form for which, as he says, "a good many of the states of tropical Africa would serve as very adequate prototypes, in which social groupings are in the simplest descriptive sense backward, largely preliterate, with low productivity, weak overarching social solidarities and slight abilities to organize themselves for the better." ⁷ Views such as these, with their racist presuppositions and their gloomy view of Africa's prospects, find their dismal culmination in this passage by David Rieff:, one reminiscent of the worst projections of Africa in colonial literature:

The hyperbole of this passage is integral to its significance, an effect of its motivation and a condition of its message. We have an entire continent consigned here to the gloom of a fervid imagination, on the part of an individual who has little or no information about it, but who feels nonetheless entitled to a damning judgement upon it. Thus, amid the somberness generated by "afropessimism," a partial and distorted image of Africa has emerged, so that even scholarly discourse begins to lend authority to a perception of Africa as a continent beyond the pale of human decencies. In this discourse, Africa has reemerged as, in Achebe’s words, "a place of negations."

I have dwelt at this length upon the negative thrust of the current discourse on Africa because it seems to me important at this time to take special cognizance of it and to consider its implications, as we embark upon a new phase of historical experience, signaled by significant political developments on the continent. That an actively hostile racism often runs through the constructions proferred by the authors of this discourse makes it all the more imperative to confront them, to resist the pernicious meanings they bear for us at this critical moment of our historical adventure. For their strident insistence upon our failures, undoubted though these may be, have nothing to do with sollicitude for us. They have no other objective but to instill in us and cultivate anew a diffidence engendered by colonial domination, a mental state from which we can barely be said to have been delivered. Yet, so extensive and so urgent are the tasks ahead of us that we cannot allow our consciousness to be damaged and our resolve weakened by the insinuations of the afropessimists.

To understand this is to begin to see through the dark veil cast upon African realities by afropessimism, which now needs to be questioned as regards its profound motivation. For we must make a distinction between a responsiveness to genuine and informed criticism and the kind of self-flagellation that is ready to acquiesce in the distortions produced by western discourse on Africa in order to claim the honour of an honesty that ultimately plays into the hands of our detractors, as seems to me to be the case with George Ayitteh and his campaign of denigration of Africa which takes him all over the United States and the Western world. The fact needs to be faced and stated: that the negative literature on Africa is inadequate and partial, and this, on at least two grounds. The first has to do with its claim to truth, its degree of correspondence to the actualities of the African experience at the present moment. For, contrary to the bleak depiction of David Rieff, life proceeds normally in several African countries, indeed the majority, despite the undoubted problems of under-development and the inevitable tensions of political conflicts in the difficult aftermath of the colonial experience. With some notable and truly spectacular exceptions, the prevailing situation simply does not justify the theme of African exceptionalism, characterised by a generalised anomy, on which the present discourse on Africa has been so persistently rung. It is to this rather banal truth of the African situation, constantly overlooked in the western media, that Chester Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa in the Reagan administration, tried to draw the attention of the American public in the Op-ed piece he wrote for the American daily USA Today. ⁹

To say this is not to deny that we are confronted in Africa with formidable problems of existence, having to do as much with internal stresses inherent in the process of adjustment to a western imposed modernity, as with the various external pressures on our collective lives, with their devastating consequences for our economies and their implications, direct and indirect, for our political systems. But afropessimism cannot be regarded as an expression of genuine concern for Africa; rather, it reflects a deeply patronizing and even cynical attitude towards our continent, one that has enabled some western scholars to make a career out of programmes for governance in Africa. It is not merely a question of these scholars attempting to moralize for us –- viewing us as incompetent pupils who have proved incapable of absorbing the lessons of western liberal democracy, and its economic corollary, free market capitalism -- but manifesting a cultural arrogance, allied to a profound contempt of the same order as that which drove the proponents of the colonial ideology to posit Africa as the homeland of a different and degenerate category of humanity.

But, as with all human societies, no unilateral or blanket view can suffice as an adequate account of the African situation, which has to be considered in the broader context of the contemporary African dilemma, in order to be understood in all its complexity. It comes as a relief to observe at least one western scholar, Peter Lewis, displaying some understanding of this complexity when he writes :

The comment calls attention to the dialectics of a history in the making on the continent, and it is well to bear in mind that universal dissatisfaction with the social and political arrangements of the postcolonial era in Africa represents the latest expression of this historical phenomenon.

This observation leads to the other point that needs to be made concerning the negative focus on Africa, and the exceptionalism that is so often inferred from it : the fact that it ignores historical experience worldwide, beginning with the dismal record of the western world itself in the matter of political instability, to which we have to add a long history of social unrest and economic mismanagement. Western commentators who promote the exceptionalist view of Africa seem to have forgotten their own history, or seem unaware that those of us who were perforce brought up on a colonial education are familiar with this history. For war, violence, and large-scale upheavals have been the stuff of western history from classical times to the present. We first encounter this in the Iliad, the epic narrative depicting in gory detail the brutality of the Trojan war. And given Thucydides’s account of the ferocity of the combatants during the Peloponnesian war and other historical evidence, it is hard to accept the idealization of the Greeks of the classical era that has been a staple of western cultural history. ¹¹ The pattern of violence continues through the medieval period and later, with wars and unspeakable crimes clinging to the Christian religion as its development became intertwined with that of Europe. There has been no abatement of the violent temper of Europe, the consequences of which we have witnessed in our own times. For, as the British historian, Louis Namier has shown in his work, The Revolution of the Intellectuals, the agitated state of Europe in the nineteenth century, reflected in the clash of ideologies, culminated in our century with the destructive fury of two world wars, on a scale unprecedented in history, and the calculated murders of whole populations.

As for political instability, we know that the European nations have had their fair share of this phenomenon. It does not occur to Professor Dunn, when he makes his disparaging remarks about Africa, that his own country has known devastating civil wars and produced, in the person of Oliver Cromwell, the first dictator of modern times. The turbulent history of France in the wake of the Revolution offers an especially striking illustration of instability, for it took nearly a hundred years for that country to settle into any form of stable government. ¹² And who can forget that, for a good part of this century, and within living memory, Europe was nearly everywhere under the heel of authoritarian regimes, with dictators ruling in its very heartland, in Spain, Germany and Italy, and its fringes in Portugal and Yugoslavia. Russia and its associated states within the Soviet Union were locked into a totalitarian system that also blanketed the nations of Eastern Europe until just about a decade ago. As for economic and social problems, the widespread distress caused by the Great Depression is a matter of historical record.

Given these facts, it is hardly an exaggeration to observe that western history presents us with what T.S. Eliot has called, commenting on the perversities of the modern age, "an immense panorama of futility and misery." One cannot but recall that the African experience of centuries of slavery followed by decades of colonial domination, represents a significant dimension of this sordid and inglorious history. But we need not dwell on this, for the immediate point here is that nobody in the world has a special lesson in political morality to teach us, least of all the West. The issue, then, is that our problems are not so much African problems as human ones, part of our experience of history. These problems are peculiar to that new phase inaugurated by the end of colonial rule; as Mahmoud Mamdani has pointed out, they form part of its legacy, and constitute the rough path we have to tread as we grope in its aftermath towards a new order of life and awareness. It is in this sense that the Beninois philosopher, Paulin Houtondji, has argued in the specific context of the Benin Republic, that the instability that has marked the evolution of his country since independence can be interpreted as the sign of a quest for a new order. This observation can be extended to the rest of Africa, for it can be said that what we have been witnessing on our continent in the post colonial era is a painful groping towards a new mode of reference for collective organization, towards a new existential center of gravity. ¹³

It is not, therefore, a question of closing one’s eyes to the disasters enacted in Africa in recent times, but placing these and other factors of the contemporary African experience in a global perspective. But, as we contemplate our place in the world, the disabilities from which we suffer, and the dangers with which we are surrounded, we cannot rest content with the thought that we are no worse than the rest of humanity. Far from encouraging a mood of complacency on our part, our precarious situation in the affairs of the contemporary world makes it imperative for us to begin to put our house in order. It is not indeed the case that we have ever been tempted to complacency, for we have lived in Africa for some forty years now with an ever-deepening dissatisfaction with our situation, a collective state of mind that has found expression in a vigorous current of social criticism and self-interrogation, as part of a newly emerging internal African discourse. ¹⁴ It is surely time for a new affirmation of resolve that takes account of the real potential in Africa for new beginnings, after the depredations of colonialism and the disappointments and tragedies of independence. It is in this sense that the term "reconstruction" has to be understood.

II

The whole idea of reconstruction in Africa revolves around the question of our accession to modernity, in terms of a workable and effective social and political organization of our national communities, and the productive management of our physical environment and material resources, all this in a world dominated as never before by "instrumental reason" and controlled from ever fewer centers of power and decision. It points at once to what posture we are to adopt towards that world today in order to claim a place within it. The question arises from the argument that is being increasingly invoked, that the forms of modern social organization do not correspond to our profound inclinations, since, we are told, they do not derive from our African inheritance, which placed a premium on harmony with nature, not technological dominance over it. This argument is a carry-over from the discourse of cultural nationalism, with its inversion into a virtue of what was read as a form of pathology by the West. ¹⁵ It is an argument that has lately been taken up again in the language of sociology and economics by Axelle Kabou, in her essay, Et si l’Afrique refusait le développement, a work that seems to me symptomatic of a certain mood of despair. This is not to deny that debate on the concept of development is a necessary and salutary one, as part of a general process of self-reflection to which our situation invites us: a point to which I shall return. ¹⁶ However, the recourse at this time to cultural arguments against modernization and development must be a matter for serious concern, for it can no longer represent a justified reclamation of cultural antecedents, as part of the response to our devaluation by the colonial ideology. Today, it can only be interpreted as the sign of a demoralization that threatens to sap our collective spirit as we grapple with the myriad difficulties of finding our footing in the modern world. These difficulties range from the institutional ones of fashioning new polities appropriate to our peculiar circumstances and present condition, to those involved in our effort to create the material conditions that will bring the amenities of modern life within the reach of our populations.

Indeed, in the past two decades, with the imposition of the so-called structural adjustment programmes (SAP) all over the continent, we have witnessed a marked regression of our economies. With the erosion by SAP of practically all our early gains, the related objectives of nation building and economic development, the twin pillars of our project of modernity, seem as remote for us today as forty years ago, when we entered massively into the era of independence. These problems have contributed to the acute sense of crisis that besets us at the present moment. But to rehash the cultural arguments of nationalism at this time is to encourage an attitude of flight, if not of irresponsibility, in the face of urgent tasks. But we must recognize that the African crisis today is as much inward, psychological and moral, as it is structural, related to objective realities. The effort of reconstruction must therefore be undertaken at two levels: that of mind, in the first place, as the necessary foundation for the second level, that of action, the two correlated in the reconstitution of our world, so as to create within it our own unique space of life and expression.

To speak of reconstruction at the level of mind is to suggest a new mode of self apprehension. This means that we must banish the image of a naive and simple Africa that gave a powerful affective charge to the literature of cultural emancipation, but which can have no place in any serious proposition concerning our place and status in the contemporary world. To invoke this image as a statement of our collective disposition, as Chinweizu and his friends have done as a function of our post independence situation, is not merely self-indulgent and even in a very real sense demeaning, but ultimately disabling for the requirements of today. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that a collective image that seeks to elude the demands of modernity cannot be part of a serious project of intellectual reconstruction in Africa. ¹⁷

But a far more insidious threat to the contemporary African mind is that posed by the prevailing intellectual fashions in the West, specifically the anti-rationalism that lends such fascination to those currents of thought associated with postmodernism. It must be said that this fascination has as much to do with the exceptional power of expression of its leading lights, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as with the content and general thrust of their thought, the radical questioning they have instituted of the historical and philosophical legacy of the Enlightenment. Although, seen in this light, the postmodernist project is one that our historical experience predisposes us to understand and to rally to, we must ask ourselves whether the critique of the western ratio corresponds to our intellectual and practical requirements at this time. For if it is argued that the forms of rationality as formulated and developed in the West no longer represent an acceptable logical or moral compass of human endeavour, the question remains what else we can put in their place, not merely as a common ground of human understanding, but as a functional reference for the contemplation of action in and upon the real world, where our attention must needs be concentrated at this time, as a matter of historical necessity. It is not certain that, for all its theoretical interest, the system of "gnosis" advocated by Valentin Mudimbe, with its association of a playful "bricolage" as its unique method of exploring the world, can have for us the practical value that we can expect to derive from a rigorous scientific understanding of our lived universe. For where the categories of a formalized rationality are either explicit and objective, or they are nothing, the "silent codes" of Mudimbe’s system (to be derived, according to him, according to the methods of structuralist analysis proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss) cannot, by their very nature, be other than implicit and subjective, without the compelling force of verifiable laws constructed from sustained investigation of observable facts.¹⁸

It is of course true that scientists tend to make extravagant claims for their discipline, and, from an epistemological point of view, there are surely limits to the rationality of science. Postmodernists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour and Jean Baudrillard thus have a point in opposing to the claims of science the skeptical point of view, a radical relativism that challenges the will to power of its adherents and the But while recognizing the limits of science, there seems no reason to jettison its real triumphs. The point here is that the postmodernist case may be justified in terms of the political and social sympathies it promotes, but it is a case that is overstated on epistemological grounds. For, at the very least, the scientific method provides us, as part of the general humanity, with a common measure for the processes of thought and for understanding the world. This is too precious an asset to be repudiated, either in a vexed reaction against the West, or in what can only be a hopeless quest for innovation. It does not appear, therefore, that the philosophical anarchy of postmodernism offers any real prospect of advancing our interests in the modern world; for us, as Africans, Foucault, Derrida and their cohorts can be nothing other than false gods.¹⁹

We cannot, then, adopt theoretical positions that are not congruent with our specific situation and interests. What we need to do rather is to reformulate for ourselves the philosophical project of modernity with which some of the brightest minds in the West have become disillusioned. It is apparent that, in our circumstances, such a project can only be founded upon a pragmatic conception of rationality, one that defines it as the principle that underlies those material transformations and social arrangements that work best for mankind as a whole. It is largely on this basis that the German thinker Jürgen Habermas has argued the case for a return to the rational ideal of the Enlightenment, by way of what he calls "the logic of communicative action." It is true that his eurocentric bias leads him to a privileging of the western tradition, elevated to a universal standard of thought and expression, thus betraying a regrettable insensitivity to the range of cultural forms within which the human mind finds expression. Despite this handicap which has to do more with presentation than the substance of his thought, the ideal defended by Habermas is just as relevant to us as it is to the West, as a possible reference for our intellectual project. ²⁰

III

The appropriate context for this project is, of course, the universities. For this reason, they will be central to the reconstruction of Africa that is our preoccupation here. But as we are aware, and all too painfully, the universities have been major casualties of the economic depression that has been ravaging Africa in the past two decades: almost without exception, African universities are today in a shambles. The present damage can be measured against the hopes inspired by the steady development of higher education in Africa all through the sixties, and its potential as a key factor of economic and social development. The consequences of the precipitous decline of our universities, the effect upon our future prospects, are yet to be fully grasped, but it is plain that the one of the most urgent tasks in Africa today is the restoration of the universities to something of their earlier prominence, if not to the glory to which a handful of them could justifiably lay claim. This new effort affords an opportunity for a return to the debates of the late fifties and early sixties concerning the role and function of the university in the African context.

The received wisdom at that time was that the universities served strictly utilitarian purposes: they were required primarily for the development of executive capacity, which would enable the new African States begin to begin to function, while at the same time they contributed to the growth of an indigenous middle class, considered essential to the modernization process. This line of reasoning was dictated by the times, and had much to commend it. It remains valid today, now that a major preoccupation is to roll back the disasters of SAP by reconstituting the university as an institution, so that it can continue to function as an agent of economic and social development. There can be no argument as to the practical aspects of this undertaking, which will involve not merely a "retooling" of the universities in terms of rebuilding infrastructure and refurbishing facilities, but also an overhaul of the entire system of higher education, in order to make them cost effective and productive in the pragmatic sense of the term.

But it is just as important to re-energize our universities so as to enable them to reconnect with the academic and intellectual tradition that was supposed to be their inheritance at their foundation, but which they have not been able to sustain, much less consolidate due to the circumstances of their development. In this light, the dichotomy that was posited in earlier discussions between fundamental research and applied research, and the debates as to the option between them for African universities, can now be seen to be meaningless, for no serious form of applied research can disregard the fundamental principles on which such research is based. One has only to think of the immense impact of the discovery of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson, achieved through work of fundamental research, to be convinced of this truth. The academic ethos that has established the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as the driving force of scholarship derives not from mere idealism but from a practical recognition of the intimate connection between the two aspects of scientific activity we have so casually isolated in our debates. More generally, this ethos enshrines the university as the ideal locus for the unfettered exercise of thought and imagination.

This point leads to the larger question of the nature of the university, as a powerhouse of ideas. The discipline that is the perfect embodiment of this aspect of the university as an institution is of course that of Philosophy. Its relevance to the African situation has never been greater, for, as Gyekye has demonstrated, the concern of philosophy with fundamental principles constitutes it as a discipline essential to the process of reflection upon questions of communal existence that a society in transition like ours stands in dire need of. ²¹ Thus, politics, as the very framework of all the activities that make up the fabric of existence, comes directly within the purview of philosophy: the outstanding issues here concern the development and expansion of civil society as a countervailing force to the overbearing character the State has assumed in most parts of Africa, and the development paradigm which we clearly need to think deeply about. African reflection on these and other issues will work towards the elaboration of oncepts and values appropriate to our own circumstances. One hardly needs to add that the condition for this intellectual activity is the guarantee of academic freedom, as the bedrock of all the other freedoms that a democratic society must secure for its citizens.

It is this background that lends significance to philosophy in the context of the contemporary African experience, summed admirably up in this statement by the Cameroonian philosopher, Jean-Godefroy Bidima:

Within the intellectual perspective opened up by the comprehensive interrogation proposed by Bidima, philosophy can stake its claim to preeminence in our intellectual life as a form of sustained reflection on Science and its place in Africa. This is a theme that has been highlighted by Marcien Towa and Paulin Houtondji, as part of their critique of ethnophilosophy. Houtondji himself has moved beyond this critique towards a reappraisal and a reactualization, so to speak, of indigenous forms of ascertainable knowledge and of the technologies they enable. The interest of his project resides in the possibility it suggests of their integration within a rational system of positive science: in other words, of universalizing them, for it is within this comprehensive conceptual framework that an African reflection on science can hope take on either a theoretical or practical significance. ²⁴

To advocate a focussing of African thought on science in this way is to insist upon the essential role science and technology are destined to play in the shaping of Africa’s future, a recognition that, to be meaningful, has to advance on a broader front than is implied by the superficial idea of "technology transfer." A recognition of this role must also find expression in a steady and intense effort for the promotion of science at all levels of the educational system, the objective being to create the conditions for the full integration of science into life and consciousness on our continent.

Placed then at the apex of the educational system, the university presents itself as the presiding agency for raising the intellectual quotient of the African population. Its principal vocation in this direction can be defined as the incorporation of a scientific culture into our habits of mind, as an essential component of our modernity project. As a former Director General of UNESCO, René Maheu, has said, "Development is when science has become culture." ²⁵

Given these considerations, we must now broaden the utilitarian conception of the university with which we’ve more or less been stuck, so that, as an institution, it can begin to function among us as the very center of our intellectual life, in order to fully come into its own. We must of course make allowance for the fact that, as with all human institutions everywhere, a university is made up of people who most of the time have no thought but for themselves, whose only preoccupation is to pursue their careers. But we have a right to expect that by its very constitution, the university in Africa will also turn ut for us what it has proved to be in other societies, the seedbed of a responsible and committed intellectual elite, providing therefore unfettered scope for generating a new body of intellectual and cultural capital and affording us thereby the ground in which to lay the foundations for the authority of our own discourse and systems of knowledge production. It is no exaggeration to assert that the destiny of the continent may well be premised on the development of the African university along the lines I have endeavoured to evoke here. To see the university in Africa as what I’ve called a powerhouse of ideas is, quite legitimately, to invest immense hopes in the institution for the expansion of our intellectual horizons and the perfection of our moral universe.

But the contemplative life entailed by the intellectual and moral function of the university must be given greater weight in our context, through forms of action that are geared towards the improvement of our society. In other words, the process of reflection has to serve not only as the mobilization of consciousness but also as the arming of our collective will and the strengthening of our resolve for building a new and better world in Africa. Thought and knowledge must serve as the foundation in our own minds for the tasks that await us in the outer world; it will not be enough through thought to evoke possibilities ("penser le possible," as Bidima puts it ), we will have to act on the fruits of our deliberation, of our intellectual efforts. At this, the second level of reconstruction, the task is to define and implement a comprehensive programme of African renewal.

IV

The terms of reference for this undertaking are clear enough, and they have been well defined in the following comment, albeit in broad terms, by Peter Lewis:

There is a sense in which the African predicament today has been defined by the coming together in the aftermath of independence of the three elements identified above. But although I have spoken of a "predicament," I do not subscribe to the view that independence has been a poisoned gift, as some people would have us believe. At the very least, it has meant, as I have remarked elsewhere, the recovery of the historical initiative which was denied us under colonialism, and that in itself is no small thing. What is more, any fair assessment of the African record must concede that it has not been one of utter failure everywhere, as it is now being asserted, for we were beginning to make progress in achieving the twin objectives of nation building and economic development, with results that were palpable everywhere on the continent. It is an incontrovertible fact that before the reverses of the seventies and eighties, we were on our way to providing a better life for our populations than they enjoyed under colonialism. However meagre the results, we could not begin to achieve then without fredom from colonial rule. But if formal independence, what Kwame Nkrumah termed "the political kingdom, " was a necessary condition , for African development., it was not a sufficient one. Moreover, it must be said that we have not done enough to merit a complete sense of achievement, for still remain accountable for our failures, especially as regards the fundamental issue of the relation between politics and economic development.

The reflections of the Nigerian scholar, Claude Aké, revolve around this issue, in his Development and Democracy in Africa, published in 1998, shortly after his tragic death in an air crash. Aké argues that the energies of the ruling elite in post-independence Africa have been so absorbed by the struggle for power that this elite has never seriously confronted the requirements of economic development. According to him, the political factor has been the major obstacle to economic development. Thus, the issues of national integration and problems of governance and legitimacy first need to be resolved before Africa can hope to achieve sustained development. As he says:

The consequence of this state of affairs has also been described by Aké in these terms:

It is this situation that has contributed to the pathologies of governance that we have witnessed in Africa. In general, the political problem in Africa derives not simply from the fragility of our institutions as experienced in the recent past but from a perception by the majority of citizens of the inauthentic character of the State, despite a formidable apparatus, what Thomas Gallaghy has called "the Leviathan" State in Africa.²⁹ In these circumstances, the alienation of the general population from the State cannot be cause for surprise. The challenge today is to overcome this estrangement of the people of Africa to the State, to reconcile us with the polis which, ideally, should everywhere embody our corporate existence.

To achieve this, we must clearly work with a new conception of the State, one that breaks totally with the authoritarian tradition of the colonial regime, and is founded upon the very principle of liberal democracy that the western nations themselves have come over time to embrace. We need to remind ourselves that, as the historical evidence indicates, the democratic ideal is not a natural inheritance of these people and their rulers, but has been won through bitter struggle. The concept of democracy relates primarily to ideals and methods of governance; it is thus first and foremost a political concept. It concerns the establishment of appropriate institutions for the orderly conduct of national affairs. There is obviously room for debate about the precise forms these should take, but the one criterion by which they may be judged is how far they respect the fundamental principle of legitimacy and how far they ensure the responsibility of governors to the governed. Above all, a liberal vision must be placed at the center of all our political arrangements. ³⁰

This is not the place to put forward specific proposals for political reform, but I think I ought to give substance to my remarks above by indicating the possible directions in which such reform might go. The main interest of what has been taken to be the democratic revival in Africa has been the effort to address by constitutional and legal means the most obvious failure of the political system in Africa, that related to the orderly transfer of power. Another major preoccupation has been with the maintenance of the rule of law. The attention devoted to these questions is fully justified, but it is useful to also draw attention to one of the major factors which has contributed to this failure, that of inadequate representation. It seems to me therefore that the most important piece of political reform we must now contemplate in all our States is decentralization. In practical terms, it must be an axiom of a democratic regime that, in most matters, the local population can be entrusted with its own affairs. It is safe to assume that an administrative arrangement which enables decision making at the local level , and is related to the economic activity and interests of closely integrated communities, can only advance the cause of democracy. Properly organised, local government gives visible form to legitimacy at those levels where it counts most, and the autonomy it ensures can contribute to easing ethnic tensions that seem to have been built, sometimes deliberately by the departing colonizer, into the very structure of our nations. Such a structure will enable direct oversight by the people of their elected representatives and local government officers, thus promoting a greater sense of responsibility on the part of the latter and popular involvement in governance. Moreover, it will help to restore the social code and political morality that governed conduct in traditional communities, principles which seem to have lost their force in the modern political and social dispensation. ³¹

The process of political reform should also afford us the opportunity for innovation stemming from our cultural experience. Thus, we might follow up Wiredu’s idea of translating our traditional political values to the modern sphere, by providing for the representation in various ways and at various levels of those social categories to which our pre-colonial traditional polities often accorded special recognition: women, age groups, professional associations, and so on. ³²

But the existence of formal institutions will not be enough to guarantee a genuine experience of democracy, for these institutions may sometimes function to provide a framework for what a commentator has called "illiberal democracy." ³³ We must also bear in mind that democracy is not merely a question of politics in the narrow sense of activities directly concerned with public life, of institutional forms and roles, but the relation to each other of various aspects of the communal and national life. It is above all a question of values. The full dimension of this understanding of democracy has been given expression by a Nigerian scholar, Simeon Ilesanmi with his notion of "dialogic politics" which, according to his definition, "proposes a democratic framework marked by accountability, public conversation, mutual respect, and the spirit of humility, as one promising way of confronting the challenge of pluralism and the attendant fragmentation of moral meaning in public life." ³⁴ These are recognizably the values that go into the making of what Henri Bergson designated as "the open society," a term later made current by Karl Popper.

It is thus essential for the values of democracy to be so profoundly internalized by all the individuals in the national community as to form a binding element of the collective life, and therefore a constitutive part of the general culture. The operative notion of culture here is anthropological rather than aesthetic; it relates specifically to the dynamics of social interaction and political participation and should be understood not as the attribute and privilege of a social minority, but as a quality informing the general life and consciousness of the national community. This is of course the notion espoused by Matthew Arnold, which seeks to establish culture as a function of the democratic process. The reference suggests the role that education, both and informal, can and must play in fostering a democratic culture in Africa. ³⁵

These, then, are some of the issues I believe we must now attend to, as we consider what appears to be a democratic revival in Africa. The very fact that this revival is taking place in the framework of multiethnic, multilingual and, to a certain extent, multicultural States means that any effort to strengthen democratic institutions must aim, as its primary objective, to build trust and to create conditions for national aims explicitly elaborated and agreed upon in a spirit of understanding, and destined to be implemented for the common good. This seems to me to be the very definition of "consensual democracy" as advocated by Kwasi Wiredu, who argues its appropriateness to Africa since it derives from our heritage of values.

The democratic ideal cannot, however, be considered in isolation from the material context of life. It cannot be emphasized enough that a vital connection exists between economic well-being, social progress and a stable political order: the gravity of the African situation in this respect is enough to remind us of these commonplaces of political analysis. Economic satisfaction is not merely a means for the legitimation of the political order, with all the dilemmas this implies, but serves as material condition for an enhanced quality of life. In this sense, economic policy subserves a particular vision of society.

These are questions that need to be confronted at this time, especially in view of the ideological alignment of the IMF and the World Bank with the forces of the so-called free market, and the enormous power wielded by these institutions in the management of national economies in the countries of the South. But whatever the answers we come up with to these questions, in whichever direction we wish to take our national economies, on whatever scale we conceive them, we cannot dispense with the discipline required by the culture of modernity. Our commitment to economic development must translate in immediate terms into a developed sense of organization, sustained by those qualities of mind and behavior on which the technical execution of economic programmes depends. Only the most disciplined adherence to rigorous standards of conception and performance will do in order to meet the challenges ahead.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that these challenges are not to be underestimated. There seems no point in talking about priorities, for everything needs to be done; the new Africa still has to be constructed from the ground up. It is enough to mention some of the areas needing attention in order to indicate the tremendous scope of the undertaking. Everywhere, the infrastructure remains threadbare, so that transport and communications are uncertain. Energy supply is inadequate for even the most common purposes, so that the environment is being degraded as our peasantry forages desperately for firewood. ³⁷ In the area of Medicine, we still have to put up with a variety of diseases that a determined immunization programme can hold in check, if not eradicate. In this area, primary care and public health have received none of the concentrated attention they deserve. And as regards the problem of AIDS, this is an issue that we cannot afford to run away from with a sense of guilt or shame—there is AIDS all over the world, and we are not more immoral or more lascivious than other populations and races—but one that we need to face squarely, in terms of a major effort of social action and medical research, the latter with a view to determining the specific character of the epidemic as it has manifested itself in Africa. For it has become apparent that there is ample room for doubt and debate in this question. In this connection, the role of our universities is clear, for they can contribute to clarifying issues that the impositions of the Western scientific community and even charitable organizations have muddled. Agriculture presents a special problem, as we become more and more hostage to external producers in the matter of food production, for our farmers have become less and less able to sustain competition from more efficient producers abroad. The problem is compounded by developments in genetic engineering, which enable these producers to impose their control on the very processes of seed reproduction. Above all, we continue to rely on the export of raw materials for our national incomes, and are failing to develop productive capacity necessary to satisfy even our immediate needs.

These are simply some of the factors in the African crisis of development. They make for the paradox that the human competence that we have developed, so much of the intelligence that ought to be available to Africa, cannot be placed at the service of its populations. To set right these inadequacies and anomalies constitutes the comprehensive objective of the reconstruction that we must undertake in Africa. We shall need not only a more responsible leadership than in the past, but also a more demanding followership that is prepared to hold this leadership to account.

V

At the end of his essay The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe voices this lament, in which the note of anguish is unmistakable: "We have lost the twentieth century. Are we bent on seeing that our children also lose the twenty-first?" ³⁸ The implications of Achebe’s cry are even more serious today than when it was first uttered. In the past half century, the developed world has moved ahead on two fronts that are having a serious impact upon our present and will have incalculable consequences for our future. We must now reckon with the profound impact of the computer/digital revolution upon industry and the economy, with its transformation of the whole range of contemporary life and awareness. Even more ominous will be the effect of the other revolution, that occasioned by genetic engineering, for we may have to depend for our very livelihood on seedlings imported from the developed world, which on this point is ruthlessly stacking the cards in its own favour. ³⁹

With these developments, the odds against us have become compounded, as it were. After more than forty years of independence, Africa is not yet integrated in any meaningful sense into the industrial age, yet we are assailed on all sides by the pressures of a new world order, given momentum by the new technologies that are shaping what Daniel Bell long ago called the postindustrial age, and which Jean-François Lyotard has reinvented as the postmodern.

In these circumstances, the case for modernization becomes compelling, and it is no exaggeration to say that it has now become for us quite simply a matter of survival. For our continent finds itself menaced anew. The negative image of Africa has been dragged out of the colonial closet, giving rise to a resurgence of racist discourse and attitudes in the West, buttressed by media portrayals of a continent in disarray. If Paul Johnson and his cohorts appear to be persuasive, it is because the cultural and moral arguments we marshaled against colonialism are no longer sufficient to validate our claim to dignity, or to afford us protection from revamped schemes of exploitation. And if, as Professor Dunn affirms, we are incapable of looking after ourselves, the conclusion is inescapable, that we have to be consigned once more to the tender care of the white races, who will once again have all the liberty to dispose of us at their will, and exploit our labour and resources for their own benefit. It is obvious that the theme of the new discourse of African denigration, barely disguised in academic afropessimism, is once more that of the white man’s burden. It amounts to nothing less than the preparation of the ideological ground for our re-colonization. ⁴⁰

It turns out from the thrust and tenor of this discourse that Africa is not so marginal that western countries can afford to be indifferent to our resources, especially the mineral wealth about which, in any case, their aerial surveys provide them abundant information. Even without being subjected anew to direct colonization, our situation within the so-called new world order renders us especially vulnerable to the unrestrained power of hegemonies that have emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In a world where moral arguments no longer hold, where consideration is accorded strictly on the basis of economic performance and technological achievement, we cannot expect to receive the attention and respect that is now bestowed, however grudgingly, upon the newly emergent economies of Asia. It is this truth that has caused so much dejection in Africa as to generate a mood of self-doubt, a frame of mind that seems to be shared by some African Americans, blocked in their effort to identify with Africa. George B.N. Ayitteh’s Africa in Chaos exemplifies this mood among Africans, while Keith Richburg’s Out of America is the prime example of the African American reaction to the denigration of Africa, the embarrassment and inferiority complex induced in Diaspora blacks by what is regarded the hopeless condition of the ancestral continent. It is no accident that Richburg specifically contrasts the material deprivation of Africa to the prosperity of the so-called Asian tigers, using this as a measure of both African and African American achievement. ⁴¹

But it is time to shove off dejection and all the other disabling emotions, and begin to work diligently to put our house in order. We must look around us and take to heart the sneers, the put-downs, the insults, the condescension and the contempt of our detractors, respond to them as spurs to renewed commitment to the welfare of our continent. The signs are there that the tide may be turning for the better in Africa. Despite the vicissitudes it has gone through, the partial successes and the frustrations it has known, the democratization movement that has been making its way through the continent since the early nineties attests to a new impulse for reform. This suggests a groundswell moving Africa towards a new internal order. It is essential that this new order be marked by a reprise of the modernity project.

It is a matter of historical fact that the essential condition for the fulfillment of this project has been achieved: the attainment of political independence, and the recovery by Africans of the historical initiative we were denied. It bears repeating that this was a necessary condition, but it has not been sufficient to ensure African development. Today, we are faced in Africa with a crisis of unprecedented proportions, arising from a multiplicity of factors that have left us with the unfinished business of nation building, in all its implications and dimensions. It is the taking up anew of this project that constitutes what I have called here African reconstruction.

It is not too much, then, to affirm that we stand today at the threshold of new possibilities. It is this potential that Kwame Appiah evokes when, in his influential book In My Father's House, he proposes a new conception of panafricanism as essentially a pragmatic affair: the imperatives of the modern world compel the kind of practical cooperation between Africans, such as that outlined in the Lagos plan of Action and other documents and protocols of the OAU, that will give concrete meaning to the continental solidarity that the ideology was originally intended to promote. Appiah's sustained reappraisal of Du Bois in his book is intended to delink race from questions of culture and concepts of identity; for him, there is simply no need to invoke racial or cultural bonds as a function of African destiny. Appiah's position has a deep moral import related to his preoccupation with what he calls, in Kantian terms, "an ethical universal." But while his position is understandable, it has to be recognized that questions of race and ethnicity cannot altogether be divorced from concepts of identity. This "natural" factor, reinforced by the common experience of the race, has determined the cycle of reciprocities between Africans and African Americans, that, despite the ambivalence that has often marked their respective attitudes to each other, gave meaning to panafricanism.at its inception.

Despite these qualifications, Appiah opens up a perspective for mobilizing the energies and resources of Africa for a renewed endeavor of self realization, while avoiding the pitfalls of an aggressive racism and narrow nationalism. But the new panafricanism cannot be a bloodless affair, for in a world that remains harsh and forbidding for black people everywhere, we still need to apprehend the image of Africa as the affective link between Africans on the continent and African descendants in the Diaspora, invoking this image as the basis for soliciting their collaboration in the project of African Reconstruction. This project calls for nothing less than the promotion of an Africa refurbished as regards its physical condition, reinvented as a polity, reanimated in all its organic endowments and its intellectual and moral resources, and thus infused with new capacities to assume the burden of modernity. In other words, the Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah, which envisioned an Africa free and self-assured, is still a relevant concept for us, reinterpreted as this concept must be in our own time as an ideology of African interests, bent towards the formidable task of repositioning Africa and its Diaspora with dignity in the world.

1. This is the same Paul Johnson who wrote "Colonialism’s Back--and Not a Moment Too Soon," (New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1993), frankly proposing the domination by white masters of non white races, by deploying what seemed long discredited racist arguments.