A PAPER PRESENTED BY CHIEF AZUMAH NDAGU EDWARD, PRINCIPAL

RESEARCH ASSISTANT, CENTRE FOR SETTLEMENTS STUDIES,KWAME

NKRUMAH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, KUMASI,

GHANA, TO COMMEMORATE THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY CEEELEBRATION
OF AUSAR AUSET SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL ON THE THEME “REBUILD

AFRICA CONFERENCE” TOMORROW’S AFRICA TODAY

AUGUST 8 & 9, 2008 IN WASHINGTON DC

TOPIC: REBUILD AFRICA’S FAMILY VALUES

The chairman or the moderator of this conference, fellow invited guests and
presenters I bring you fraternal greetings from the chiefs and people of Ghana. I
present this peace of work not as an academician, but as a royal and a traditional
chief. The topic of my presentation is REBUILD AFRICA’S FAMILY VALUES.
This is a topic that is so gigantic and to effectively handle or treat it, certainly
requires intensive and extensive research and consultations among experts with
deep African traditional knowledge. Again looking at the time constraint for its
preparation, this presentation is made, not as an expert but, as a traditional ruler
who by our tradition is never expected to shy away from challenges. A “man” by our
traditional definition is one who is able to overcome unchallengeable challenges
whether of social, political, economic or religious nature without turning back

WHAT ARE OUR DOMINANT VALUES?

As a traditionalist by definition “value" shall be connoted as "a thing of worth." A

thing has value if it has some worth, and in this sense man considers life worth living
because he finds certain things intrinsically valuable. The values of a group or a
person are the moral principles and beliefs that they think are important, e.g. the
values of liberty and equality.

Now let us do a brief critical examination of the major traditional values of the
African.

God or the highest spirit tops the list for the African, in his ontological hierarchy or
hierarchy of beings. This supreme Spirit is followed by the nature deities or spirits,
then, the ancestors or the "living dead" (thus ends the invisible universe). Close to
the "living dead" are the elders generally revered as wise, holy, and soon to join the
ancestors, then ordinary human beings, lower animals and inorganic nature.

In his traditional life the African holds certain things to be of great value. It is these
values which give him a distinct cultural personality and enable him to make some

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contribution to world knowledge, history and civilization. It is not my task in this
paper to articulate all the cultural values of the African, but only the dominant ones,
as we attempt to assess their status against the current tide of urbanization sweeping
across the continent.

One of the foremost traditional values of the African is a large family. Children are
of supreme value to the African. His primary purpose for marriage is children and
to have as many of them as possible. This is the reason why polygamy or the union
of one man with several women still holds great attraction for him, and also why the
birth rate in Africa is among the highest in the world. The fact is that the African
still counts his blessings by the number of children he has, whether they are
educated or not, rich or poor, healthy or sick, well-fed or hungry. As a royal, infact, I
have always not been shy to mention before any audience that whereas my late
father, Chief Ndagu Akparibila had 19 wives, my late grandfather Akparibila
Akundimore had fifty wives, and both left behind large compound houses blessed
with great grand children which remained the envy of people up to date.

Another important traditional value of the modern African is love for, and practice
of, the extended family system. As a matter of fact the extended family characterizes
the life of the African and somehow shapes his personality and outlook on life.
Unlike Western man, for instance, the African sees his nuclear family as broadening
out into a larger family unit. Prof. Jacques Marquette (1972) describes this
broader family life thus: The African child has only to take a few steps in his village
to visit several who can substitute for his father, mother, brothers and sisters, and
they will treat him accordingly. Thus the child has many homes in his village, and he
is simultaneously giver and receiver of widespread attention.

This extended family system is widely practiced in Africa. Indeed it is one "in which
everybody is linked with all the other members, living or dead, through a complex
network of spiritual relationship into a kind of mystical body." (Prof. Ruch & Dr.
Anyanwu, 1981 p.328). Consequently, it is not just "being" that the African values;
"being-with-others" or as the learned Professor says, "Being rooted in kinship" is
an equally important existential characteristic of the African. He is never isolated
since several persons are assimilated into one parental role: his father's brothers are
assimilated by extension into the role of father, his mother's sisters into the role of
mother, his patri-lineal uncle's daughters into the role of sister. (Prof. Ruch
&Anyanwu, 1981 p.60)

SOCIAL STRUCTURE, Systems and Practices

Let me give an example by throwing more light on the kinship system and its
importance in the Ghanaian society. Members of a kin group are people whose
social relations derive from consanguity (blood), relations, marriage and adoption.
The patterns of behavior associated with relatives in a society, together with the
principles governing their behavior are usually referred to as the kinship system.
The kinship system of any society is important because it prescribes statuses and

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roles to people who are in particular relationships. It determines the rules, duties
and obligations of individual and groups in all aspects of life in which these
individuals and groups interact. (Nukunya 2002).

A person’s kinship status may significantly limit his or her opportunities and
capabilities to participate in decision making, gain access to meaningful livelihood
opportunities and benefit from social services. Also important are the kinship and
lineage arrangements for reckoning descent, inheriting property and ascending to
political office. Ghana has three such systems, the matrilineal, the patrilineal and
the double descent system. In matrilineal societies tracing descent, inheriting wealth
or taking up office in the traditional authority structure, must be done through the
mother’s lineage. A child, in principle inherits the property of his mother’s deceased
brother, not necessarily that of that of his own father. He also qualifies to be
installed as a chief only by virtue of the royal status of his mother. This is a system
largely practiced by the Akan (mainly Twi) speaking peoples of Ghana .The
patrilineal system is essentially the opposite of the matrilineal system. Entitlement to
property and social position in the patrilineal system is claimed through the lineage
of one’s biological father.. In this system, the son (usually the first) is an automatic
successor to the father’s property and is first in line to assume his father’s political
office in his society. This arrangement is characteristic mainly of the Northern parts
of Ghana, the Ewe speaking peoples of southern Ghana and the ethnic groups of
Western Region

The Fanti speaking peoples in the Central Regions practice the double descent
system, in which a child can inherit property from both lineages of his parents.

Against the background of this great African value, a person is an individual to the
extent that he is a member of a family, a clan or community. Another great value in
traditional Africa is respect for old people ("senior citizens"), particularly one's
parents, grandparents and relatives. Together with this value, one must also
consider "ancestor worship" as an important related value in African culture. In
fact, the basis for the honour and respect accorded to old people in the traditional
African culture is their closeness to the ancestors, for in his ontological conceptual
scheme the African places his old relatives closest to his ancestors or dead relatives
in his great hierarchy of being.

It must be noted that in the African universe the living and the dead interact with
one another. Life goes on beyond the grave for the African and is a continuous
action and interaction with dead relatives. These unseen ancestors called "the living
dead" become part of one's living family and often are invited to partake
(spiritually) in the family meals. As Parrinder observes: The ancestors are not just
ghosts, nor are they simply dead heroes, but are felt to be still present watching over
the household, directly concerned in all the affairs of the family and property, giving
abundant harvests and fertility (E.G. Parrinder, 1949).

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According to the traditional belief, the African ancestors--the morally good ones, of
course--are held in high esteem. People have great recourse to them as powerful
intermediaries between God and the living members of their particular families.
These good ancestors are expected also to reincarnate into their families in due time.

The respect and honour bestowed on the ancestors filter through the old people--
one's parents, grandparents and other relatives--as living embodiments of wisdom
and of the good moral life who are expected sooner or later to join other good
ancestors in the land of the "living dead." Old age therefore is an important value to
the African.

Another value to be examined in the light of the urbanizing influences in Africa

today is religion. To the traditional African, religion is an indispensable value. "To
be" for him is to be religious. Professor John Mbiti of Kenya speaks of him as
"notoriously religious"; other scholars regard him as "incurably religious." As
religion truly permeates his total life, there is for him no "secular" existence or
naturalistic vision of world order. In this important way also, the African exhibits a
cultural personality distinct from that of the Western man, for instance, he easily
makes a radical distinction between the secular and the religious, the natural and
the supernatural, this world and the next.

Also one cannot forget the fact that the African loves nature and feels one with it.
We are clearly reminded by Professor Maquet of the basic fact that, unlike
Westerners who, having succeeded in defying nature, proceed toward its complete
subjugation, Africans seek harmony with nature and achieve this by sharing its life
and strength. The African values the whole of creation as sacred. To him nature is
neither uncanny nor for subjugation and exploitation, but something sacred,
participating in the essential sacred nature of God Himself and of all reality. Open
spaces, fields, forests, trees, oceans and lakes are sacred to him and consequently
important as places reminiscent of the ashes of his fathers and the sanctuaries of his
gods.

Many other values distinguish the life of the African and in characteristic ways
determine also his modes of being-in-the-world, such as music, dance a sense of
family togetherness, hospitality and love for community.

The main bone of contention in this paper, fellow distinguished participants, is that
under development of African countries lies with the differences between the
Eurocentric and African values. As the former values informs the development
paradigm and planning models in African societies, the models of development
have become conformist, depriving African societies of self-reliance and self-
determinism. The result has been dependence and underdevelopment of African
societies through exploitation on the basis of cultural deprivation. Therefore, the
dependence and underdevelopment of African societies is a function of
marginalization and undermining of African values to an extent that the African
societies becomes a function of capital penetration and affluence through

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unfavorable division of labour , trade and exchange systems that are informed by
world dominating values which are inimical to African values.

For a long period various studies on Africa have attempted to identify the causes of
underdevelopment of the continent and the third world in general such that the
whole intellectual quest has been a cliché. Nevertheless, as the crisis of
underdevelopment deepens the exercise for intelligible knowledge about this
melancholy, has been far from wanting. This piece therefore explores the contrasts
of family value systems of both Eurocentric and African societies in an attempt to
offer an explanation about the genesis of African underdevelopment. The main
argument in this paper is that Eurocentric values informs the theory and practice
of development models in less developed countries and thus, its values in economic,
social, political domains have coercively undermined the development of those
societies.

The main basis of this argument stems from the fundamental differences between
Western and African family values. What then is the way forward for Africa in its
bid to rebuild its cherished family values that has seen massive cultural invasion and
corruption in diverse forms? To partly attempt to answer such a question, there is
the need to critically examine a few details to enable us get a clear picture of this
problem that has lived with us since pre-colonial time to date.

Whereas the Eurocentric is atomic, individualistic, modernized and compatible with

capitalist objectivised ideals, the latter is trustee, communalistic and traditional akin
to socialized ideals. The modern is associated with complexity, heterogeneity,
differentiation, secularization and technological advancement whereas the
traditional is linked with underdevelopment, the primitive, simple, homogeneous,
undifferentiated and supernatural influences. The western family also has
materialistic, scientific and secular values whereas the African values are communal,
socialistic, sacred and magical.

Oosthuizen (1987, p107) views the western value system as pervious to the
suffocating, dehumanizing effects of the rationalistic, modern, techno-scientific
approach and in contrast, the African value system is resistant, traditional and
conservative.

Modern technology and industrial life are based on results of modern natural
science and functions because the observations and laws of natural science are
objectively correct. On the other hand, for the traditional African society, the
economic sphere is not something separate from family ties, structures of authority
and homage to ancestors. The initial traditional standpoint of both African and
western values were similar among primitive societies. For example, communal
bonding was strong and the notion of the “nation as a family”, the chief or king and
queen mother or “magazia” as father and mother of the nation respectively existed
among other things. However, the shift from these notions has been drastic in the
west than African societies. Industrialization, urbanization and technological

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advancement have removed numerous factors that nurtured the “bonding factor”.
From the industrialization of the modern era (1500-1800) families started spending
less time together as a unit. Husbands were stolen by the industry and women were
custodians of the house.

In the 20th century, even women began to be absorbed by the workplace creating a
space between the family members. The introduction of formal schooling further
created more space between parents and children. In the process the social forces
(i.e. religion, social rules, mores, etc) of bonding family members were undermined.
Eventually, industrialization became a way of life and the order of progress.
Similarly, urbanization further weakened the social strings in the family. Strong
sentiments for individualism started gaining popularity and became more
meaningful to the economic life than social life of urban environment. Materialism
and individualism became synonymous with urban life, a life that economizes.

Equally, the advancement of technology created so much faith on itself that religious
and moral beliefs were downplayed by rational scientism. The various technological
innovations have taken the world through various epochs of boom and bust. Each
epoch has influenced the way people think, do and die. On the overall,
industrialisation, urbanization and technological advancement became strongly
engraved values of western societies as determinants of development, progress and
success.

Similarly, the improvements in technology, rapid increase in industrialization and

urbanization have increase access for children to information and technology and
they exercise more power than before. The powers are recognized and defined in
terms of Western values. Most African countries and other third world countries are
in the process of redefining power relations in the family according to Euro-centric
values.

Undoubtedly, colonialisation took place because of the “faith in science”. The

discovery of new Americas, the adventurous voyages, numerous innovations and
explorations were driven by the power of technology, industrial scientism and
rational development (which was expressed in urbanization as an organic process).
Scientific rationality, positivism and objectivity have become standard ideals of
measuring efficacy. Therefore, traditional values of African societies were un

dermined because they used religious rationality, subjective meaning and communal
beliefs as measurements for factual validity. This means that the initial interaction
of Western values with indigenous conservative (communal) values in African
societies was a clear uneven balance of power. The terms of values on which
development was initiated was at the disadvantage/disfavour of African countries.

Indeed, after over fifty years of independence, “millions of Africans are threatened
by famine, real incomes are continuing to decline”, high cost of fuel and its
immeasurable effects on the prices of goods and services, “foreign debt is increasing

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at an alarming rate and socio-political institutions are disintegrating.“(Maritz: 1987,
p120). Exploitation, high illiteracy rate, racism, poverty, Aids, war, cruelty, sexism
and alienation are some of the urgent problems of the moment that dramatize the
shameful conditions of human underdevelopment in African families. The desolate
outlook is depicted in Edem Kodjo’s belief that, “the situation is all the more
disturbing, in that we cannot say when our misery will end and there is no glimmer
of hope in the immediate future. The end of the crisis is not yet in sight “ (Leistner:
1981, p133).

Landell-Mills (1992, p543) observes that ‘this sad state of affairs is not simply a
consequence of an unfortunate coincidence of collapsing commodity prices and
mismanagement, but rather because of fundamental flaw in the prevailing
development paradigms. As planning became widely accepted as a profession,
mainstream planning became more sharply divorced from ethical theory. The
cleavage reflected an erroneous shared principle and that each principle was
technical in nature and would eschew value questions (Harper and Stein: 1992,
p105). As a result, “socio-political institutions such as the family have been taken
for granted, ignored, shunted aside and expected to do the nations patching and
mending without reward for attention” (Waller:1951,p3)

Developments agents , donors and Western educated African leaders

unquestioningly or misguidedly bow to the stereotype of using planning models
which are informed by western models systems such that the models of development
planning were exogenous, often applied out of context and not compatible with
beliefs, attitudes and practices of the African people. In the process, the values of the
African societies embedded in the family institution as a basic institution were
neglected and sidelined by the overarching importance of exogenous models in
development planning. Landell-Nills (1992-p543) argues, “Little attention was given
to the possible enhanced role of indigenous institutions. The leaders led and the
people were supposed to follow”. In that way, development planning became a tool
of insinuating and imposing western values of development in a linear, top-down
fashion.

The compounding effect was brought about by “the ideology of scientism, the notion
that all thought, action and knowledge can be reduced to the objective of scientific
paradigm” (Habermas in Harper and Stein: 1992, p109) and by the popularity of
planning systems which are alienated from human –oriented development e.g.
physical and economic planning. In addition, urbanization, technology and
industrialization further suppressed the development potential of the African family,
despite it being the fundamental institution of development and seat of social,
economic and political values.

The belief in the use of empirical observations and the normative laws of natural
science as basis for objective truths also added impetus for the scientific
approach to surpass the indigenous approach which was entangled with
mystical and transcendental explanations of reality. Through education and

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 higher learning, language, literature, art, and architecture, mass media and
bureaucratic practices, the African family value system was further
marginalized and in some cases destroyed by the application of Western
values particularly by conquering the minds of African leaders.

Sunede and Bozalek (1995, p.64) ascertain that “familism as expressed in Western
society assumes that the family is the natural unit of social organisation and
implicitly posits the heterosexual, nuclear family as the desired norm.” Therefore,
the western nuclear family is taken as the norm in much of the world due to the
hegemony of western imperialism which continues to form the basis of many social
policies. Thus, the insinuation of western traditional family values into development
planning models run into the flaw of assuming the universality of the nuclear family.
Consequently, development planning in African societies has an irrevocable
“conformist approach” because it operates under the presumption of Western
family values.

Since development itself is a culturally loaded term, ready to succumb to

ethnocentrism, the policies and economic system of society adapt to culture and
culture to theme (Klitgaard, 1992 p.77). Therefore, the presentation of human
development as a uni-linear change from simple primitive societies to complex
modern communities was a diffusionist effort to submerge African societies into a
dependency on Eurocentric values.

In that way, the modernist project worked as an agent of passing through Western
family values into African societies. The diffusion of Western values, consequently,
became associated with development. There was an equation of development with
Westernization and adoption of Western value systems became synonymous with
development. Thus, under the unfailing control of the world dominating values, the
African society has been transformed helplessly from the traditional communal
humane (clanage) values by colonial and neo-colonial forces, now global
governments ((International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade
Organization) into adoption of global dominating Eurocentric values.

The Western view of family presented a novelty of enlightenment imbued with

rationality, ideal, stability, superiority and democracy. In all aspects of life the
western view of family was a carrier of modernist enlightenment, a symbol of
success. This laid a demand and provided a model of a “mimicry agenda” among
African societies. This “agenda” en-route the developing world in a process of
“doing like Master” However, neither master fully understood the complex values of
the servant nor did the “servant” absolutely captured the supposedly absolute
objective verities of western values.

However, the nuclear form of family does not reflect the true conditions of African
societies. Beyond the assumptions of objective behaviour at all times, there are
major differences between the two. For instance, whereas, the western family is
atomic, individualistic and monogamous, most African families in the West African

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Region, for instance (Kusasis, Ashantis, , Moshis, Hausas, Ibos etc) were extended,
trustee and polygamous. Although the notion of an extended family exists in the
Western society, it is perceived differently in the African context. Whilst an extended
family is perceived in terms of including the grandparents and grandchildren and
close persons of kin at the domestic level in the Western context, the extended family
in this region goes further to include those who are dead (ancestors) and those who
are conceived.

For example, African societies speak and share food with the dead through ritual
cults. The un-born are taken care of, by giving the bearer drinks, so that the baby
grows well to show that they are part of the family. Mbiti (1975, p85) indicates that
rituals are performed by the local medicine man or diviner, who also performs the
purification ceremony for those yet to be born. According to Mfaniseni, among the
Swazis, the death of King Sobhuza II made every Swazi to cut their hair to mourn
the King. Also, the death of any member of a family requires all people in an area to
refrain from work for a day or more up until the person is buried (depending on
status of the deceased). Likewise, the death of His Royal Highness, Otumfuo Opoku
Ware 11, the late Asantehene, the whole of the Ashanti kingdom and indeed the
entire country was thrown into a state of mourning for a period of time in Ghana
without people going to work.

Beyond this, the idea of an extended family is not confined within the “walls of the
house” as the case may be in the Western sense. It goes beyond the walls of the house
to encompass the domestic, chiefdom and kingdom levels. It is a tier system rather
than being a unitary system. For example, development in Dagomba and Gonja
society are engineered by the national family structure which have the Yaa Naa and
Yabonwura respectively as the fathers and their senior most wives as the mothers
of the nation.

In addition, as mentioned elsewhere in the passage, the concept of children is

defined differently in African societies highlighting the way in which this concept is
socially constructed. Whilst a child in the Western society categorically falls below a
certain age i.e. eighteen years, the status of being a child takes a lifetime in most
African societies. For example, in Ghana, the child status manifests itself in various
ways within the social hierarchy of the nation. At Kingdom level the King is the
father and the Queen mother is the mother of the nation, at chiefdom level, the
Chief is the father and his senior wife or mother is the mother of the subjects. At
domestic level, every parent is father or mother of every child in the country. A
similar situation exists among the Yoruba, Ashanti, Kusasis, Zulus, and Buganda of
Uganda.

Most African families have numerous indigenous and traditional structures which
are central to the family and in the development of African societies i.e. Kings,
Chiefs, Traditional Healers, Tindanas, landowners, etc. However, these structures
have been left out in development planning and sidelined and/or patronized in
project implementation. Usually, development is imposed upon them because they

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are understood and associated with being un-progressive, conservative, primitive,
obstructionist and even non-extent. For example, the Northern part of Ghana has a
permeating traditional ruling system that is controlled by structures such as the
Paramount chiefs and elders, divisional chiefs, headmen, head of clans and families
Tindana ( landowners) and spiritual leaders (the medicine man).

The operations of these structures are not rationalized in blueprint in terms of

identifying responsibilities, rights and privileges. The vast knowledge of what they
do, exist in oral tradition and it is often not given explicit relative positioning of their
legal status against modern structures. Conflicts, confusion, complication emanating
from the difference between the modern and traditional can not be overemphasised
in this regard.

Traditional spiritual healers like "Teemdaanam", "Komfuo" (the medicine people)

traditional institutions of celebrating rituals, marriage, procedures of acquiring land
in Chief’s area are not clearly defined in terms of legislature and planning terms of
reference. Most of these activities are “informal” and remain petrified in what
appears to be a mystery of traditional values. They have never enjoyed equitable
recognition in blueprint and are undermined in the mainline frameworks of
planning, legislature and educational system.

Perhaps, the most ignored aspect of the African family in general is that it is not
merely a social entity, but it also includes the environment and resources where the
people live. Places give identity and a sense of belonging because the environment is
acculturated by people’s icons, idioms and ideologies. The integrity of peoplehood
with environmentalhood expresses a special unity between the people and the
environment.

For instance, an occurrence of a rainstorm which destroys domestic items such as

crops or livestock would be followed by stay away from work to ‘fast’ or sympathise
with the storm stricken environment. In the Kusasi local language "ne ya farafara"
is also used to pay tribute to a bereaved affected family.

Furthermore, polygamy is among the issue that is underscored by Western family

value system among African societies. This is reflected in the provision of
maintenance benefits, access to loans, credit, insurance and medical schemes. Most
of these schemes recognise only civil marriage certificates, civil adoption certificates,
and chauvinist patterns, and interpretations of various forms are not hard to find in
these schemes. This is compounded by the fact that the legal status of civil and
customary marriages remain unequal (albeit recent recognition of customary
marriage in some countries).

The process of formalising customary marriage is not yet formalized, with the result
that a majority of people married by customary rites do not have marriage
certificates and their “invisible” certificates deter them from getting loans,
inheritance and claim rights. As a result, the access of women in polygamous

10
families to sources of investment, financial security and their human rights in
general are grossly affected. In some countries eg Swaziland, loans, credit, medical
scheme, insurance do not accommodate all women in polygamous families in a
husband’s scheme despite the overwhelming preponderance of polygamous families
because they can only accommodate one wife.

Whilst changes are taking place in general towards multiculturalism and

recognition of traditional obscured values, subtle attitudes and a hangover on
Eurocentric interpretations lives on with us up to this day. For example, in Ghana,
certificates, application forms, passports forms, demand name of one wife (singular)
because of the universal assumption of a nuclear family. Nonetheless, the
assumption of a universal nuclear family has also come under attack in the western
world where the nuclear family has disappeared and new forms of family have
emerged such as single parent families and gay families. For example, in Britain it is
estimated that only two per cent of the population live in nuclear families (Fernades,
1993, P.29).

Now, it is increasingly becoming clear that value-free planning is impossible where

choices between divergent objectives and interests cannot be resolved by any
technical means in an ever changing societal environment. These realities may not
be an ideal for an ever changing society but for those who are part of it, it might be
practical to accommodate them.

These processes are not divorced from the social, psychological and cultural realities
that shape the specific patterns of production, consumption, investment and
commercial exchange, etc. It forms the foundation for the marginalisation of the
African value system which in turn created conditions of dependence and
underdevelopment. As such, the satellite position of the third world occurs not as a
result of economic tyranny of the first world but essentially stems from the tyranny
of socio-cultural family value system of the world dominating values. The
marginalisation of the third world occurs through the displacement of its people’s
value system and incorporation of developing countries into the world economic
systems, is secondary to its incorporation into the world dominating value system.
Therefore, dependence is not a fundamental function of economic domination but it
is essentially caused by cultural domination of one set of values by another.

This leads to the conclusion that prior to dependence articulated by the Latin
American dependency schools of thought, was undermining of values in order to
create conditions conducive to underdevelopment. Cultural dependence is a pre-
condition and a cause for underdevelopment of one society by another. If one society
manages to capture and captivate the attitudes, beliefs and practices of another the
“object” society is bound to be dependent because their goals, visions and priorities
are externally defined and the development models, production methods, exchange
processes and consumption patterns are commissioned by external values. Economic
dependence is a result of cultural dependence and underdevelopment evolves out of
a history of cultural deprivation and/or marginilisation.

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Therefore, the gateway for capitalism and socialism into African societies is through
the infiltration of Eurocentric values. The success and failure of development of
either capitalism or socialism depends on the level to which the Eurocentric values
are compatible with local values and the extent to which the penetration command it
influences. Both capitalism and socialism accentuate their effects in a society that
has been devalued by Eurocentrism. For macro-success of capitalism in Western
Europe occurred on the basis of the fact that they were operating on conducive
grounds of Western value system which was compatible with its Eurocentric modes
of production i.e. individualism and materialism. In South East Asia, the success of
the East Asian Miracle, culminated from the contextualisation of Western values
onto the indigenous value system. The development of Japan which offers a model
and lessons for most of these countries was inextricably bound with Japanese values.

In Russia, capitalism frustrated the attempt to impose socialism on an individualistic

and materialistic society and capitalism has been a failure in Africa because
development in Africa was introduced on the basis of a Western value system which
was inimical to African values. Socialism strived for survival in Russia, up until its
collapse, countries such as China and North Korea have been successful because they
have blended it onto their cultures.

However, in Africa and the rest of the third world, as capitalist values got
introduced, it accentuated economic classes, spatial imbalances and economic
disorders that already existed in the traditional societies. The classes, gaps and
disorders (injustices) among African people were not necessarily a creation of
capitalist infiltration because it already existed, but, in a sustainable mode of
relationship. However, they were social structures that had to do with the traditional
social space of organisation. Capitalism accentuated these classes by disrupting the
socio-cultural securities which were safeguarding against economic displacement
and gave it an economic dimension. As Ahmad (1996, p14) in Monthly Review
argues, “The logic of capital is to destroy the integrity of all use values and to impose
exchange values upon all productions of value. This means then that the cultural logic
of capitalism is to produce a uniform culture of pure consumption, pure commodity
fetishism…..Capitalism is never able to resolve the contradictions that it produces. .But
I do not think that the logical tendency of capitalism is toward subsumption of all
cultural value under commodity fetishism”.

Some years back, a link between structural adjustment (operating under the
auspices of the Eurocentric global governments-World Bank, International
Monetary Fund) and rising ethnic tensions in Africa has been noted. However, this
does not imply SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programmes) is the cause but there is
no doubt that SAPs have acted as catalysts by far and important exacerbators. In
most cases, the conditions of reduced socio-economic resources and opportunities
created by the debt and adjustment have tended to intensify inter-group struggles

12
and sharpened the divide between the “haves” and “have-nots”. Superimposed upon
pre-adjustment structures of inequalities and this has exacerbated situation of
conflict. A typical example is, when SAPs were introduced in Nigeria soon after
General Ibrahim Babangida came into power in 1985 in a coup, the London
Financial Times saw the crises as IMF induced.

Recollecting that period, Nigeria went through some of its worst political, social,
civil-military and intra-military discords, crises and conflicts. These included the
Vasta coup plot of December 1985, and the subsequent executions; the acute
tensions generated by the imbroglio over Nigeria’s secretly arranged membership to
the Organization of Islamic Council (OIC); the bloody religious riots of March 1987
in Kafanchan, Kaduna/state; worker’s strikes and market women’s demonstrations;
intermittent revolts in the rural areas; the nation-wide university students’ uprising
of 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1990; the violent Orkra counter-military coup of April 1990;
and agitations and protests by various associations of professional bodies, including
doctors, lawyers and academics.

It is not only in Nigeria that the introductions of SAPs have been greeted with
strikes, riots and demonstrations. The experiences of country after country, from
Nigeria through Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal, to Sudan, Zaire to Zimbabwe and
Zambia have followed similar patterns. Numerous authors have highlighted this
phenomenon (Bangura, 1986; Gibbon et al., 1992; Herbst, 1990). They have shown
in various strengths of arguments that Africa has plunged into economic crisis
through the structural adjustment. To many, structural adjustment is synonymous
with harsh conditions of exploitation, disintegration of human values, corruption
and corrosion of moral values because experiences shows that it has left the
continent in the shards of terror, trouble and turmoil.

Since the early 1980s, there has been the extension of the capitalist franchise into
various countries descending with economic austerities supervised by the world
governments through an unwavering well entrenched Western value system which
supersede any sense of human morality. Consequently, official and formal jobs are
becoming more scarce due to adoption of capital intensive methods and increases in
speculative investment among other things. Informal and unofficial means of
gaining economic support are increasingly becoming the norm. Practices such as
prostitution, homosexuality, pimping, crime, child labour and environmental
scourge are some of the vices that mark social and moral decay among African
societies. In particular, crime, poverty and child abuse and various forms of other
abuses have risen up to inexplicable proportions.

Socialism, similarly, has been an ideological pathway for Eurocentric values, albeit
its historical reaction to the ruins of capitalism through revolutionary activities
which at best, managed to restore political power to African leaders. It also instills
non-African values to the African elite leaving the rest of society enduring

13
democratic rhetorics of the African struggle. For instance, leftist schools of thought
in the form of socialism, communism, neo-Marxism which emanate from the Euro-
centric enclave emerged as a counterforce to the ruins of capitalism. The likes of
African socialism, Humanism, Pan-Africanism etc. are some of the variant attempts
of African leaders to bring about development in the African continent. The first
breed include: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Dr. Kaunda of Zambia and Dr.
Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and the new generation of the 1970s and 1980s which
are: Mengustus Haile Miriam of Ethiopia, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Thomas
Sankara of Burkina Faso, Samora Machel of Mozambique and Edward dos Santos
of Angola.

At best, these leaders have developed their own classes, spatial imbalances and
social disorders at the expense of the African values. Some of these leaders confused
Africa’s strong sense of community with socialism, even communism. The whole
crew of leaders managed to survive for decades in self-enrichment through capitalist
investment, by capitalising on the mass illiteracy and ignorance of their citizens.
Now, all of them have dropped or are dropping from their power as their countries
helplessly fall into capitalist or socialist created abyss of poverty. By and large their
primus operandum has been defined by Western attitudes, practices, beliefs and
habits beyond the African outlook which was mentioned only to serve as facets for
.window dressing
Even though the leftist thinkers theoretically negate capitalism by principle, its values
are not different. Both are objectivised and believe in rational scientism. The difference
is in ideological orientation because neither capitalism nor socialism seeks to
recognise African values. The ideological means of attaining dominance are different
but the ends are the same. Wherever they have been implemented they have sought to
uproot the indigenous values in self-justification of their ideals. Much as capitalism
created islands of riches in the African aristocracy in a sea of poverty among its
communal people, the left created its own pseudo-equalitarian class which drew
support from the communal pool with a heavy penalty of wars, exploitation, genocide,
and massacre. As such, underdevelopment in Africa can partially be explained in terms
of competition between capitalism and socialism. The struggle to balance the two is
what has constituted suffering and bitterness in most of the African societies.

Since the infiltration of Western settlers into African societies and the ingestion of
colonial capital through a modernist approach there has been a practical translation
into the destruction and uprooting of African family value system through either
capitalist or socialist interests. The modernisation paradigm became a means for
both capitalist and socialist ideologies to penetrate, colonise and under develop the
African societies. Then, in due course, language, idiom and culture began to be
dictated by Western values. Systematically, the advancement of the processes of
urbanisation, industrialisation and technological advancement further transformed
African attitudes, beliefs, and practices became tools of alienating and incorporating
African societies into the world dominating value system. As a result, the
organization of space, art, architecture and literature in the African land lost the
instinctive and perceptive values of African societies. Instead, it got an artificial

14
expression of African values which falsified the needs, processes and procedures of
development which are divorced from the African sense of values, perceptions and
frames of reference.

Development was disembodied, dehumanised, “lipless,” lacking an African

mouthpiece for its value expression and the symbolic flesh for cultural coaching.
Prof. Ali Mazrui, (1992, p129) for instance, ascertains that, “the indigenous
languages lost the opportunity to the “scientificated” in such a way that they are
capable of becoming languages of technology; so that diffusion and popularisation
of scientific concepts in the wider population became a great aid towards creating a
scientific culture.” The dependence on values transformed the symbolic imagery of
African societies completely and immediately into a state of dependence. The
African people lost vision, focus and version of Africanness such that they lost its
capacity to interpret and appropriate external knowledge to their context. Also, the
political clout behind scientific support and rational validity added impetus to the
authenticity of Western value systems and simultaneously drowned the African
family value system into the history of oblivion.

Indeed, many African countries have spent millions getting the “right” expertise
from the right people to come and sort African problems. They have come and
explained the problems in the most Oxford and Yale of terms, but the solutions have
frustrated their architects. Instead of solving the problems, they have worsened
them and created new ones and left. Djibril Diallo spokesman of the United Nations
Office for Emergency Operations in Africa in Timberlake (1985) puts it more
bluntly, “Africa’s problem – Africa’s biggest problem – is too many people going
around the continent with solutions to problems they don’t understand. Many of
these solutions are half-baked. But this is not to put all the blame on the North.
Some Africans don’t understand African problems.

In that way, African societies at large got transformed radically, perceptively and
socially onto the rearside to the development as a people who will always follow
rather than lead.

HUMBLE SUGGESTIONS

As a people whose family value system was marginalized and in some cases
destroyed by the application of western values particularly by conquering the
minds of the African leaders, through education and higher learning, language,
literature, art, architecture, mass media and bureautic practices, the following
suggestions are made hopefully, towards ways and means of rebuilding Africa’s
family values.

15
 (A) Even though part of the global village, and largely an interdependent
community among others, Africa has to put an end to the habit, as reflected by
Adedeji Adebanjo’s statement, that Africans have become mimic people who mimic
other societies and their lifestyles, use borrowed phrases, jargons and terminologies
which have not real meaning to them and merely becloud the issues” (Leistner:
1981, p134). In Susan George’s words, “It mimics without understanding, and
copies without controlling. Lacking roots in the local culture or environment, it
quickly drops and withers if not sustained by transfusions of foreign capital,
technology and ideas. It goes for growth usually without asking growth for what?
For whom?”

The result has been a multiplicity of uncoordinated development activities, which

tended to weaken the overall coherence among societies. The litany of failures that
set rows disappointment in Africa include: Volta Dam in Ghana, Aswan Dam in
Egypt, Rural Development in Swaziland (Sallinger-McBride: 1986), Betterment
Planning in South Africa, Villigisation in Tanzania and lately Zimbabwe (Robins:
1994, p9). Joining the spate of failures are the crisis-ridden programmes that come
in the variant versions of Economic reforms, Economic restructuring and Structural
Adjustment Programmes.

(B) Africa, including other third world blocks must now avoid continuously being
subjected to culturally determined, characteriscally Euro-centric values, vision,
goals and priorities. Obviously, the continuous incorporation into the world
dominating value system buttresses the alienation of the African societies from their
value system. Such alienation deprives the third world of foresight, understanding
and local interpretation of phenomena. Eventually, the translation, transformation
and transplants of western goods and services, technology, expertise and models
through capitalist and socialist modes of production at best condemns, confuses and
contains the third world in a dependency position. Attempts to undo this cancerous
situation strive in vain to cope with the changes and conditions of Euro-centric
determinism.

Under the determined control of both western and eastern ideological values in
developing planning, there is a flow of capital and socio-cultural values in two
different directions. Whereas capital accumulation flows from the periphery to the
core, socio-cultural values flow from the core to the periphery. Therefore, although
capital development does not result in a trickle down onto the periphery, socio-
cultural values of the core diffuse down to the periphery at a rapid rate. However,
the trickle down of the socio-cultural values has a marginalizing effect to the
periphery in terms of socio-cultural expediency and its capacity for self-
determination and self-reliance.

(C) Africa and other third world countries such as the Latin Americas and their
Asian counterparts have to take note that even though, the competition between the
main left and the right ideologies have eventually tipped the scale against the left,
and the right spreads its wings to cover the whole world. As the environment

16
increasingly become capitalist through a regulated deregulation system of global
governance that is controlled by strategic mechanisms like the world Bank,
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, the capitalist
franchise extends and consolidates the Eurocentric enclave that is engulfing the rest
of the world nations. This increases the urge to seek better means of survival in a
world that is increasingly becoming competitive, volatile, uncertain and inhuman.
As a result, there is a breakdown in values of African political solidarity, economic
and interdependency, social security among various societies in the continent. But
wait a minute, what about being more serious on regional integration by Africa and
other third world countries to counter the trend of events? Despite the negative side
of regional integration portrayed by other school of thought, as presenting a form
of capitalist defense as a result of the intense conditions of competition in the global
economy, it is one option of strategizing towards rebuilding our values, even though
experience shows that if at all it benefits any country, those benefits accrue for the
elite created and nurtured by the Europeans.

(D) Over four decades have almost elapsed since independence, and the question
when will Africa’s problems come to an end still remains. World Bank reports raises
some hopes about Africa’s economic crisis, however, the satisfactory mark is still out
of the light. “Decolonising the mind” as serialized by a London magazine (1983), by
changing the mindset, a better comprehension of the forces and circumstances,
shaping the perceptions, wishes and resolutions of people can greatly contribute
towards meaningful developmental endeavour.
This is an effort in the right direction, but at best a partial answer.

(E) Africa, notes Adebayo (1981), p134) needs a development process that ‘puts the
individual in the very centre of the development effort’; a process that is both
human and humane; that does not alienate man from his society and culture; that
increases self-confidence and self-reliance; and sustains the needs of the society in an
equitable and just manner. Above all, he demands a break with the past and the
evolution of truly indigenous pattern of development and lifestyles as the conditio
sine qua non for the attainment of higher levels of living. These efforts, at best have
tended to be rhetorical and sentimental. It is time to do away with tokenism.
Academia need to move away from abstract grand theorising to more empirically-
based and lower order theory by engaging in the praxis of bringing about tangible
results.

(E) A way out of these crises is delinking from the wholesale values of the world
dominating value nations through an Africanisation process revolution. There is a
great need to engage in a meaningful research to dig into the archives of our history
for those values that foster humane, sustainable and equitable development.
Restoration of our values would bring back a sense of brotherhood, humanity and
prosperity which the African desperately need. However, this process is not
automatic, it requires well informed campaigns to resist and reverse the Eurocentric
construction of our values.

17
(F) There is a need for protection of African culture from abuse by capitalist and
socialist ideals which has dehumanised African societies to a large extent. The
African environment needs to be made more human, habitable and less threatening.
A humanisation of the environment should be undertaken through Cultural
adjustment programmes (CAPs) NOT Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs).
Africa needs a programme of cultural adjustment carried out by Africans that
would transform their mentality to one more consistent with values in the rest of the
world. Since African underdevelopment is expressed through attitudes, beliefs and
practices, cultural adjustment programmes should involve a rigorous defensive
attack on these values through publication, workshop, symposia and infiltration of
media with Africanness. This does not mean going back to the past, old customs and
rituals so that Africa finds itself living in an African museum. It means that Africa
needs to develop a global approach to its problems which seem to be now imposed
by global governments.

(G) Africa should Africanise globally: introducing its vocabulary, habits, interests
and visions into the globescape. The continents’ dominant languages such as Twi,
Swahili, Zulu, Yoruba and Hausa should be actively promoted by being taught and
publicised so that Africaness enters the global fibre of values that are
circulating/dominating the world. This will open the wider choice of values at the
same time affirm and expose the Africanness which is forever buried in the mystery
of the history of African people due to the glamour of western logic, habits and
materialistic interests. Beyond this, a regional integrated approach is necessary to
support the African continent in the global bid to neutralise the cunning effects of
the global franchise of Euro-centric values.

(H) In addition to supporting languages, state intervention should never dispense its
role from supporting the development of social superstructure and infrastructure
that enhance the development of African values. Developing institutions supportive
to family life i.e. life time employment, crèches, hospitals, management by
consensus, national ritual and community institutions should be encouraged. Major
investment should be directed into African literature, art, architecture and folklore
should be supported. Film, radio, television should capture the glamour the
romance, pride, science and technology of African society in order to increase choice
and enhance exposure which is limited and marginalized by European values. Tribal
and clanship may exist and will always exist however, a profuse campaign and
presentations of our various values with all its variations and tensions will go a long
way in informing and representing the black continent which has been marginalized
for a long time. In time, the divisions and tensions between tribes and clans will be
buried into the unison campaigns of peoplehood, brotherhood and Africanness in
the globescape. An African age of enlightment may emerge (African renaissance).

There is no doubt that countries that have tended to be successful laid their
economic success e.g. “Miracles of the Pacific tigers” on an appropriate
contextualised value system. They used the best of their cultural values whilst
extracting from European cultural values. A reconstruction of values starting from

18
the family should take place drawing attention to trust, communality, mutual
responsibility, accountability and answerability. The family should not be something
bound within the walls but should go further to engulf national familism in order to
instill national patriotism, work and responsibility. However, these values should be
dampened within a democratic enclave that is tailor-made by its own people
through an informed participatory process.

A humane and sustainable environment can only be realised in a society that has a
set of values that sees the person as an end not a means and also one that sees ‘a
person as one of us that deserves the same’ since “a person is a person through
other persons – I am because we are”. Therefore, there is a need to develop a
communitarian culture in order to built a sense of trust, work ethic, responsibility,
accountability and answerability which are so crucially needed in order to be
humanable among not only African societies but also in the corporate world where
it is desperately needed. These values should groom and capacitate our societies not
only in their social life but in their businesses and various enterprises in order to
make them successful global competitors.
Thank you so much, organizers of this wonderful conference for giving me this
unique opportunity. May God, the Almighty bless us all. Long live Ausar Auset
Society, long Live African Solidarity. Thank you.

End

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