I doubt that African philosophy on its own is a solution to African poverty. However, insofar as African philosophy is a source of the kinds of local culture and wisdom needed to reduce poverty it can contribute eg by decolonising and locally informing, lasting, localised poverty-reducing interventions. Paulo Freire is a useful resource on processes which connect local culture (including local philosophy), as a source of shared learning to escape poverty
African philosophy can be one of the major pinnacles in combatting poverty and inequality.
A scenario to explain this well: there is a basket of food under a tree, people must line up on a start line and race towards the basket of food, and the first one to get there wins the basket of food. In developed economies, usually, but not always, people will run like hell to get the basket of food and the one to reach it first will take it all. In Africa people will not run, they will happily walk and when they get to the basket of food, they will share it among themselves as well as with others who may be passing by………….
Hi Rossitsa, thank you for your kind inputs on my post. The philosophy i described above is very generic and general as in Africa diversity is immense. However, there is an overall general tendency, usually, and not always, that fosters for a far more social and community-based economy. This very general tend is not simply inertia, far from it, but an overall will which can be termed the sharing of resources among all people. This goes some way to dismantle the basic economic questions of: what to produce? how to product it? when to produce it? and most importantly who gets the produce? Economics and economic development are very ethnocentric, in terms of their evolution and the social, cultural, natural environment, climate and political where such subject matters pertain too. For example, basic demand and supply, market equilibrium and price are well understood, but culturally, socially and economically have little or any relevance and practicality at the local level.
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