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Chair of the Afrospectives, a Global Africa Initiative, Dr Ali Moussa Iye, has underscored the need to rewrite African stories to counter Eurocentric biases and oversimplified narratives which have led to widespread misunderstandings about Africa.

Dr Iye was delivering a public lecture on Transforming Narrative: Endogenous Knowledge and African Modernity, at the University of Botswana Conference Centre on the 23rd of April 2024. He further observed that early reports about Africa were written by foreigners in foreign languages with the intension of upholding European dominance by pushing narratives of African inferiority. He said African cultures were examined through shaded lenses while African voices were silenced which resulted in current narratives about African problems.

Dr Iye indicated that the current conversation on African problems composed of distortion, injustice, poverty, disease and political corruption. He said African scholars should focus on reclaiming their history and narrate their stories. In addition, he said many African scholars had addressed the opposition between tradition and modernity underlining Pan Africanism and development as early as the 18th Century in an effort to develop knowledge that could support the liberation of Africans minds.

Dr Iye highlighted that African scholars and activists had debunked the racial prejudices against people of African descent by highlighting the significant contribution they made to the general progress of humanity. He noted that scholars from South America and Asian had also challenged Western predation to universality and exemplarity. He also highlighted that Indian scholar, Dipesh Chakrabarty’s publication on provincialising Europe, popularised the debate on deconstruction of the paradigm of Western universal modernity.

Dr Iye highlighted the concept of coloniality, which has reshaped studies on colonialism by addressing the hierarchical relations imposed by Europeans based on racial, spiritual, and linguistic criteria during conquest.

He said most physiological, cultural ideological and economic assumption that drove the dominant system were today facing serious doubts on their universality.

“This global crisis of dominant narratives offers Africans a golden opportunity to explore alternative in all domains,” said Dr Iye.

Dr Iye added that African people were subjected to slavery, colonisation and had no time to produce their own form of modernity.  He said the modernity Africans received was imposed in that it did not emerge from within African societies but linked to coloniality which subjected Africans to the role of imitators.

He emphasised the need for a fresh perspective on African philosophy, encompassing democratic traditions, social interactions, ecology, medicine, water and cattle management, house building, education, and relationships with other entities.

Dr. Iye urged African scholars to draw from their own historical experiences and move beyond attempts to defend against prejudices imposed by others, which often drain energy and imagination through a process he termed 'Latimization'. He said African scholars need to chat their own course without wasting time trying to convenience humanity and international community.