African Political Thought

Luc Sindjoun

The expression “African political thought” can be considered a prima facie misunderstanding in that it oversimplifies the pluralism of thoughts that has always existed in Africa. Deep divergences characterize the African ideological landscape. While Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan political thinker who was the first prime minister of Kenya and its president from 1964 to 1978, positioned precolonial Africa as the reference for the rebuilding of independent Africa; Léopold Sédar Senghor, president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, idealized the encounter between Africa and Europe as the starting point of any modernity in Africa. In the same way, the call for the immediate building of a United States of Africa was contradicted by the advocacy of a step-by-step process of regional integration. Pluralism of political thoughts is not the lone obstacle besetting the emergence of a unified school; alongside it, there is also the issue of pluralism in meaning. As the ...

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