Curriculum Perspectives
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-023-00187-x
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Building an authentic African philosophy of education based
on the African concept of personhood
Babalola Joseph Balogun1
Received: 22 October 2022 / Revised: 24 February 2023 / Accepted: 26 February 2023
© The Author(s) 2023
Abstract
This paper’s central task is to demonstrate how the African concept of personhood provides a suitable grounding for an
authentic African philosophy of education. An authentic African philosophy of education is one in which there is a constant
search for underlying principles for reflecting on the foundation, nature, and justification for the need and desirability of
education in Africa. Scholars have drawn diverse implications from the African concept of personhood, especially in the
areas of normative ethics, social and political, and legal philosophies. However, sufficient attention has not yet been paid to
how the African conception of personhood could drive fruitful theoretical engagements with the foundations, nature, and
justification of the African philosophy of education. This paper attempts to fill this gap. With the combination of critical
literature review and philosophical methods of conceptual and logical analyses (and argumentation), the paper argues for
the centrality of an African concept of personhood to the questions of the foundation, form (nature), and justification of an
authentic African philosophy of education. The paper concludes that a personhood-based African philosophy of education
provides a plausible framework within which these questions can be fruitfully engaged.
Keywords APE · Personhood · Communalism · Educated person
Introduction—three questions
for philosophy of education
There have been concerted efforts by African philosophers
to reflect on the continent’s philosophy of education (Higgs,
2012; Horsthemke, 2017; Ramose, 2004; Waghid, 2004,
2014; Wiredu, 2004). One such effort—Wiredu’s (2004)
idea of the African philosophy of education (henceforth
referred to as APE)—is inspired by what he takes the notion
of an “educated person” to be in an African context. For him,
it is impossible to reflect on APE without being first and
foremost clear about what it means for an African person to
be educated. Waghid (2004, p. 57) agrees with this, “because
any philosophy of education needs to frame human action in
a way that is commensurate with its underlying meanings”.
Working specifically within the Akan conceptual framework,
Wiredu identifies three key qualities that distinguish educated people from their non-educated counterparts. For him,
* Babalola Joseph Balogun
talk2joey@yahoo.com
1
Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, University
of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
an educated person must possess: (i) basic knowledge of
the cultural and natural environments, with more than mere
mastery of some selected area of discourse; (ii) capacity for
logical reasoning and refined articulation; (iii) a good degree
of moral maturity (Wiredu, 2004, p. 17). While Wiredu’s list
of qualities of an educated person seems to align with the
commonsense conception of education globally, the list indicates the significance of the concept of personhood in African thoughts about education. As it is argued in this paper,
no serious discussion of philosophy of education could avoid
the need for an appropriate concept of personhood.
Formulating an authentic philosophy of education for
Africa has a lot to benefit from the nature of persons in
Africa. In fact, an authentic APE cannot be extricated from
the insights from the African metaphysics of personhood.
One reason for this is that the concept of education only has
meaning within the context of human relationships. Animals
could be trained to behave in specific manners envisioned by
their owners. However, regardless of the degree of response
to training, it is not conventional to refer to an animal as
educated or uneducated. As Woods and Barrow (2006, p.
22) rightly observe, “you can design or program a machine
and train a monkey, but, strictly speaking, you can educate
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only a human, or, to be precise, a being with a capacity for a
hypothesising language”. This suggests that human beings
remain at the centre of the activity called education. As
Taiwo (2005, p. 244) argues, “One can hardly speak of the
well-being of an entity unless one is apprised of what type of
being it is and what will best conduce to its being the best of
its type that it can be.” Similarly, one can hardly talk about
an authentic philosophy of education of a people if one is not
highly knowledgeable about the kind of people in question.
The central thesis of this paper is that an African concept of
personhood plays, or should be made to play, a pivotal role
in the conception of APE.
Every philosophy of education confronts three key questions1: a. the question of its foundation, b. the question of
its form (nature), and c. the question of justification. Any
other issues regarding philosophy of education can be conveniently subsumed under these tripod missions. The first
question focuses on the source(s), origin(s), or root(s) of
such a philosophy. The legal principle that you cannot build
something on nothing holds true for philosophy of education. Philosophy of education is an accumulated body of
knowledge that is deeply enshrined within an intellectual
mode of discourse. As it relates to Africa, the question of
foundation focuses on whether APE has an authentic African
origin or is rooted in an alien culture. This question becomes
more relevant in the specific case of Africa owing to her
historical experiences of slave trade and colonialism—two
ugly pasts that continue to shape the African present and
future discourses about education.
The second one is the question of form or nature. This
asks, among many other things, what are the distinctive features of a philosophy of education? What are the internal
configurations of the philosophy of education? A part of
efforts to provide answers to this question should include the
overall purpose that a specific philosophy of education aims
to achieve. What relation should one philosophy of education have with other philosophies of education? How should
one philosophy of education react to another? In reflecting on the question of nature, philosophers of education (as
accountable citizens of their respective regions of the world)
have the professional responsibility of taking an introspective perspective on what their society stands to gain through
a particular form of education. For instance, Oladipo (1998,
p. 24; see also Waghid, 2016) argues for an APE with the
intellectual capacity to provide skills required for the eradication of the “various dimensions of the African predicament (that is, the amelioration of the human condition as
a consequence of poverty, hunger, famine, unemployment,
political oppression, civil wars, colonialism (imperialism),
1
These questions are based on my understanding of what philosophy
of education stands for, and the goals it aims to achieve.
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and economic exploitation)”. The import of Oladipo’s argument is that any philosophy of education must be committed to the situated or lived reality of a human community.
In providing solutions to these problems, are African philosophers of education restricted in their approach to only
African intellectual repertoire, or are they required to borrow
from other intellectual traditions? Reflections on these questions are an integral part of a properly conceived philosophy
of education.
The third question that philosophy of education strives to
answer is that of justification. This is the question, why education in the first place? This question has a general as well
as a particular version of being posed. In its former version,
a philosopher of education wants to ask, why should education be preferred over and above ignorance? Why should an
individual ever strive to be educated? How do you know that
education is worthwhile? (Cuypers, 2012, p. 3). In its latter
version, why investigate APE? Why should Africans (or any
people for that matter) aspire to have their own philosophy of
education? Why should an African mode of education take
the unique form it takes? When these questions are asked,
either for the general purpose of knowing why education is
to be preferred to ignorance or the specific purpose of knowing why people pursue a particular mode of education, what
is usually being sought is a rational explanation for treating education as sacrosanct and as a human value worthy of
being sought. Such rational explanations help us to understand the human dispositions to educational activities and
why the educational philosophy of one people may not be
suitable for another.
What I attempt to do in this paper is to demonstrate
that the three central questions of philosophy of education
identified above can be adequately investigated against
the background of the African metaphysical framework of
human personhood. The paper argues for a personhoodbased APE, with the overall purpose being to prepare
the ground for fruitful engagements of a more culturally
sensitive and ontologically ingrained theory of APE. In
achieving this objective, the paper starts with an examination of some of the proposals for APE. In the section that
follows, the paper does a survey of an African concept
of personhood, after which efforts are made to provide
answers to the questions of foundation, form, and justification within the African perspective anchored on the
metaphysics of personhood. Conclusions are drawn in the
last section of the paper.
African philosophy of education
It is apt to start this section with a brief discussion of the
question: What is the philosophy of education? What kind
of activities are designated by the phrase “philosophy of
Curriculum Perspectives
education”? In searching for a quick and precise answer to
this question, one may (as the case of philosophy itself has
shown) be disappointed to discover that such a quick and
precise definition of philosophy of education is very rare,
if not impossible, to come by. This should not be taken to
mean a scarcity of definitions or conceptions of either philosophy or education. There have been various attempts to
define these very important concepts in various intellectual
discourses. However, the problem has been that there is no
way one tries to define them without encountering difficulties that would make the proposed definition somehow inadequate. With this backdrop, it is prudent not to merely seek a
definition for either philosophy or education but to simply be
content with what philosophers of education describe themselves as doing when they engage in philosophy of education. Although this will not amount to defining philosophy
of education in a philosophically tidy way, it would motivate and propel the present discussion in the right direction
towards achieving its central objective.
The paper adopts Siegel et al.’s (2018; Siegel, 2009, p.
3) definition of philosophy of education as “the branch of
applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature
and aims of education and the philosophical problems
arising from educational theory and practice”. This
definition appears less troublesome in the present context
because it deliberately avoids controversies that usually
accompany philosophical concepts. It states the obvious
about philosophy of education, namely, that it is a branch
of applied or practical philosophy and that it is concerned
with philosophical issues that arise from education. Beyond
this rather simplistic way of conceptually mapping its
subject matter, all the disciplinary concerns of philosophy
of education have attracted disagreements among their
respective practitioners. Scholars are yet to come to terms
with the nature, aims, and problems of education. Also, the
fact that these foci of philosophy of education are engaged
within the methodological precincts of philosophy makes
them as controversial as philosophy itself. For Siegel
(2009, p. 3), the aims of education present the most basic
problem for the philosophy of education. This may be
because different persons and peoples aim at different ends
in pursuing educational goals. Given that an agreement
is often difficult to reach where there is a multiplicity of
possibilities, it may be problematic to find an overarching
aim of education.
Problems in the philosophy of education are not intrinsically different from those encountered in mainstream philosophy. They are issues that various branches of philosophy have got to grapple with in their various complexities
and disciplinary consciousnesses. It may thus be argued
that there are no issues separating philosophy of education
from those in mainstream philosophy. Issues in philosophy
of education are philosophical issues with implications for
theories and practices of education. Philosophers reflect
on issues in philosophy of education alongside issues in
epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, logic, philosophy of
mind and language, social and political philosophy, etc.
(Siegel, 2009, p. 4). To illustrate, for being concerned with
the phenomenon of knowledge in its diverse complexities,
philosophy of education is inextricably tied to epistemology, a branch of philosophy that (conceived in its broadest
sense) is concerned with giving an account of knowledge.
Also, there are issues in education that are straightforwardly
metaphysical in nature. Whereas epistemology deals with
the question of how genuine knowledge could be acquired,
it leaves out the question of what this genuine knowledge
really is or whether it really exists. This is an ontological
issue that is central to metaphysical enquiries (Bigaj, 2012;
Conee & Sider, 2014). Questions such as whether there is a
right to education, whether it is government’s responsibility
to educate citizens, or whether government should meddle
with the process of research, teaching, and learning are not
disciplinarily distinguishable from general ethical problems.
Philosophically, there are no absolute ways of reacting
to some (if not all) of the above problems. Education is so
context-sensitive and situation-specific that it would be a
grandstanding error to assume a universalist principle underlying the desire to be educated. Given the critical role that
education plays in the survival of a people, its connection
with the environment in terms of physical, spiritual, and cultural cannot be gainsaid. Hence, a discourse on the appropriate educational philosophy for a people cannot be taken out
of the context of the people’s worldview about themselves
(i.e. about the kind of human beings they take themselves to
be) and the socio-cultural realities that give meaning to their
existence. As Abdi aptly notes:
[E]ven in spaces where the normative semi-structure
of traditional education (with all its socially binding
but formally non-codified sanction-and-prohibition
mechanisms), there would be so many tacitly agreedupon notations and practices that govern the way people learn, value knowledge, and use that knowledge
for specific intentions and locations that are embedded
within the political, social and cultural platforms of the
places they inhabit. Abdi (2011, p. 83)
This suggests that what we take to be a suitable form of
education transcends merely crossing the borders of ignorance to an informed standpoint. It is neither knowing many
things nor the ability to recall many established facts. On
the contrary, it is the building of a rational capacity to deal
with the vagaries of everyday life as they arise for a people
within culturally delineated contexts of survival and fulfilment of humanness.
The foregoing can be situated within the cultural context of APE. Notwithstanding the propensity to deny APE
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Curriculum Perspectives
in some quarters (Bodunrin, 1981; Hountondji, 1983; etc.),
there have been concerted efforts by some brilliant African
scholars to outline the structure of African thought as far as
traditional education is concerned. For instance, against the
unfounded claim that pre-colonial Africa was an intellectual
nullity, Semali (1999) reveals that traditional African education had an effective knowledge and scientific repertoire
that allowed it to effectively respond to the socio-political,
agricultural, and medical needs of the community and its
ecological literacy. One must agree with Semali because
only such a high-level understanding of their environment
and themselves could have sustained them for the long years
of their solitary existence before Europe’s disruptive invasion that scuttled this indigenous form of knowledge system.
For Walter Rodney, APE is marked by:
its close links with the social life, both in material and
spiritual sense; its collective nature where it focuses
on the whole of the person and the community; its
many-sidedness; and its progressive development in
conformity with the successive stages of the physical,
emotional, and mental development of the child. There
was no separation of education and the productive
activities of people. Altogether, through many informal means, pre-colonial African education matched
the realities of pre-colonial African society and produced well-rounded personalities to fit into that society. (Rodney, 1982, p. 239)
The holistic picture of APE that Rodney paints above
derives from the African lived experience, which furnishes
them with cultural insights into what it means to be humans
in a world populated by both physical and spiritual forces.
With the African lived world characterised by organic interconnectedness of everything to everything, human survival
and flourishing require a harmonious relationship with every
aspect of such a world. In fact, according to Toure (cited in
Taiwo, 2005), the humanity of human beings consists of
this harmonious existence with others. It is, therefore, easy
to see the point that “if one hopes to understand the experiences and conditions of African communities, then one
firstly needs to practice a philosophy of education”, which,
as Waghid puts it, “is an activity of scientific inquiry which
enables one to understand the situations of communities,
albeit Africans’ “lived experiences” (Waghid, 2004, p. 56).
In agreement with this, I would like to stipulate the discipline of APE as a philosophical enquiry that seeks to gain
insights into what it means to be African, with its unique
place in the world, the peculiarity of its past and present
experiences, and the goals towards which it propels itself in
the context of contemporary global realities.
Let me now engage the issue of the ideal aim of education for Africa. There seems to be a convergence of opinions
among some scholars (Gyekye, 1997; Waghid, 2004, 2014;
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Wiredu, 2004) that reasonableness serves as the main
aim of APE. They agree that African education aims to
enable the individual to be reasonable. Wiredu is led to
this conclusion through his analysis of an educated person using the Akan linguistic framework. According to
him, the identity markers of an educated person, within
an Akan conceptual scheme, are the personal qualities of
being refined, polished, lucid, and logical (Wiredu, 2004,
p. 17; Waghid, 2004, p. 57, 2014). An educated person has a
good measure of knowledgeability in her natural and cultural
environments, as well as some chosen area(s) of knowledge,
a decent moral sense of right and wrong, and the willingness
and tolerance to learn from others through clear and logical
dialogic engagements. A similar point is made by Hountondji
(2002), who emphasises the importance of subjecting every
form of intellectual discourse to critical deliberations as a
way of guarding against acceptance of dogmatic beliefs and
unhealthy indoctrinations. Hountondji accuses what he calls
“ethnophilosophy” of operating on a closed system, which
does not promote the culture of rational enquiry. It is on this
basis that Hountondji rejects ethnophilosophy (of education),
which according to him does not reflect the open, discursive,
and critical temperament of philosophy.
One challenge with reasonableness as the telos of education is that it is not clear what it means to be reasonable.
Each of the advocates of reasonableness has given a set
of qualities underlying a reasonable act. Gyekye (1997)
defines reasonableness in terms of rationality and logic,
i.e. an act is reasonable if it is rational and logical. However, Gyekye fails to explain further what these concepts
are even though he affirms that they are culture dependent
(1997, p. 29). The culture-dependent nature of rationality
and logic is philosophically significant because it aligns
with the particularist school of African philosophy, which
insists that rationality and logic should not be taken out of
the context of a people’s culture. Against the universalist
claim that concepts such as rationality and logic have a
unified standard of measurement across all cultures in the
world, the particularist contends that rationality and logic
are specific to the unique epistemological structure of each
cultural setting because what is logical (and thus rational)
in one socio-cultural setting may be illogical in another.
For example, what is rational in Western culture may be
irrational in African culture. This is important because it
tends to reveal the mistaken root of the Western anthropologists’ characterisation of African rationality as questionable. Such is the case with Lévy-Bruhl (Lévy-Bruhl
& Clare, 2018), who continues to suffer heavy criticisms
for his infamous statement that Africans have pre-logical mentality. Thus, Gyekye’s clarification does not only
show that no culture is the sole custodian of rationality or
logic, but it also shows the conceptual error in judging the
rationality of other peoples, using one’s own parameters.
Curriculum Perspectives
Wiredu has an expanded concept of reasonableness. For
him, aside from the cognitive qualities of rationality and
logic, a reasonable (i.e. an educated) person must possess
the moral qualities of tolerance and a personal ability to differentiate between right and wrong. This implies that being
reasonable is not a matter of being intellectually mature
alone, it also encompasses moral maturity. If this is what
being reasonable entails, how is it different from the normative sense of an African conception of personhood? Scholars have identified two concepts of person, one descriptive,
the other normative (Gbadegesin, 1991; Gyekye, 1978,
1992; Menkiti, 1984, 2004; Molefe, 2018, 2019a, 2020a,
2020b; Wiredu, 2004). Descriptively, a person is an object
in the world that has a specific physical configuration and
behaves in certain ways. Hence, descriptively, all human
beings are persons. Normatively, personhood is not inherent
in human beings; it is acculturated. A human being may be
a person in the descriptive sense but may not be a person in
the normative sense (Wiredu, 2004). Within this explanatory system, this possibility is not a contradiction; Wiredu’s
analysis fails to properly delineate an educated person from
a person in the normative sense. Can an educated person
not be a person in the normative sense? Can there be an
educated nonperson? Are all educated persons necessarily
persons in the normative sense? Can a normative nonperson
be reasonable?
Wiredu’s introduction of moral maturity as an ingredient
of reasonableness leads to some implausible implications.
In my opinion, being reasonable does not necessarily imply
being morally committed. Consider a situation where an
educated person, in Wiredu’s sense, at a point in life changes
from being morally committed to being morally noncommitted. In this case, we say she has lost her personhood, but
does she, at the same time, lose her educated status? Much
as this cannot be answered in a positive, it shows that being
morally mature is not a necessary component of being reasonable or educated. I would strongly agree with Wiredu if
his requirement of moral maturity is defined in terms of the
ability to differentiate between right and wrong. However,
this ability does not entail a life of commitment to moral
living. An educated person may know right from wrong,
but this does not commit her to a life of avoiding wrong and
doing right.
Another aim of APE is identified by Obafemi Awolowo.
According to Awolowo, the aim of education is the attainment of what he refers to as a “regime of mental magnitude”
(Awolowo, 1968). Awolowo believes that the sole essence of
knowledge is to feed the human soul, because what organic
food is to the body is what education is to the human soul.
According to Taiwo (2005; see also Makinde, 1987, p. 8),
this conviction largely informed Awolowo’s free education
policy that transformed the quality of persons in Southwestern Nigeria during the early years of independence.
For Awolowo, an educated person is one that has entered a
regime of mental magnitude. Mental magnitude is “a philosophical doctrine that derives from a theory of mind and
body, with the assertion that the mental is superior to the
physical element of a person and should take control over
the emotions, desires, and actions” (Makinde, 1987, p. 4,
2010). In this regime, a person has not only transformed
from the state of ignorance to enlightenment, but she has
also conquered herself in terms of having tamed personal
indulgence in undignified bodily passions characteristic of
unlearnt minds. Awolowo describes the regime of mental
magnitude as.
properly and eminently equipped with a considerable
measure of intellectual comprehension and cognition,
insight, and spiritual illumination. In this regime, we
are free from (1) the negative emotions of anger, hate,
fear, envy, jealousy, selfishness, or greed; (2) indulgence in the wrong types of food and drink and in
ostentatious consumption; (3) excessive or immoral
craving for sex. In short, in this regime, we conquer
what Kant calls “the tyranny of the flesh” and become
free. (Awolowo, 1968, p. 230)
In Awolowo’s opinion, education not only sets one free
from the shackles of ignorance, but it also sets individuals free from their personal imperfections, such as negative emotions and destructive pleasures of the body. Hence,
the proper function of education is to help human persons
to attain both cognitive, psychical, and moral perfection
through the elimination of ignorance from the mind, negative emotions from the soul, and immoral cravings from the
body. These undesirable features of natural human beings
constitute impediments to the flourishing of the soul, which,
according to Awolowo’s Christian-inflected theory of human
nature, is the real person. Thus, an entry into the regime of
mental magnitude is secured through a life of discipline. The
body is disciplined through the cultivation of right eating
and constant exercise; the mind through continuous reading
and expansion of the intellect; and the soul is disciplined
through love towards God and one’s neighbours (Awolowo,
1968, p. 188).
The aim of education, as Awolowo sees it, pertains to
the whole of a human person. “It is to make it possible for
man’s physical organs as well as his instincts to function
normally, positively, and harmoniously” (Awolowo, 1968,
p. 215). Awolowo adopts Christian creationism, in which a
human person is composed of three components, namely,
body, mind, and soul (i.e. the divine breath). Education
enables each of these components to function at its optimal
capacity, culminating in productive individuals and a
functional community. A person who possesses a sound
mind in a sound body can become a good instrument of
social, economic, political, and scientific changes, i.e.
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contribute his own quota to a nation’s mental and physical
developments through what he calls “gainful employment”
and “integrated rural development” (Awolowo, 1981). The
role of education cannot be overemphasised in a democratic
setting, as both the leaders and the led need education to
effectively play their roles. For leaders, adequate education
enables them to serve with efficiency and integrity, while
for the led, education empowers them to make the right
political choice as far as democratic institutions are
concerned. Hence, as opined by Makinde, “democracy
in practice can tum out to be a disaster or a curse unless
it conforms to the regime of mental magnitude where
both citizens and their leaders have cultivated, through
education or discipline of the mind, mental magnitude and
spiritual depth” (Makinde, 1987, p. 9).
Awolowo’s philosophy of education has attracted fierce
criticism, especially on the ground of its impracticability for human beings. Makinde (1987, p. 10), argues that
“Awolowo’s doctrine of mental magnitude is an ideal that
cannot be met by any mortal, short of an Angel who presides over a colony of holy spirits”. I do not think that
Awolowo’s mental magnitude is as impracticable as Makinde thinks it is. The moral standard may be quite high
and almost humanly impossible, but I think it remains an
instrument of self-development and self-appraisal. Thus, it
should not be taken as an impossible standard for being an
educated person. Rather, it should be viewed as an ideal that
an educated person aims to attain, regardless of whether she
succeeds or not. Also, Awolowo’s flirtation with religious
absolute (such as what he calls the Universal Mind, from
which the human soul originates) has been accused of taking his analysis of human nature out of the realm of reason
(Nwanwene, 1969). This objection could be circumvented
by agreeing to Mbiti’s characterisation of African reality
as essentially religious. If Mbiti’s (Mbiti, 1970) religious
universe hypothesis about Africans is correct, then there
should be no problem justifying African human nature on
the grounds of religion.
What I consider the greatest challenge of Awolowo’s
doctrine of mental magnitude is its foundation in a foreign
religion. Awolowo’s adoption of the Christian metaphysics
of personhood (as found in the biblical creation story that
provides a theoretical foundation for his theory of human
nature) is a major disservice to indigenous APE. Although
the Christian metaphysics of personhood bears similarities
with some African theories of human nature, it does not
completely reflect the African ontology of person. Whatever measure of success it could have recorded, Awolowo’s
philosophy of education is founded on an alien culture and
is out of tune with the African ontological reality. It would
be difficult to refer to the outcome of such a philosophy of
education as authentically African, having its root in another
metaphysical foundation. This paper hopes to correct this
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sort of anomaly by grounding an authentic APE in an African concept of personhood. However, there is a need to be
clear on what this African concept of personhood entails,
hence the following section.
African personhood discourse
The subject matter of African personhood is a popular one
in African philosophical literature. In my opinion, this
popularity is due to its interdisciplinary significance to
African humanistic scholarship in general and to African
philosophy specifically. Molefe (2020a) avers that the concept of African personhood is ambiguous. This ambiguity is
explained in terms of the different meanings that the concept
has wielded in the history of its treatment in the literature.
Scholars have agreed that personhood has at least two conceptual colourations, namely, ontological (also metaphysical or descriptive or ordinary) and normative concepts of
personhood2 (Gbadegesin, 1991, 2003; Gyekye, 1978, 1992;
Ikuenobe, 2006a, 2006b, 2016; Makinde, 2010; Matolino,
2016; Oyowe, 2013, 2014).
Ontologically speaking, all human beings are persons,
and personhood is fixed by one’s membership in the class
of Homo sapiens. It is descriptive because it describes the
fact of being human, especially in terms of its psychophysical configurations and behavioural dispositions to
their physico-spiritual environments. I will illustrate the
African ontological concept of a person with the Yoruba
and Akan examples.3 The choice of the two ethnic groups
is informed by the fact that their ontological conceptions of
personhood are among the most popular in the literature and
have received diverse attention in the history of personhood
discourse.
Yoruba scholars (Abimbola, 1971; Gbadegesin, 1991,
1998; Makinde, 2010) identify at least three constitutive
elements in the eniyan (person in the Yoruba language), ara
(body), emi (soul), and ori (metaphysical head). These components are intertwined in a way forming the reality of the
person. Ara represents every physical feature that makes a
person, both internal and external organs. Aside from being
a mode of identification in the social context, ara serves as
the shell that houses the other components of the person. It
also serves the aesthetic aspect of persons, which, unsurprisingly is connected to its (ara) physicality.
2
I am aware of Thaddeus Metz (2013) and Molefe (2019a), who have
respectively identified three and four concepts of person. However,
my position is that in the long run, all can be broadly categorised into
ontological and normative concepts of person.
3
Yoruba and Akan groups are both from the West African subregion
and are from Nigeria and Ghana, respectively.
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Unlike ara, the other components of a person are nonphysical. Emi is a sufficiently controversial component of
the person. However, it is agreed that emi is the active principle of life, the life-giving element put in place by the deity
(Gbadegesin, 2003). Makinde (1984, p. 191) thinks that emi
does perform this role thanks to eje (blood), since “a heart
without the supply of blood is no heart, and blood without
the heart as a pumping machine is useless”. All agree that
emi has its source in the breath of life that Olodumare gave
an individual at creation. Thus, the giving of emi is the sole
prerogative of Olodumare, who also recalls emi at death.
Emi has its physical manifestation in eemi (breath) linked
with the activities of the lung but is essentially different from
it because, whereas emi is spiritual, eemi is physical. The
existence of emi keeps the body alive and active. Ori, the
most controversial of the three elements, is believed by the
Yoruba to be the bearer of destiny (that is, the roadmap that
a historical person must thread during her earthly existence).
Here I deliberately keep discussion on ori brief because I
will return to it shortly.
Perhaps it could be argued that the Akan people of Ghana
have an identical ontological concept of personhood. For
the Akan people of Ghana, a person, which they call onipa,
has three basic elements, namely, nipadua (body), okra (a
life-giving entity), and sunsum (that which gives a person’s
personality its force) (Gyekye, 1978; Kaphagawani, 2005;
Wiredu, 1987). Nipadua, like the Yoruba ara, comprises
both the internal and external physical organs of the person. Wiredu and Gyekye disagree on the nature of both
okra and sunsum. While Wiredu (1987) describes okra in
quasi-material terms, Gyekye (1992) maintains that okra is
a spiritual substance. On this basis, they disagree on whether
okra should be interpreted as the soul or not, with the latter affirming and the former denying that okra is the soul.
Regardless of the dispute between Wiredu and Gyekye on
the nature of okra and sunsum, what is important for this
enquiry is that for the Akan (like the Yoruba), the human
person comprises two essential elements. For Wiredu, this
relates to the physical and quasi-physical, while, for Gyekye,
it applies to the physical and spiritual—or what Gbadegesin
(2003) refers to as physico-material and mental-spiritual
divides. Hence, it is safe to characterise the African ontological concept of personhood as a variant of dualism (Balogun & Oyelakin, 2022).
The normative concept of personhood, in contrast, does
not analyse the meaning of personhood in terms of its constitutive elements. Unlike the ontological concept, the normative concept does not grant personhood status because
of membership in the class of human beings. An individual
may be a human being but not a person. This is because
personhood is not given but is earned. In such a system, it
is not contradictory to say that a person is not a person, if
we take the first person to mean the fact of being a human
being and the second to be the normative dimension of this
fact. Personhood, in this context, is a moral achievement
that the individual strives to attain and which may be lost if
an individual fails to keep up with the moral requirements.
Scholars have not agreed on what the moral requirements are
that launched one into the realm of normative personhood.
Metz (2010) understands these moral requirements in terms
of living a genuinely human life. Others, such as Behrens
(2013) and Gyekye (1992), have identified moral virtue and
excellence as requirements for the attainment of personhood.
There are also the requirements of self-realisation and moral
perfectionism (Behrens, 2013; Metz, 2007).
The problem with some of the identified moral requirements for being a person is that it is not very clear what they
really mean. Specifically, what does it mean for a human
being to live a genuine life? What constitutes moral virtues
and excellence? How are self-realisation and moral perfectionism to be understood? Consider the requirement of living
a genuine life by Metz. Being genuine may be conceptualised in existentialist terms to mean personal authenticity,
which is the capacity of a rational being to tailor her existence towards realising the goals she has set for herself. This
will be counterproductive because it does not follow that all
such goals are morally permissible within the social context. Also, there is a question of whether there is a generally acceptable manner of being genuine. The same problem
arises for the requirement of self-realisation, which supposes
that there is a standard called “self” towards which realisation all human actions should tend.
There are principally two ways of engaging this problem.
The first is to take the universalist position—that there is a
global standard for these requirements. One may then go
ahead and construct what one thinks this could be. Some
African philosophers have held this view (Bodunrin, 1981;
Hountondji, 1983, 1989). The challenge to such a response
is that it undermines the cultural peculiarities of different
social settings. This may naturally lead to the imposition
of an allegedly superior cultural standard as being more
genuine, virtuous, and so on than other allegedly inferior
cultures. The second way is to take the cultural particularist position by situating the meaning of these terms (such
as genuine and virtuous) within the cultural context. The
cultural particularist argues that “theoretical frameworks are
to be developed situationally and within culturally specific
frames of reference, and that they may not reflect the social
realities of other cultures” (Verhoef & Michel, 1997). In
compliance with this cross-disciplinary agenda, some scholars have sought the meaning of these terms within culturebased African ethical frameworks.
The view that Africans operate a socio-ethical system
called communalism is well known (Gyekye, 1992; Mbiti,
1970; Menkiti, 1984, 2004; Metz, 2007; Molefe, 2019a; Venter, 2004). Communalism is the doctrine that communality (or
13
Curriculum Perspectives
the group) is the focus of activities of the individual member
of the society (Gyekye, 2011). In a communalist system, the
community takes precedence over the individual. The African
context of communalism is an ethical as well as a social principle for evaluating personhood. On the one hand, as a social
principle, African communalism underlies and describes the
relational structure of a typical African society as a historical
phenomenon. It is a descriptive term for the African social
mode of existence, characterised by a close interconnectedness among members of the society in a lifestyle that is oriented towards others (Verhoef & Michel, 1997, p. 396). On
the other hand, as an ethical principle, communalism provides
an evaluative paradigm for morally judging human actions as
either right or wrong. For the communalist, an action is right
if it promotes the good of the community, while an action is
wrong if otherwise. As Verhoef and Michel put it, “What is
right is what connects people together; what separates people
is wrong” (1997, p. 397). Thus, the telos of a moral act is the
promotion of communion, harmony, cohesion, and community belongingness among persons in the community (Iroegbu
& Echekwube, 2005; Masolo, 2010; Metz, 2020; Mokgoro,
1998; Nkondo, 2007).
Equipped with the above ethical framework, the cultural
particularist defines personhood in terms of ability and commitment to the promotion of human welfare within the community. The moral requirements for personhood, namely,
living a genuine life, moral excellence, moral perfectionism,
self-realisation, etc., all get their meaning from the African
communalist outlook. For example, to live a genuine life is
to be committed to the good of one’s community. There is no
genuine life outside the good of the community. The proper
purpose of morality, and ultimately of human life, is to build a
stronger bonding with members of the community. The rightness or wrongness of an action depends on whether or not the
action aligns with this purpose. Also, given that the individual
does not have a life outside of the community, the purpose of
the latter automatically becomes the purpose of the former.
Hence, an individual realises herself (her real nature) by helping the community to attain its purpose of communality; it
works against her own nature if she does otherwise.
Having differentiated between ontological and normative
concepts of personhood in African scholarship, a pertinent
question to pose is: When we talk about an African concept
of personhood, which of these concepts are we referring
to? It appears to me that a good theory of personhood must
derive its normative concept from its ontological concept.
So how can this be achieved in the case of the African concept of personhood? What is the relationship between African ontological and normative concepts of person? I earlier
indicated, using the Akan and Yoruba ethnic groups, that a
human person is composed of three elements: body, soul,
and the principle (or bearer) of destiny. It is imperative to
note the interconnection among these elements. While the
13
soul activates the body and enables it to play its role in the
social context, destiny is the purpose for which each person
lives, and it determines how long the unity between body
and soul will last—it is part of destiny to determine when
each person dies.
African ethics is a variant of virtue ethics (Balogun,
2022) because it is a character-based moral system. As
already noted, good characters are those that enable persons to realise themselves as communal beings. It should be
noted, however, that character, being essentially about what
people do or fail to do in the social context, cannot be realised without their bodies, notwithstanding how this comes
about. Hence, one will be right to describe each person’s
body as the currency spent in the African moral market.
Writing about the Yoruba, for instance, Hallen (2004, p.
301) argues that the knowledge of a people’s moral character
is obtained through observations of their bodily and verbal
behaviours. This means that human bodies provide evidence
for their moral status within the Yoruba moral epistemology. Also, the belief in human destiny makes the African
conception of personhood necessarily communalistic. As
Gbadegesin (2003, p. 228) notes (correctly in my opinion),
the meaning or purpose embodied in an individual’s destiny
cannot be separated from the larger human community of
which the person is a member. The individual’s destiny is
thus a subset of the communal destiny, so the fulfilment of
this personal destiny requires that the individual aligns herself with the common goals of the community.
Deriving an authentic APE from an African
concept of personhood
What then is APE, and how ought it treat the questions of
foundation, nature, and justification of education? Within
the holistic view of personhood that I have been outlining,
education is tied to personhood perfectioning. It is a consistent walk towards the attainment of complete personhood
status. The elders are often regarded as “more person” than
youngsters because the former have spent more time on earth
perfecting their personhood than the latter (Molefe, 2019a).
This may be the origin of the African value of respect for
elders. Hence, education does not happen to a person; it
happens to a person. Two reasons could be advanced for
this position. One, if education happens to the person, it will
mean that it is a one-for-all phenomenon. However, this is
not the case as Africans conceive education as a life-long
process that starts from birth and ends at death. It is about
the “totality of a person’s experience in society, and continues throughout life and is not limited to time and place”
(Wane, 2019; see also Bewaji, 2017, p. 733). Two, to conceive education as something that happens to an agent from
Curriculum Perspectives
outside is to concede the possibility of having a morally
bankrupt educated person, which will be a contradiction in
terms as far as Africans are concerned. In Africa, being educated and being morally bankrupt are mutually exclusive.
Wiredu (2004) contends that while it is possible in Western culture to have a “highly educated fool”, this is highly
impossible within the African culture.
The question of foundation
The African concept of personhood provides a plausible
foundation for APE. Perhaps this derives from the centrality
of the concept of personhood to all aspects of African lives
and the multi-tiered relationship between African indigenous
education and African personhood. There is a sense in which
African intellection is person-centred. This may imply that
the African notion of personhood has implications for every
aspect of an African person’s life. Education and African
personhood are Siamese twins not only because the term
education is meaningful only in the context of persons but
also because only those who have attained personhood are
truly educated. This way, education does not consist in having learnt many things but in acting in the capacity of what
has been learnt, thereby equipping one’s personhood in
anticipation of real or imagined factors that may militate
against the sustenance of the community. Hence, APE is
founded on the very nature of an African person as a communal being.
Being founded on the African concept of personhood
commits APE to be community-oriented. The community
is populated by human beings who are vulnerable to human
and environmental excesses owing to the frailty of their
bodies. One indisputable truth about human beings is that
they are finite beings. APE must, therefore, be committed
to a form of education that is considerate of human finitude
and vulnerability. Education is cultivating the right attitude
not only towards fellow human beings in the community but
also towards the non-human components of the earth whose
activities do have significant impacts on the community.
The environment or nature provides support for and poses
significant dangers to the life of the community. Therefore,
any philosophy of education that makes the welfare of the
human community its focal point must prioritise indigenous
knowledge of the environment. It must be part of APE to
explore to what extent the environment constitutes an ally
and to what extent it is an enemy. The knowledge of flora
and fauna must be sought, explored, and exploited for the
benefit of the community (e.g. the knowledge of herbalism helps the community to live healthy lives, while the
knowledge of the soil types and a good understanding of
weather can lead to increase in food security for the community, etc.).
A person-centred philosophy of education must seek the
welfare of the whole person: body, soul, destiny, and character (Wane, 2019). Such a philosophy must be interested in
the health of the body because one would not be a complete
person without good health. The demand for good health
as a precondition for the fulfilment of holistic personhood
requires that APE be fully interested in research about the
physiological makeup of human persons. This will enable
Africans to be more knowledgeable on how their bodies
work, which will further empower them to protect themselves against sicknesses, diseases, and some deadly impacts
of their immediate environments. Because the body needs
appropriate food for energy, growth, and health, APE must
invest in agricultural education that is aimed at catering for
the culinary needs of the African person. Also, the spiritual need of Africans must be fully integrated into such
philosophy. An African person is essentially a spiritual person. Africans affirm the primacy of spirit (Senghor, 1964),
which means that any educational philosophy that conduces
to this spiritual nature must invest in the spiritual development of the community. According to Wane (2019, p. 108),
religion gives depth and strength to the values that education
cultivates. It gives meaning to life and knowledge and helps
children to understand why they do what they do.
The question of form (or nature)
I will discuss the question of the form or nature of APE
in relation to its curricular development and pedagogical
framework. According to Mizan (2022), “the term curriculum refers to the academic content and lessons taught in a
school or educational institution or in a specific course or
program”. Curricula are designed with specific goals and
expected consequences in mind. The design and goals of
any curriculum, thus, reflect the educational philosophy—
whether intentionally or unintentionally—of the educators
who developed it (Curriculum Definition, n.d.). For APE,
the main goal of education is the development of complete
personhood in terms of constitutive elements and moral perfection. Wane (2019, p. 108) correctly affirms that “the goal
of traditional African thought in the area of education has
always been to nurture the body, the mind, and the spirit”.
In the achievement of this central goal, the African educational curricula must be designed with the intent of safeguarding the community against factors that may undermine
the perfect functioning of any of these elements in a person.
Sufficient space must, therefore, be given to the learning of
physical health education, besides investment in natural and
biological sciences. An appropriate curriculum in subjects
including physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, agricultural
science, geography, geology, botany, and zoology will help
Africans to achieve a good understanding of the principles
underlying environmental natural/biological phenomena and
13
Curriculum Perspectives
how best to harness them to establish a good relationship
between human communities and the natural environments.
APE must also be interested in the structure of life in
the community. Language and other means of communication represent a vital part of life in the community. No
human community can survive without the instrumentalities of language and communication. Hence, the teaching
of indigenous African languages and other means through
which Africans communicate their lived experiences must
feature prominently as part of the general prerequisites for
being educated in the African context. Language learning
consists of the teaching of literature, which includes myths,
legends, riddles, proverbs, and poetry (Wane, 2019, p. 109).
An educated person must not only be capable of understanding messages coded in African proverbs and other verbal and
nonverbal modes of communication but also of deploying
the same in the engagement of important issues in the community. Making these oral traditions salient parts of APE
must be encouraged for understanding African cultural
beliefs and practices. The purpose of the exposure to oral
literature is not to force them down the throats of Africans
nor to bring about passive acceptance of their bidding. African oral traditions have often been accused of being authoritarian in their approach to providing answers to basic life
issues (Bodunrin, 1981; Hountondji, 1983; Wiredu, 1980).
However, to support these African oral traditions, APE must
develop a critical attitude that can withstand ruthless criticism in light of what is reasonable, rational, logical, and of
pragmatic relevance for contemporary Africa.
Language is not meant for the purpose of daily communication alone; it can also be a tool for analysing complex
African concepts and expressions (Hallen & Sodipo, 1997;
Kayange, 2014, 2018, 2019). It bridges the gap between
the past and present. Language also serves as a historical
research methodology. For instance:
It is quite interesting to note how oral narratives
uncover past lineages, the migration of specific
extended families and communities, inspirational
tales, popular cultural belief systems, or knowledge
of local fauna (wildlife), flora (vegetation), and ecology (environmentalism) that may be of consequence
to educational relations. (Waghid et al., 2018, p. 13)
Some African proverbs give information about historical
events and persons, familiarising contemporary Africans
with their past heroes and heroines in ways that are mutually beneficial to the community and the individual. African
myths may stimulate intellectual curiosity and a questionasking spirit among young Africans. Besides its didactic
intents that purport to imbue Africans with moral qualities (including honesty, hard work, resilience, community
spirit, and unity), African oral literature (such as folk tales,
proverbs, myths, riddles, rituals, taboos, and songs) also
13
constitutes a non-personal agent of socialisation because it
contains precepts for right living in the society. In contemporary times, humanistic and social scientific disciplines have
demonstrated capacities to generate more knowledge about
social and political modes of existence than the African oral
literature has generated. However, rather than treating these
oral knowledge forms as anachronistic and utterly irrelevant
to contemporary African lives, an authentic APE has the task
of engrafting them into the mainstream humanistic (including philosophy, religious studies, history, music, and aesthetics) and social scientific (such as political science, sociology, economics, anthropology, archaeology, and commerce)
epistemologies through suitable disciplinary methodologies.
In addition to cultivating a knowledge-based culture that
focuses on understanding the physiological, environmental,
and socio-political dimensions of personhood, a suitable
APE-inspired curriculum must lead to knowledge and skills
required for facilitating infrastructural development within
the human community and for the fabrication of tools and
machines without which contemporary communities would
be quite unlivable. Complete personhood is not realised
when there are no appropriate housing facilities. Africans,
like other peoples, need infrastructure, including tarred
roads, electricity, the internet, railways, airports, seaports,
and potable water. People in Africa also need clothes and
footwear to cover their nakedness and protect themselves
from the environment. Africans further need to protect
their communities against internal and external aggressors.
Beyond the knowledge such as soil type, sowing and harvesting seasons, and crops, Africa needs to build capacity in
the fabrication of implements and machines for mechanised
farming aimed at meeting up with its growing demand for
food by the ever-enlarging human community. A philosophy
of education founded on the principle of realising a complete
African personhood must thus be committed to the development of curricular content that empowers Africans to build
and fabricate technological gadgets according to the needs
of the community.
What would then be the pedagogical approach to teaching and learning these various curricular contents in African learning spaces? Being a community-centred system of
education, the pedagogy of personhood-based APE is necessarily communalistic. Education both derives from and ends
in the community; therefore, its process of teaching and
learning must be well grounded within the community values of reciprocity and harmonious living. African pedagogy
is, by the very nature of APE-inspired curricula, participatory. Teaching and learning are not done in isolation of the
communal mode of existence, nor are they one-directional
concepts that privilege one group as teachers and denigrate
the other as learners. According to Venter (2004, p. 157),
“the relationship between teacher and student would be one
of cooperation and harmony in an Afrocentric framework”.
Curriculum Perspectives
The iron-clad demarcation between teaching and learning in
the Western pedagogical framework does not align with the
African quest for a harmonious relationship among members
of the community.
Waghid et al., (2018, 2021) place this Afrocentric pedagogical methodology within the context of ubuntu. The concept of ubuntu is a theoretical derivative of the African lifestyle of interdependence, reciprocity, and consensus. In its
most canonical expression, ubuntu is the belief that a person
is a person through another person (Molefe, 2019b; Venter,
2004). This is a perfect representation of the communalist
understanding of the African conception of the person that
I have been portraying. Concerning pedagogy in African
learning spaces, Waghid et al., (2018, 2021) opine that the
notion of ubuntu plays out most forcefully in the concepts
of co-teaching and co-learning in that it exterminates the
dichotomy between teachers and students by putting them in
the same boat of teachers and learners. Accordingly, “when
we pursue pedagogical encounters in line with the practice
of ubuntu, we consider ourselves—that is, teachers and students—as co-teachers and co-learners in such encounters”
(Waghid et al., 2021, p. 19). The pedagogical principle of
co-teaching and co-learning strips teachers of the status of
absolute custodianship of knowledge and recognise the ability of learners to impart knowledge to their teachers, who, at
that instance, become co-learners.
The mutuality that characterises the African pedagogical approach to education derives chiefly from the spirit of
dialogue. Wiredu (2004) and Hountondji (2002) identify the
willingness to engage in dialogue with others as a significant
virtue of an educated person. Rejecting what could be termed
the “African ethnophilosophy of education” on the ground of
its static, uncritical, unreflective, and authoritarian tendencies,
Hountondji (2002, p. 73) insists that a genuine APE cannot
be achieved without the progressive structure of dialogue and
argumentation. The purpose of dialogue in educational discourse is to enable all participants in the discussion to have
the freedom to contribute their views, however unenlightened
they may be. The spirit of dialogue is not conferred on an educated person after having undergone the process of education.
On the contrary, the spirit is acculturated during the learning process, which develops into a democratic state of mind
for the learner. The sense of belonging that comes with the
awareness that one’s opinions count in matters central to one’s
educational pursuits puts the learner on par with the teacher,
thereby promoting the feeling that the former is a co-creator
of knowledge with the latter. In all of this, the community
remains at the centre, both in the sense whereby all knowledge
sought revolves around the well-being of the community and
in the sense that the knowledge is created within parameters
set by the community.
The foregoing point is very important in considering
the appropriate attitude of APE to non-African educational
content. The history of contact with other people, resulting in
the phenomenon of cultural intermingling between Africans
and the rest of the world, has prevented isolationism from
being an option for Africa. The spirit of dialogue that characterises the African pedagogical framework demands that
APE interacts fruitfully with other cultures by obliging the
audience to tell their side of the story. When this happens,
there is a mutual understanding among the cultures involved
that forms the basis of their relationship with one another. If
Africa wants to be heard, she must allow others to be heard,
too. Another reason for this nose-poking attitude towards
other peoples’ business is the fact that educational content
developed elsewhere (including theories, laws, and scientific
discoveries) may serve as tools for understanding and engaging African situations and experiences. In this way, the jobs of
African researchers are made easier because they only build
on established truths that have been discovered by others.
The question of justification
I have argued that the goal of APE is to develop practical
frameworks for the attainment of complete personhood, with
its attendant implications for the welfare of human communities. It has also been established that attaining complete
personhood is achieved through developing and maintaining the right attitude towards the community. Hence, if education aims at developing complete personhood, and the
achievement of this is conditional upon cultivating the right
attitude towards the community, the justification for education will appear to be the cultivation of the right attitude
towards the community. But what constitutes this right attitude towards the community? As the paper has shown, it is
the attitude of care for the community; the attitude involves
the realisation of the community’s ideal self, which is being
the best human community that it can be. This not only
entails a community of persons in the best physical, mental,
and spiritual states but also presupposes a community that
is at peace with itself and its environment.
The health of the community remains the centrepiece—
the highest motivative of an authentic APE. To achieve the
status of the best human community possible, the community must develop the capacity to meet its challenges. This is
the whole essence of any kind of education. Bewaji rightly
notes that:
What all education, culturing, instruction, and training
in the family, groups, classrooms, and various social
organisations and fora including religion, schools, and
clubs—are about…is mainly preparing human beings,
at various stages of life, to be able to cope with the
challenges of existence and solving real and anticipated problems related to these challenges. Bewaji
(2017, p. 732)
13
Curriculum Perspectives
May it be recalled that these challenges and problems are
not uniform across the globe. Different people grapple with
different existential confrontations, which are often distributed along geographical, cultural, and historical lines. To take
geography, for instance, the existential challenges that a people established along a coastal line are surely expected to be
different from those encountered by other people established
in a desert. However, each of them must develop capacities
for confronting their challenges based on the knowledge they
possess of their environment and themselves.
Hence, owing to the peculiar nature of its historical and
socio-political circumstances, APE has different priorities
for philosophy of education elsewhere (Horsthemke, 2017).
The history of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and several other impoverishing experiences has distinctly impacted
Africa. This calls for a unique educational approach to
addressing these experiences, especially given the wellknown fact that practical philosophical and educational priorities usually emerge from life experiences and from the
ways these are socially articulated. To illustrate:
Given, for example, the experience of “indigenous”
Africans of physical and mental oppression, it stands
to reason that African philosophy of education would
have as priorities matters of transformation and
redress in politics and education. If philosophical
and educational concerns and priorities arise from
different forms of social life, then those that have
emerged from a social system in which a particular
race or group has been subordinate to another must
be suspect. In addition, given the (especially vicious)
history of physical and psychological colonization, it
is plausible that one of the philosophical/educational
priorities will be to educate against development of a
subordinate or inferior mindset, as well as against a
victim and beggar mentality, despite the continuing
economic crisis and low level of economic growth.
(Horsthemke, 2017, p. 696)
There is a litany of other challenges that Africans are
daily confronted with that demand an intentional approach to
educational philosophy. This way, the chief justification for
an authentic African educational philosophy derives from its
unique place in the world as reflected in its unique experience of history, environment, cultural outlooks, epistemologies, and ontologies, as well as its needs and expectations
for the future.
Conclusion
This paper focused on three principal objectives. One, it
did a review of APE, in which it was established that a connection exists between African education and the prospect
13
of attaining complete personhood. The paper situated the
notion of complete personhood within the framework of
African communalism, which gives priority to the community over the individual. Two, the paper analysed African
personhood discourse. It identified two African concepts of
personhood in the literature (namely, the ontological and
normative concepts) and argued for their reconciliation in
order to convey the idea of complete personhood, which
APE ideally aims at. Three, within the African personhoodbased conceptual framework, the paper attempted to provide
answers to the questions of foundation, form (or nature), and
justification of APE. Given that the prospect of a healthy
community is conditional upon its being constituted by
complete persons, an APE has the task of developing the
capacity for raising generations of Africans with complete
personhood status.
The practical implication of the view expressed in this
article cannot be downplayed. The consciousness of the centrality of personhood in APE has the propensity of providing
a much-needed direction for educational policies, curriculum and pedagogical designs, and research goals. It would
curb the phenomenon of production of stale or irrelevant
knowledge and thereby strengthen the connection between
what is taught at schools and the needs of the community.
The precarious condition of living in many African countries not only offers sufficient evidence for a dysfunctional
philosophy of education, but it also suggests the need for an
appropriate and authentically indigenous African concept
of education with all its cultural minutiae and ontological
peculiarities. This paper has argued that the relational concept of personhood within which African communalism
is embedded provides a solid footing for such philosophy
of education. But more importantly, the paper serves as an
impetus for other contemporary African researchers to study
more closely how the African concept of personhood could
be profitably deployed in the development of an educational
philosophy that is authentically African both in theory and
in practice.
Funding Open access funding provided by University of Johannesburg.
Declarations
Conflict of interest The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
Ethical approval Not applicable
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
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provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes
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included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
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