Consensus or Disharmony in African Philosophy Conversations?

This philosophical paper enters the contested arena of the African Philosophy debate in which scholars have been engaging each other from the late 1950s to this date. African Philosophy, as a movement, attempts to assert and affirm the identity and dignity of Africans, who felt insulted, despised, and trodden by western ideologies and worldviews. Practitioners in African philosophy in contemporary times have developed fundamental interest in, often much to their frustration, the existence and nature of an African philosophy. On the other hand, non-Africans (including Africans of western persuasion) have often raised questions about African philosophy’s existence resulting in an embedded dismissal of Africa and African thought systems. This paper surveys and synthesises the murky conversations on the nature and character of African Philosophy in an effort to expose some of the areas of consensus and disharmony.