AFRICAN CULTURE AND VALUES IN A WORLD OF CHANGE: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPRAISAL

Abstract

Culture is the defining element of a people and the varieties of culture among the
world’s populations make life beautiful and interesting. Since culture is often seen as
the sum total of the peculiarities shared by a people, a people’s value can be seen as
part of their culture. In discussing African culture and values, we are not
presupposing that all African societies have the same explanation(s) for events, the
same language, and some mode of dressing and so on. Rather, there are underlying
similarities shared by many African societies which, when contrasted with other
cultures, might reveal a wide gap of difference. It does appear that while so-called
African culture and values have positive, soul-lifting and humanistic dimensions, it
also has some negative and dehumanizing aspects. In this paper, we try to show the
relevance of African culture and values to the contemporary society, using Igbo-
African society as an example, but maintain that these values be critically assessed,
and those found to be inimical to the well-being and holistic development of the
society, be discarded. In this way, African culture and values can be revaluated, their
relevance established and sustained in order to give credence to authentic African
identity. We recommend that there is need to harness the cultural resources of Africa
to enrich the process of education, and indeed, greater emphasis is on the need to
harness all our cultural dimension towards a common goal of development
understood as human wellbeing so as to identify with other civilized populations of
the world rather than remaining backward. The method we employed in this paper is
the critical method of philosophy.