Africa: cradle of civilisation.

In the second part of his trilogy on the emancipation of Africa, Dr Hippolyte Fofack argues that contrary to some widely held perceptions, a thriving scientific culture existed in Africa but the 'cultural holocaust' that came in the wake of colonialism all but extinguished it. It is time for Africa to reclaim its scientific roots, he urges.

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Although the institution of slavery was abolished 200 years ago, its side effects remain vivid, affecting many aspects of African lives. While the emphasis has primarily been placed on economic development, one of its most significant ramifications is the cultural holocaust and the alienation of African peoples.

Two centuries on, Africans continue to be identified as Anglophone, Francophone and Lusaphone. Similarly, though efforts are ongoing to recoup ancient African treasures taken away by colonial institutions--Ethiopia recovered the Axum Obelisk in 2005--the collection of African treasures in the Louvre museum alone exceeds what can possibly be found in contemporary Africa.

While foreign museums have secured the conservation of ancient African treasures, they have also made them less accessible to the majority of continental Africans. This distancing creates a space of cultural discontinuity, leaving the impression that the civilisation of the continent that is commonly referred to as the cradle of humanity only began with the "civilising mission of colonialism".

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After the review of political milestones in the last issue of African Business this article focuses on cultural achievements.

The African renaissance foundation

While the emancipation of people of colour and the independence and liberation of African nations may be considered part of a long walk towards the African cultural renaissance, it would be difficult to achieve a true renaissance without a reconstruction of past histories and memories that were erased by the colonial experience.

At the same time, a connection to the past would serve to purge African cultural lineage of discontinuous paths, thus allowing the virtuous cycle of renaissance to unfold. In practice, the trajectory of these paths has widened since independence and now constitutes a serious constraint on cultural development.

Thus far, African countries have relied on the importation of manufactured goods to fill the gaps created by the discontinuity between the cultural and economic plane. But is this model sustainable? Research suggests otherwise, especially in the context of asymmetric trade, where natural resources, which are sources of foreign reserves for African economies, are extracted by neo-colonial powers at marginal costs in exchange for costly manufactured goods.

In order to rebuild and strengthen Africa's socio-cultural foundation and mitigate these threats, the research done by Professor Cheikh Anta Diop has, to a large extent, focused on filling the discontinuous gaps between cultural and economic development.

Building on historical and linguistic factors, Diop demonstrated that the ancient Pharaonic Egyptian civilisation, which inspired the Greek civilisation, was a black African civilisation. This outcome influenced generations of Africans and largely contributed to the restoration of the historical consciousness of people of African descent.

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Centuries earlier, Herodotus, the Dorian Greek historian, had come to the same conclusion following a visit to Egypt in the 5th Century BC. He too attested to the Negro character of the Egyptian civilisation.

The hypothesis of anteriority of African civilisation also holds when tested against the mastery of tool-making materials. Two decades ago, Schmidt and Avery revealed the existence of technologically advanced modes of iron smelting in northwestern Tanzania in the first millennium BC. Their research also indicates that iron smelting slags were formed at temperatures exceeding 1,350-1,400 degrees Celsius, at least 100 degrees higher than that implied for European bloomery furnaces. In addition, it appears that Africans made steel through the formation of iron crystal rather than by the sintering of solid particles, a process that requires the use of more sophisticated and advanced techniques.

One direct implication of this research outcome is that the cradle of humanity may well be the cradle of human civilisation.

By highlighting the African origin of civilisation, this research places the African contribution to the foundation of knowledge at the heart of man's evolutionary process, a landmark contribution in the post-abolition era as it addresses the negative perception the world has developed toward Africa, often cited as the continent that has contributed the least to the advancement of science.

This erroneous characterisation was developed during the slavery era and continued to be entertained during colonial eras and beyond, some would argue to this day. Yet a close look at the history of science suggests that Africans made great strides in advancing knowledge in the course of human evolution. In particular, they pioneered the production of glass and carbon steel; led the world in mining copper ores and building sailing ships; and offered the Giza pyramid, one of the greatest wonders of the world. Along the axis of the 'Three-age system', the chart left highlights some of Africa's landmark contributions up to the Iron Age.

Manifestations of a cultural holocaust

Despite these landmark contributions, the challenges on the cultural plane remain significant. They are heightened by the distortion of historical facts during colonial eras, and further by the persistence of cultural discontinuity and widening scientific gaps with the rest of the world. Two centuries after abolition, African culture is not at the epicentre of the world's production and development process. Rather the trend has been that of declining value of African cultural forms and expressions.

Yet the continent enjoys a tremendous cultural diversity. As one important illustration, the African Development Bank has de facto two official languages, English and French, both foreign languages, despite the proliferation of African languages spoken by the majority of the population in its different countries. A real paradox! Just imagine the Islamic Development Bank having Zulu and Swahili as their sole official languages or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development having Hausa and Wolof as their tongues!

For centuries, colonial institutions claimed that African languages were 'too primitive' to convey scientific concepts, which are by definition abstract. Foreign languages were introduced as a substitute and widely used in a gravitational model where colonies revolve around their European rulers and largely depend on the latter for the acquisition of knowledge and economic development.

Under this gravitational model, access to formal employment requires fluency in the language of the colonial ruler. Accordingly some Africans had to speak Portuguese and Spanish (Lusaphone), others French (Francophone), yet others had to speak English (Anglophone), all vectors of access to knowledge and to the world. While this gravitational model did indeed connect Africa to the world, at the national level, it erected implicit barriers for the majority of the population conversant only in African languages that were de facto relegated to oral communications.

In addition to creating two separate worlds within countries, locking the majority of the population into ghettos of illiteracy, the gravitational model appears unwarranted on scientific grounds and incompatible with the broader objective of building nation states.

In the second half of the 20th century, Diop's translation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into Wolof proved that the language of science was based on ideas and concepts rather than linguistic requirements, and exposed the lie about the inferiority of African languages.

It also highlighted the universality of the language of science and expanded the perspectives for African languages. In so doing it weakened the pull factors sustaining the gravitational model on the linguistic scale. Over time, the process of globalisation and increased competition from Asia and the US, further weakened the pull factors.

Nonetheless, the changing pattern of the global economy did not markedly alter the cultural parameters inherited from the colonial era. The functionality of African languages remains largely confined to oral communications and informal activities. With the possible exception of Afrikaans and Swahili, African languages have not yet entered the intellectual and formal professional realm.

Even the Hausa language, spoken in several countries, remains largely confined to informal communications and economic transactions, a major constraint to the African renaissance agenda, especially in view of how languages have been used as vectors for cultural expression and economic exchanges within an overall strategic development framework over the years.

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The resilience of the parameters inherited from the colonial eras has tremendous costs.

These costs are borne by African children who at a very early age have to study in a language that is foreign to them. As a corollary, they miss out on the traditional education that is generally rooted in the depths of proverbs and idioms which carry all their meaning when expressed in the root language.

These costs extend beyond linguistic factors, however. The African textile industry, which used to be one of the most vibrant, delivering some of the finest fabrics enjoyed by African Queens in pre-colonial Africa, provides another illustration. In the same spirit of discontinuity, who among the younger generations of Africans remember the traditional costumes of Ashanti Queens or the ones then worn by the Queens of Ndongo? Many of today's most successful African women vie to be dressed by Chanel, Dior, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent--to name just few of their preferred European brands.

The increasing popularity of foreign brands as a substitute for African heritage has significant negative implications for the continent's balance of payments and employment.

The declining use of African traditional costumes precipitated the death of the African textile industry. In the long-run, it undermined prospects for endogenous growth--for traditionally, cultural foundations underpin economic development. Scientific progress and innovations are primarily driven by the need to improve and continuously refine the different vectors and forms of cultural expressions for efficiency and productivity gains. In this context, the growing deficit of science and technology may largely explain the persistence of discontinuity between culture and economic development in Africa.

This deficit is illustrated by the decay of Africa's scientific institutions and its dismal contribution to global knowledge, and reflects the fact that Africa no longer has the scientific prowess of pre-colonial eras. To begin to do so would require the establishment of world-class institutions, a rare commodity in the current scientific architecture--not a single African institution was ranked among the first 200 top universities in 2005.

Remaining challenges

While the current state of Africa's contribution to global knowledge is dismal, it is important to note that sciences were the foundation for enlightenment in pre-colonial Africa. Without the sciences, Africa would not have made its worthy contributions in the many critical fields.

Pre-colonial achievements reflected the maturity of institutions and the culture of self-reliance that enabled the leaders to harness and use African talents to continuously improve living standards. During these glorious years culture and science were fully endogenous to production processes. Hence, enhancing a scientific renaissance to regain the status of knowledge in the continent is crucial, especially given the increasing contribution of science to long-term economic growth.

At the same time, the inability to overcome cultural discontinuity and utilise African culture in production processes using science as a vector is undermining the African renaissance, as well as its development process and ownership. As Professor Diop remarks, "African cultures will not be taken seriously until their utilisation in education becomes a reality".

Presumably, ownership is natural when production processes are rooted in cultural heritages. The alternative cultural holocaust and discontinuous path has resulted in aid-dependency and the debt and poverty traps.

However, Professor Diop's landmark analysis serves to strengthen Africa's renaissance foundation. Africa should build on this foundation to bridge the discontinuous gaps between culture and development. Continuity in cultural relevance, reflected most notably in production processes, is a pre-requisite for an effective renaissance.

Dr. Hippolyte Fofack is a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences and founder of the Nelson Mandela Institution. He can be reached via email at [e-mail].