What Happened to the African Renaissance? The Challenges of Development in the Twenty-First Century (2025)

Prospects for an African Renaissance: Culture, Development, Reconciliation

Africa Society Conference Program, 2000

Writing and Righting the African Renaissance

Research Africa Reviews: Vol. 3 No. 2 , 2019

A recurring project in modern Africa is the vision of an African Renaissance. Its lure has captured the imagination of many musicians from Bob Marley to Youssou Ndour, as well as intellectuals from Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. Most African leaders of the post-colonial era have championed some utopian version of the renaissance project. However, a common end result of these projects has been their failure to deliver, and their inability to materialize. Although each case does bear unique features relative to its shortcoming, one can examine general patterns among the failed promises, and through this examination, uncover a roadmap for the possibilities of realizing such a renaissance.

The Rise and Demise of the African Renaissance

This paper presents an argument on the topic: " the rise and demise of the African renaissance ". In doing this, the paper explores a number of themes identified along the following line: Structurally, the essay is split into two distinct sections. The first examines the rise of African renaissance. This section firstly, explains what the African renaissance is. Secondly, explains the different interpretations of African renaissance and South Africa's perspective of African renaissance. Thirdly, provides the genesis of African renaissance. Fourthly, this paper elucidates what Mbeki did to bring the idea of African renaissance into existence and his notions of leadership. The second section examines the demise of the African renaissance. Here, the challenges and limitations of the African renaissance are discussed, basically this elaborates on the question of what happened to it now? Secondly, this part provides the explanations for African renaissance's disappearance. A conclusion is provided.

Deconstructing the Pessimism of African Renaissance

2018

Sequel to the debilitating effects of historical events of slavery/slave trade, colonialism, neocolonialism and capitalism with their consequent exploitation in Africa, with the result of inferiority complex and its attendant ills among Africans, the perception, perhaps, especially among the West is that Africa cannot attain again the glorious height it had in the past. Arguably, it is in line with this perception that Ann Bernstein doubts the reality of African renaissance and postulates that if at all it will occur in this contemporary globalized world, it must primarily be western-driven. Against the preceding position of Ann Bernstein, this research work, with the philosophical method of deconstruction, and relying much on thoughts of eminent thinkers like C.B. Okolo, Nyerere, Oguejiofor, etc., is out to debunk the hopelessness Bernstein associates with African Renaissance.

African Renaissance in the United States of Africa: A Historical and Political Approach of a Pan Africanist Vision of Africa

The focus of this study is to bring out an appropriate methodology and present the function of universities in discussing the need for a collective and institutional portage of the United States of Africa and African Renaissance offers a social, cultural and economic vision of Africa, whereas, the United States of Africa presents an essentially political view of Africa. We insist that be a vision, because of its remote nature from the daily masses concerns, needs specific treatment to gradually take root in the collective memory and serve as a compass for the future. Second, we place particular emphasis on the function of the historical African communities scattered around the world with Africa as their original geographic base. Thus we argue that a collective portage of the binomial concept of African Renaissance-United States of Africa should stimulate the large constitutive movement for African people eager to live together as one, although scattered throughout the world.

The African renaissance call as a strategy for socio-cultural and economic transformation : a critical analysis of cultural and ideological issues

African Renaissance, 2018

The main task of this article is to interrogate the meaning and content of the concept of culture as a phenomenological and ideological concept in human history, and to demonstrate how it is linked to the development or nondevelopment of the marginalized communities within the African continent. Equally important, the article identifies the processes of alienation and the marginalization of African cultural heritage by the ideological designs and practices of colonialism and the apartheid ideology. It highlights the importance of the African Renaissance call as a socio-cultural, political and economic strategy for transformation in post-1994 South Africa, and a movement to motivate Africa into moving forward and realising its true potential in the context of globalization and its marginalizing tendencies.

Artcl African Renaissance

The Necessity of a Challenge to Western Discourses by the African Renaissance

ACTA ACADEMICA-UNIVERSITY …, 2003

SOUTH AFRICA'S 'AFRICA RENAISSANCE' PROJECT: BETWEEN RHETORIC AND PRACTICE

South Africa's putative status in Africa as a regional and sub-regional hegemonic power is sometimes viewed from the prism of its exceptionalism and Afro-modernity. The study on which this article is based analyzed secondary data from print and electronic media to argue that although South Africa has shown mixed behavior in its foreign policy in Africa, neo-imperialism is not the most appropriate mode to conceptualize it. Contrary to the arguments of some studies that have unjustifiably placed South Africa's continental diplomacy in Africa within the orbit of neo-imperialism or sub-imperialism, this paper argues that South African diplomacy in Africa is also captured within the orbit of its constitutional democracy. We argue that South Africa has collaborated with international capital to create unequal exchange between it and Africa. South Africa's African Renaissance rhetoric appears more of a response to the world economic order it found itself in at the end of apartheid than the purported African revival it projects.

African Renaissance: The Politics of Return

African Journal of Political Science, 2002

The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library.