American International Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 4, No.

10; October 2014

The Transformation of “African Mentality” as Fundamental to the Development of

Okpalike, Chika J. B. Gabriel

Abstract
This paper seeks through the prism of various brands of “African Mentality” proposed by earlier writers to
expose the African Mentality that works against true development in Africa. “African Mentality” is the
summation of the basic African pattern of thought or frame of mind with which Africans grapple with issues.
Chinweizu (1978) dubbed the process which engineered the African mind into the loathsomeness of “African
Mentality” as “Re-tooling” and “Miseducation”. Soyinka understood Chinweizu and others as those African
intellectuals ravaged with slave mentality. Soyinka (in Frederick, 2009) understood this ‘Slave Mentality’ as
hindering the progress of African literature because most writers seem to be laboring under the yoke of western
enslavement in their works; engaging in the enterprise of shifting blames. Achebe (1983) proffered that one of the
problems of African leaders is ‘Cargo-cult Mentality’ which interprets why they keep waiting for an illusory
Messiah across the shores for the solution of the African problems. These brands of African mentality make an
average African unwilling to identify with “African Mentality”. The paper then suggests models of social
structures the African may connect with, in lieu of arriving at a transformed African mentality.
Keywords: Africa, Mentality, Development, Re-birth, Transformation, Model, Chinese, Jewish
Introduction
Mentality has to do with level of intelligence; mode and pattern of thought. Like world view it is the standard with
which a people interpret their world and affairs. Most often it depicts the dynamisms in the mannerisms of a
people which form the basis of their reflexes. The present writer thinks that to develop the African continent, the
African mind should be a priority. It is only the developed mind which can evolve, initiate, advance, maintain and
sustain development. As it were, the African mind that seeks development still wallows in the gallows of induced
mental confinement. It is true that by the mid of the 1950’s many African countries were engaged in the struggle
that ended the era of colonialism (Meredith,2006; Reid, 2012), but that struggle after almost sixty years has failed
to produce African independent minds completely unbiased by some kind of western influence; negative or
positive. Lending his voice to the earlier revolutionary thoughts of Frank Fanon, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime
Cesaire and so forth, Chinweizu (1978) had suggested that the African mind has been re-tooled to appreciate
reality differently. He understood this re-tooling as achieved through Miseducation. In his laments, he stated:
It was a miseducation which, under the mystique of “modernizing” me into some “civilized”
condition, had worked to infect me with an intellectual meningitis that would twist my cultural
spine, and rivet my admiring gaze upon Europe and the West. It was a miseducation which, by
encouraging me to glorify all things European, and by teaching me a low esteem for and negative
attitudes towards things African, sought to cultivate in me that kind of inferiority complex which
drives a perfectly fine right to strive to mutilate itself into a left foot (P. xiv)

Like David Hume did from his dogmatic slumber, Chinweizu suddenly rose from his colonial mentality slumber;
lamented his predicament in the extent to which he has imbibed western education in complete spitefulness of an
existing but illusive and abandoned African education. He went ahead to restructure the history of African
encounter with Europe with a better sincerity, veracity and clarity. Adichie (2009) would corroborate this effort of
Chinweizu by stressing the need for Africans to tell their story themselves. Chinweizu strove to expunge
‘Colonial Mentality’ which he understood as a hindrance to the evolution of a true African development.

Paradoxically, Wole Soyinka seems to be addressing the likes of Chinweizu when he is quoted by Fredrick (2009)
as saying: “the slave mentality continues to govern our thinking and our writings”.
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Soyinka opines that African intellectuals and leaders are suffering from “Slave Mentality” and as such finds it
difficult to rise above liberation from colonialism in their writings. He is simply of the opinion that there should
be limits to the African disposition to apportion blames to their colonial masters for the present situation in the
continent. It is time the people of this continent rose above the mourning of the African predicament and evolved
minds of their own; interpreting human reality from their original standpoint.
Meanwhile, with the uprisings in North Africa, the political situation in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan; the security
issues in Nigeria, heightening terrorism threats and so forth, it is clear that leadership in the continent is yet a far
cry from world standard. In analyzing the problem of leadership in Nigeria, Achebe posed what he called “Cargo-
cult Mentality”. In this he was simply saying that the Nigerian (African) leaders are habitually looking beyond
their boundaries for the solution of their problems; waiting for some kind of ‘big brother’ from beyond the shores
to help. In this waiting stance the African project keep dilapidating like no-man’s business. In the same vein, in a
lecture he delivered at the Youth Village, Amansea-Awka, Nigeria, on March 17, 2012, Prof. Pat Utomi referred
to what he called “Scarcity Mentality”. With this he meant to describe the attitude of most Africans for which they
seem to accumulate material things that at the end might be of no use to them. By “Scarcity Mentality” he meant
that manner of judgment which impresses that things meant for the community might not go round to everybody
therefore in order to check that chimerical scarcity people tend to scramble and accumulate things they have no
need for. This accounts for the billions of dollars African leaders stack away to Europe and America for ‘safe-
keeping’ in preparation for the scarcity day.
In these varied brands of mentality in Africa, the present writer thinks that development is seriously impeded.
Development is not a matter of infrastructure but of structure. The idea of this structure had been given by Karl
Marx in his Theory of the State, he called it Superstructure. This superstructure should be a mental construct that
brings together the being, situation, hopes and aspiration of a people into one piece of developmental formula.
With the so-called western education left in its colonial schemes, African development is still west-bound and
may not favour those whom it never considered when it was being constructed. We look at our continent as
chronically flawed and irredeemably so. We may not be touched by the hues and cries of our decaying continent
and may never spare a thought to quelling them provided there still exists the promise of a western alternative.
The African superstructure needed to be such that Africans should be strikingly passionate about and which
brings together Africans of all affiliations. In this paper we seek those superstructures which may be foundational
to constructing an African developmental mentality and initiate a sustainable development for the continent.
1. Factors Surrounding the Monumental Disconnect
There is obviously a disconnection between the African and the development that he craves for. Ekwe-Ekwe
(2011) avers: “the salient feature of the development ethos, any development ethos, (is) that the engine of such an
enterprise is anchored internally – right there at the very locale of the projected activity.” In other words the
prototypes, modalities and operations of the development needed for Africa is located in the African continent; in
its culture, tradition, religion, philosophy, language, environment and so forth. On the contrary, however, the
African journey to the development it envisages today began from the internal arrangement and purpose of the
continent; informed by the schemes of external predators and its destination is located somewhere beyond its
shores whence its driving force and leading light came. The African agents of this development if they are
humans were isolated from their local communities, trained elsewhere to gaze upon their community with air of
superiority and disgust. Within their training they learnt to reject their language, culture, religion and even their
names; they get initiated into the process by being emptied of who they were to take on a new personality. Their
training informs them that they are becoming more like their trainers; and because they have also been goaded to
accede to the superiority of their trainers, this in turn informs their superiority-complex and that their local
environment is base and of no good; this in its own turn also informs their acquired disgust for it. While they were
away, their trainers continued to vandalize and impoverish their homeland. They came back to it to meet it worse
than ever and are overwhelmed with frustration of where and how to begin, and even if they did find answer to
this uphill task, with what tools? In their hands are schemes tested in the laboratories of their trainers which in
Africa lack potency. It is Britain and France together with their brother allies in Europe who are the authors of this
world-drama (Chinweizu, 1978, Ekwe-Ekwe, 2011). The war of Europe against Africa is a war of mentality and
in it the African spirit was the target and has been wounded in various fronts.

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It could be analogized that just like they shipped away millions of slaves from Africa in exchange of mirrors and
tobacco; so they suck the African blood in exchange for synthetic blood-builders. Consequently, the African
person is not in touch both with himself and with his environment. His personality is truncated; his harmony with
his environment fragmented.
The crisis taking over all parts of Africa is the picture these fragmentized and dichotomized entities paint.
Chancellor (1987) had foreseen and made that prediction:
The first tragedy to note about the effects of this class education on Blacks is that it further
reinforced colonialism’s policy of perpetual disunity in Africa and elsewhere. The line dividing
these black “upper” and “middle” classes from the black masses and their basic aspiration is more
rigidly drawn. And this superior class mentality, becoming even more crystallized since
independence, is an almost certain guarantee of future uprisings on a scale never seen. (P. 25)
The average African look across the shores of the continent for the kind of life he reads in books and watches in
movies in the conviction that his environment is totally impotent and incapacitated to so evolve. His interaction
with the West teaches him to stand beside himself in the pursuit of the so-called development. The West seems to
have adopted the Taoist philosophy often rejected by China: “Empty their minds and fill their bellies”; in this way
Tao te Chin sought to achieve the subservience of the ruled under the schemes of the ruler. The result of this is
that wherever the African finds himself in the globe, he continues to be mentally impoverished. Even in the
United States the so-called American Dream remains a dream for the blacks while their white counterparts wake
up every day to their dreams. The well-known Black American Dream apes the Taoist Belly which the Black
American craves to fill at the detriment of his mind. In the words of Deutsch (2003):
The American dream seems a little more difficult to attain when the American dreaming is a
member of a minority group living in poverty. This is not to say that the dream of success and
money (Yes, I said success and money -- they are not the same thing) is unattainable for certain
people. It is just incredibly more difficult to achieve when one is faced with certain obstacles that
others do not have to overcome.
The obstacles he means are obvious; they are naturally inherited in accordance with colour. The integration of the
black man into the American society after centuries of servitude and marginalization may not be a stronger need
than the protection of animal rights as far as that society is concerned. Human beings, black or white, are
subsumed under the same broad heading in the declaration of independence “All men”. The fact that the black
components of this universe of humans have been disadvantaged by the centuries of impositions by the other
white components, amazingly, does not constitute much worry. Apparently, the Black American is disconnected
from the basis of being American and therefore is aloof of the goal for which being American makes meaning in
its profundity. He is not at grips with the idea of the American development and cannot contribute meaningfully
to it. As the slave he has always been, he remains subservient to his masters who have no need of him beyond the
labour he supplies and owes him no duty except give him food. We must admit that in recent times the situation
of the blacks in America has greatly improved; at least it could be said that a black man has attained the highest
office in the land and may have proved the insinuations of this work wrong. On the contrary, it is those who on
their own accord broke the chains and fetters of their mental slavery who could rouse up the genie in them to
conquer the white fortresses. They were, in fact born outside the scheme which would have otherwise defined
their humanity not by their mothers and fathers but by that struggle which could loosen the grips of their allotted
nature into the humanity that really makes all men equal. The present writer understands those emancipated from
the shackles of mental slavery and besides still reserved the energy to actualize themselves as super-humans and
the best of humanity’s species. It should, however be emphasized that people like that broke the barricades of
their mental confinements before they could achieve much for themselves. Nevertheless, it is not any easy to
achieve this task that proves Herculean from every side. Chancellor (1987) beautifully painted the picture of the
difficulties likely to be encountered by such minds thus:
One reason why the greatest issues of African history must be both reviewed and expanded is that
anyone who dares to challenge the prevailing and widely held viewpoints is in a position far more
precarious than that of little David facing the towering and mightily armed Goliath. Here an
almost universal army of giants, standing steadfastly in defense of the “Africanist” ideologies
they have developed, must be combatted. (P.85)
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On the other hand, those liberated may be the blacks who have been tested and confirmed to have lost everything
for which they may have been called black except their colour. In that case they are simply excluded from the
sufferers of the African (black) mentality syndrome; not growing from it to eradicate it. The situation of the
Blacks in America gives eloquent evidence to the place of Blacks in the world-drama. If Blacks who are living in
the same environment with their white counterparts are so much disconnected from their environment, how much
more those living beyond that shore?
When Africans discuss or embark upon development, they rely on their minds saddled with mentality stuffed by
these self-arrogated masters. They scheme development alongside courses already charted by the west and thus
continue in the defined status of underdevelopment. How then may the African be developed in this state of
affairs? Is it possible for Africa to put together their own design of a development that will be truly African;
promoting and advancing the African cause? Will such a scheme not isolate the continent from the
Commonwealth of Nations and deny them a share in this-world-affair?
2. Models for an African Development
2.1 The Chinese Model
Years ago, China and India were used as examples of over-populated nations in our Economics text books and
following the definitions of Abraham Maslow which the example sought to illustrate, “Over-population is the
inability of a population to feed itself”. If that was really the situation with China when so many African countries
by the same standard definition were not considered over-populated at the same time as China was, how did
China rise to such an economic height that it is just no longer considered over-populated without reduction of its
numbers but has grown to swallow up the big economies of the west? How did China come about science and
technology in a manner that the west needed to run up to it or lose out in it? It is obviously not by chance that
China and its neighbor Japan and other smaller far-eastern countries like Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai
and so forth did come to the extent of controlling the world economy and dominating the field of science and
technology. Like various other countries of the world, China too was at a point in her history conquered and
colonized by western powers at least in parts and also subdued by the communist regime which almost succeeded
in wiping off the memories of its antiquity (Adler (2011).
Apparently, in all her experiences of colonization by the West and under the sway of western domination, China
did not allow herself to be rid of her culture. China preserved the knowledge of and with time rediscovered her
great teachers – Confucius and Mencius; recalled her great and ancient civilization much older than that of Europe
and began again to study and improve on them; rejuvenated their medical sciences and sold its idea to the world.
Confucianism became an official Chinese Culture and Philosophy(Gardels, 2014); to learn China is to learn
Confucianism ( Worthy of note is the fact that it was Philosophy which China first rediscovered and especially
Moral and Cultural Philosophy. For instance, Confucius had taught that if the people are starving, then it is time
to open the store-rooms and begin to distribute the reserve; when the people have enough to eat, then it is time to
reserve again. Confucius had stated the Golden rule by the time of Socrates; long before Rabbi Hillel (not to talk
of Christ) and had charged the government with the responsibility of feeding its citizens. These are bits of his
Moral Philosophy and are amazingly the basis for Chinese development. It should be recalled that the
fundamentals of Western Economics was set down by the 17th century Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) and
radicalized by Adam Smith (1723-1790) into hard-line capitalism. Meanwhile Confucius (552-479 BCE) lived
during the period western Philosophy was nascent; obviously, Chinese Philosophy at the time has grown to
maturity. China realized that in her history Taoist idea always ended in one calamity or another; resulting to loss
of lives and property and that the ideas of Confucius always favoured them. Therefore Chinese Culture,
Philosophy, Religion, Politics, Science and Technology were harmonized and given the same basis in the idea of
Confucius. As should be expected, Confucianism is China’s exclusive possession. Giving account of the role of
People’s Republic of China (RBC) government in resurrecting Confucianism, Adler (2011) wrote:
In this context, it seems clear that the PRC government's support of Confucianism is politically –
even geo-politically – motivated. First, they are reclaiming traditional Chinese culture as one of
the world's great civilizations. In fact there is a wide-ranging strategy of claiming that Chinese
civilization was the world's first great civilization. Second, they are claiming Confucius, the
world-renowned philosopher whose ideas permeated traditional Chinese culture, as their own.

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If it must be learned by the rest of the world, then it must be through China. China has shown like did the former
Europe that it is belief-systems, culture and Philosophy that is at the basis of any civilization. Likewise in the
development of Europe, its Philosophy did not break with its Religion while it’s Science and Technology is the
offspring of both.
2.2 The Jewish Model
Scholars of Biblical history (De Vaux, 1978; Armstrong, 1994; Finkelstein and Silberman, 2001) place the
definitive beginning of the formation of Jewish civilization between the tenth and seventh century BCE; more
than two millennia after the Exodus account of that formation at Sinai as represented in the Bible. The Bible
presents the Jewish story as a model of the history of the human race in which the Jews were privileged to know
and preserve the immortal story of the origin of things. More fascinating is the fact that although that history is
nowhere more than eight thousand years whereas the radiometric age of the earth is reckoned at somewhere above
four billion years, it still is very effective and convincing. In other words, in spite of this verifiable evidence of
science, the story of Israel constitutes the most convincing presentation of origins and various divine interventions
on earth. Evidently, Israel cleverly appropriated the various strands of Ancient Middle East stories, myths and
legends (the Babylonian Enuma Elish for instance), pieced them together and made it the Jewish story.
They so blended them that their patriarchs became such legendary entities with universal application; one can be
in Africa today dying for a believed descent from Abraham. Yet whether or not the personality of Abraham can be
ascertained through any historical survey is debatable. The Jews also developed effective means of preserving this
story. It was not just about writing; it extended to its institutions, feasts, rituals and most of all story-telling. These
ensured that this story was not totally lost through time. It could be said that the average Jew is a good story-teller.
Lastly, they so believed this story that any Jew can bet his life for it. They carried this story wherever they went
and sojourned, caring nothing about what the story might generate. Armstrong (1994) insinuated that Mohammed
listened intently and extensively to this kind of Jewish story and through the appreciation of it made a parallel
Arab story (pp. 153-4). Today the whole world can tell the Jewish story with such proficiency that it has actually
become the story of the human race and creates the impression that no other race has any story to tell. Wherever
the Jews are, they receive such a treatment like they are the brothers of the God worshiped by the rest of
humanity. From the years of Roman Imperialism till date, the Jews have had a special place in the heart of
humanity that they have produced the best of humanity’s species because of the opportunities this privileged place
afforded them. After the World War II the Jews employed once more the power of story-telling; they told the
story of the holocaust in such vivid manner that they won the sympathy of the world and Anti-Semitism became
such a crime that no one will want to be associated with; it has created such apprehensiveness in the human mind
that only the contemporary terrorism phobia could match it even if it means in verbal utterance. Not even the
centuries of slave trading; not the mindless invasion of Africa in the name of Colonialism could be viewed in such
a catastrophic light and most often no one cares to tell the African story even the Africans themselves. Yet Africa
lost more millions of its citizens than did the Jews and up until now, the aftermaths of colonialism are everywhere
to be seen; with the succeeding neo-colonialism more genocidal than the first. The Jewish race is one giant that
has swallowed other races of the world that one can comfortably say that humanity is constituted of two races –
The Jews and the Rest. It is important to note that the Jews are a race; a people. The State of Israel is a symbol of
this people; not their geographical boundaries. The truth is that the Jews cannot be confined to anywhere or better
still they are everywhere the true husband of the earth and its inhabitants. The simple Jewish model we desire to
pick here is their ability to tell their story themselves, the character of holding on to it and the resilience to defend
it.
2.3 The African Contrast
In Africa, the experience is different. For instance, in the American education system, Asante (1991) had observed
about the African-American that: “Most African-American children sit in classroom, yet are outside the
information being discussed. The white child sits in the middle of information, whether it is literature, history,
politics or art.” Writing in favour of the revision of the curriculum in the education of the black child, he
advocated that some patterns be found in Afro-American culture and history on which to anchor and bring the
child in the middle of an intellectual experience.

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Onyewuenyi (1994) drew the consequences of a curriculum that exposes its black students to negative and
denigrating information about their ancestors, succeeds in making them believe that slavery was a good thing and
that the benevolent whites only schemed to rescue their ancestors from savage and primitive Africa and as a
result, their good-for-nothing ancestors had contributed nothing to the development and civilization they enjoy. In
the face of this mentality, the blacks become descendants of the beneficiaries of white benevolence. Consequent
upon this, the contemporary blacks are caged-in a new manner of slavery; locked in the servitude of their minds.
Within the boundaries of Africa, it is the same experience. The educated African finds it difficult to interact with
his people and environment because he feels so superior to them. Even in the process of education, they are fed
with junks doctored by the West while the real materials for their consumption are stacked away in European
museums and libraries especially in Britain; affording the latter of the ample opportunity to mutilate what they
desire and bring back to Africa. In their religion they are taught that their forefathers were animists and pagans; in
politics savage and barbaric; in socio-economics primitive and backward and amazingly they accept it without
hesitation. There is nothing remaining for the African to fall back on in his quest for development; the only
development open to him is that in terms and schemes of Europe and America. The most disconcerting of the
African state of affairs is that the true African story is at the verge of being lost. Unlike the Jews, Africans have
left their story to be told by their white slave masters and colonialists. Every African child knows Africa to the
extent to which it is relevant or connected to the European story and this situation has been left to linger for ages.
Such stories as Africans have been stereotyped to replicate does not serve the African purpose; does not foster any
development for the African continent.
3. Re-born African Mentality towards African Development
The present writer advocates for the re-birth of African mentality; a mentality that has variously been tagged
colonial, slave, cargo-cult, savage and poor. The African spirit has been brought so low that it has accepted these
various presentations of the African mind as normative. The African like the Chinese should realize that this was
a continent of one black race still preserving various institutions that bear testimony to the homogeneity in its
culture and gallantry in its hegemony. Like China the city state of African civilization was not conquered by the
evading Europe in the name of Ethiopia. It was the seaport cities which were subdued and colonized. Europe
schemed and achieved emphasizing ethnic differences and tribal conflicts in the African continent with the aim of
achieving further divisiveness of the people. African scholars should find cultural patterns and social currents that
run through the African continent and people; build it in the curriculum of studies in the schools and integrate it
into a bond for its entire people.
Africans should be proud to realize that African civilization dates back to the 4th millennia B. C. E. and that it
was blacks who were at the take-off of this civilization producing the great founder of the idea of monotheism and
Philosopher-king. Chancellor (1987) writes:
Queen Tiy was one of Egypt’s remarkable queens. Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy gave a son to
Egypt who was destined to be one of the greats in the black world. This was Amenhotep IV,
known to fame as Ikhanaton. He was different from all of his predecessors. He was more preacher
than king, and the greatest single spiritual force to appear in the history of the Blacks. His great
religious reform movement aimed at a greater focus on the One and Only Almighty God. (P. 110)
This civilization is the oldest and most advanced in that period of human history. Even within the scheme of
deleting the glorious history of Africa, the West was not able to deny the title “Cradle of Civilization” to Africa;
in all the vandalism of evidences of African civilization they were not able to hide away the fact that Thales – the
first learned man of Europe schooled in the mystery schools of Egypt and all the ancient philosophers of Europe’s
pride in their turns visited Egypt to graduate into the teachers of Europe that they became. The Egypt talked about
here is the Egypt of the first cataract; Egypt populated by flat-nosed, thick-lipped and dark-skinned people; Egypt
that had its capital in the region where the Nile rises (Ethiopia); the Egypt whose wisdom, development and
military might could hold the Jews bound in slavery for four hundred and thirty years; the Egypt that is Africa as a
matter of fact. It is only Africans that can tell this story in this manner.
These truths will be able to convince the African mind that it has a story to tell and a pride to relish on and has the
potentials of restoring its glorious dignity. The re-birth of African mentality should inaugurate the era of picking
the bits and pieces of our abandoned culture and philosophy; free them from the doldrums of barbarism and
savagery into the golden clouds of their glory.
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Chancellor (1987) describes Africa as “The Land of the Gods” and “The Land of the Spirits”. It is evidently the
abode of “the earliest builders of civilization on this planet, including development of writing, sciences,
engineering, medicine, architecture, religion and the fine arts.”(p. 34). It is the African prerogative to lead the rest
of the world to the paradise of their dream. The West, which is the perpetrators of the on-going African lie, can do
no more than to improve upon that lie and expand its intensity and horizon. Africans should shun the cargo-cult
mentality which keeps them in wait for the arrival of the Messiah-ship (Ekwe-Ekwe, 2011), rise above crying
about the ills of her past and move ahead to claim its place in the league of nations. To do this, it is the African
spirit which will be re-born and for this re-birth to take place, Africans must seek the knowledge of Africa within
Africa from which they had been tactically turned away.
Conclusion
Development is far more than construction of infrastructure; technological advancement is much more than
receiving and accumulating information. Every human environment contains the seed of its own construction and
destruction; every culture is a unique civilization. Accepting another culture as a standard of measurement and
another environment as an accomplished ideal is to accept to play the slave or a second fiddle. A people’s science
and technology is contained in their philosophy and culture; China has proved this and has been able to challenge
the domination of the West in so many areas and ways. The leaders of African nations should begin to look
inwards and allow our best brains to contribute meaningfully to the development of the continent. In international
politics, there is no morality; it is all about interest of individual nations and how best any one of them was able to
get that interest served.

A Nigerian problem, for instance, cannot bother Americans more than it bothers Nigerians; there is no way the
American solution to a Zimbabwean problem will be more effective than a Zimbabwean solution. The heart desire
of our nationalist forebears to galvanize the whole of Africa together as a commonwealth of Black people is not a
sham; it is a dream worth it and worth struggling and dying for. Chancellor (1987) identified and proffered
solution to this fear of the West as to a possible unification of Africa in these words:
That there is a historical and fundamental basis for real brotherhood and unity of the black race
could not have escaped the notice of all those Europeans who have been investigating and writing
about Africa over the years. But they are shrewd. Massive black unity will be massive black
power which, of course, would reduce white power and its domination of the earth. (P. 21)
If the idea of development in Africa remains at the level of seeking to and actually replicating cities and
monumental structures in the manner of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Dubai and so forth that will amount to
no development at all. If the spirit of Africa is left nailed in the coffin of its demise and the African culture is not
rescued from strangulation; if the unity of the divided people of Africa is not achieved by a sole African effort,
then the most solid edifice constructed in it may become a sordid sight crumbling in the twinkle of an eye by the
finger of those whose concept it is. The development of Africa will begin with the development of the African
mind which will in turn generate the concept of the developed African continent and be ready to dwell in,
appreciate and maintain the development it generated. The first place to begin the journey to the re-birth of
African mentality is in the schools. The schools hold the key to the mind of their candidates and pave the way to
the destination of their quest. Our schools in their colonial form in which they have remained may not rise above
colonial mentality; it is this mentality that ought to be shed that the true African development may emerge.

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