The Quest To Define Who Can Claim An African Identity
Richmond Setrana
Posted On March 22, 2023
Race and identity are burning issues that occupy the attention of many, especially people in the diaspora. There are a lot of controversies online about who an African is. Within the parameters of African philosophy, questions bordering on African identity have arisen: what is Africa? What is African? Who qualifies as an African? How can an African be characterised? At face value, the answer may seem obvious.
Wikipedia defines an African as a person native to Africa, a descendant of a native of Africa, or someone whose genealogy can be traced to native Africans. Yet, the answer becomes less evident as more inquisitive qualifiers are added. Do White South Africans genuinely belong to Africa? Do Moroccans, Egyptians, and other Arab Africans have as much African heritage as claimed?
Do those who identify as African or have an African ancestry think of themselves as such? Are all people who identify as Africans accepted for who they are? Are there “African-ness” levels, and are some people more African than others? Who decides who is considered African and why? How do several degrees of identity and citizenship in Africa interact with African identity? In other words, how is the African identity created in light of the diversity of identities that those with African ancestry, both on and off the continent, hold?
For some, an African is only a man who belongs to the black racial group. But this system of classification frequently raises more problems than it does answers. If we define Africans only based on their colour, a genuine concern regarding non-Black residents of Africa, such as White South Africans who have only ever known South Africa, arises. Are they from Africa?
Others have attempted to define the African people using territoriality. For individuals who share this viewpoint, all one needs to do is glance at a map of the world and label everybody born in Africa, who has citizenship in one of the continent’s nations, or who has ancestors from the continent as African. Yet, there are also several issues with this choice.
For instance, how far in the past should we look if we refer to everyone as having an “African” heritage as Africans? This viewpoint also makes the incorrect assumption that everyone who is an African accepts their identity as African. Some countries like Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt would prefer to be called Arabs rather than Africans, even inside sub-Saharan Africa.
Some individuals think defining what an African is should be based solely or primarily on one’s awareness of one’s African identity or dedication to the cause of Africa. The remaining members of the African ideological left and those ready to assume the robe of universalism and cosmopolitanism are fond of this classification system. One of the problems with this classification system is that it is so open-ended that anyone who shows even the slightest interest in African concerns might legitimately claim to be an African according to this definition.
There are “Africans of the blood and Africans of the land,” according to eminent African political scientist Professor Ali Mazrui. He defines Africans of the blood in terms of race and genealogy. While Africans of the land are characterized in terms of geography, they are associated with the black race. So, for Mazuri, determining an African applies to territoriality and race, which need to be considered simultaneously.
The main issue with this perspective is that it appears to establish a hierarchy among Africans since an African of the blood and an African of the soil may legitimately claim a higher ranking than someone who only possesses one of these characteristics.
Achen (1913) argues that the origin of the concept of Africa already depicts its geographical setting. Africa is of Phoenician origin, and the Romans first used it to refer to the territory of the city of Carthage.
According to Filesi (1971), the concept of “African” arose as a reaction to racial prejudice from the West to develop a political philosophy that would catalyze constructive solidarity among Africans and as a guide of action.
To help resolve the crisis of conscience already created by the contact between Africa and the West, Kwame Nkrumah (1964) wrote that our philosophy must find its weapons in the environment and living conditions of the African people. From those conditions, our philosophy’s intellectual content must be created.
The emancipation of the African continent is the emancipation of man. This requires two aims: first, the restitution of the egalitarianism of human society, and second, the logistic mobilization of all our resources towards attaining that restitution. Nkrumah believes this would help bring about the total liberation of the African person.
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