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Paper short abstract

The paper maps out the meaning of Afro-centric enlightenment. It establishes its content. It argues that such an enlightenment will derive from Africans’ vision of the world, their values and expectations as beings-in-the world.

Paper long abstract

This paper argues that 18th-century Enlightenment, though universalist in tone, was Eurocentric in substance, and inadequate for Africa’s development. It proposes an Afrocentric enlightenment rooted in African worldviews as a necessary path toward epistemic and developmental transformation. It offers a critical interrogation of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, challenging its assumed universality and tracing its instrumentalisation through colonialism as a vehicle for Eurocentric values. While European Enlightenment ideals spurred tremendous change in Europe, their transplantation to Africa through colonial and postcolonial institutions often conflicted with indigenous value systems. The result, this paper argues, has been epistemic dissonance where Africa’s frameworks for understanding the world were marginalised, leading to cultural erasure and underdevelopment. The paper explores the possibility of an Afrocentric Enlightenment one that draws from Africans' vision of the world and their values, as beings-in-the-world. It asks: Can there be an African Enlightenment? What are its foundations? And how might it serve as a transformative vehicle for the continent’s development? By mapping out its meaning and content, the paper proposes that such an enlightenment would serve not only as an epistemic corrective but as a developmental imperative.In the context of debates on decolonising knowledge and curricular reform, this paper contributes to reimagining development by advocating for epistemic sovereignty. It aligns with ongoing calls to reclaim African agency in shaping the intellectual futures of the continent through philosophy, education, and development discourse.