Africa, Communal Philosophy, and Outlier Thinkers

"The very idea of a communal philosophy that is entailed in the notion of particularistic studies of traditional African philosophies might be put in question. It might be suggested that to talk of the Bantu conception of this or the Zulu conception of that is to postulate a unanimity or consensus in philosophical belief among the traditional peoples for which there is not, and probably can never be, sufficient evidence. It is necessary, in response to this, to explain at once that talk of communal philosophy of an ethnic group does not necessarily imply  that the conceptions involved are entertained by all members of the group. What it means is that anybody thoughtfully knowledgeable about the culture will know that such conceptions are customary in the culture though s/he may not subscribe to it. The evidence for a communal philosophy is very much like that for the customs of a culture. In fact, in quite some cases, customs are encapsulations of some aspects of communal philosophy.
        It is important, however, to note that a communal philosophy is the result of the pooling together over a considerable length of time the thoughts of individual thinkers. Propositions about, say, the constituents of human personality or the nature of time just don't materialize impromptu out of a cosmological bang, big, small, or medium. They emanate from human brans. In an oral tradition the names of the thinkers are often forgotten. This is not always so, however. In Ghana, for example, it is not at all rare for a proverb to be prefaced with the name of its author. Nor is it unusual for such sayings to evince originality and independence of mind. It goes without saying, therefore, that a communal philosophy is a gathering together of inputs from thinkers who may not have agreed on all points. And this, perhaps, accounts for the apparent inconsistencies that one sometimes notices in such bodies of belief."

Kwasi Wiredu, 1998

"Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion"

African Studies Quarterly, Volume 1 Issue 4

In Memoriam: Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

(By Graca Machel) - Last Letter to 'Big Sister' Winnie Madikizela-Mandela 

My Big Sister,

It is with a heavy heart that I address you today. As I struggle to accept your transition, I take solace in the fact that you have risen to become one of the brightest stars in the sky where you will remain ever present and radiantly shining. You will continue to serve as a guide to your loving family, your grateful nation, our beloved Africa, and indeed, the world.

The extraordinary life you led is an example of resilient fortitude and inextinguishable passion that is a source of inspiration to us all of how to courageously confront challenges with unwavering strength and determination. Thank you for your brilliant wisdom, your fierce defiance, and your stylish beauty.

Fortunately, stars shine brightest during the darkest of hours. I know you will continue to illuminate our sky, even through the storms and clouds. Your legacy will be an uplifting beacon from which we can continue to draw guidance and strength during difficult times.

Journalists and Making of Nollywood Stars

Toni Kan

(By Toni Kan) - Celebrating Nigerian Entertainment Icons: A Tribute 

“That night the King could not sleep: so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him.” Esther 6: 1 (NIV)

In ancient times, before Martin Luther and Gothenburg, there existed a select group of individuals whose duties were to record, dutifully and in painstaking detail, significant events that were taking place.

Their writings were called Chronicles or Annals.

Those men were called Scribes and they were an essential part of a King’s court. In today’s world, a Scribe would approximate to a personal lawyer who would prepare a man’s last will and testament or a Confidential Secretary who is privy to all that concerns his principal.

But above all, in the more democratic times that we live in, the modern day Scribe is the journalist, the man or woman who through his writings, records (almost always in a hurry) for posterity, the doings of the people.

The Death of an Industry

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - The Death of an Industry 

In July 2011, as part of our series A due diligence, Tiger Global had McKinsey & Co conduct a study of Nollywood. The remit was:

1. Nollywood content popularity across Africa

2. Nollywood Industry Structure and Dynamics

- market size, growth, concentration and key trends

- content creator economics

3. Internet, broadband, payments and advertising trends across Africa.

They spoke with over a thousand people in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

Over the weekend, I re-read elements of the study, just to refresh my memory on all that had happened over the last 4.5 years. Let me go ahead and share some of those slides with you.

Sexism, Diapers, and Making it Work in Lagos

Adibeli Nduka-Agwu

(By Adibeli Nduka-Agwu) - Sexism, Diapers and Making it Work in Lagos 

It was my first week in Lagos, squeezing in a workout at the hotel gym, when a pudgy business man I had met earlier entered and started staring. Somewhat irritated I asked: “Sorry, can I help you?” He leaned closer and beamed: “It’s ok… I just enjoy watching you sweat.” My workout was over, my work life had begun.

I left the West three years ago to work across Lagos, Johannesburg and Nairobi expanding iROKOtv.com, “The Netflix of Africa”. I’ve had male counterparts refuse to speak to me (one physically closed his eyes until my male subordinate spoke); I was asked by a male client in a packed meeting room if he could sit on my lap, and the number of business men that hoped they could conclude our deal in their hotel room is endless. Sexism has followed me to Lagos like a virus: unwanted yet unshakable. Yet (and this may surprise some), I would argue that being a woman in Lagos has felt like LESS of a career barrier for me in my work compared to my time in North America or Europe.

Nollywood, iROKOtv, and French-Speaking Africa

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - Expanding Iroko in French Speaking Africa (FSA) 

When Canal+ invested in Iroko, a bunch of people in the English speaking Africa world kinda scratched their heads. Canal who? Little did we know that Iroko had been distributing dubbed content across FSA since 2013.

In Nigeria, for the most part, French Speaking Africa never really comes up in casual conversations. Unless we are talking domestic staff (especially cooks) and going to Cotonu to buy imported cars, we, as a people, are so inward looking that we don’t really bother to remember that both Nigeria and Ghana are literally surrounded on all sides by French speaking countries. Granted they are all pretty small, but being ~180m people in Nigeria vs ~230m across FSA one can understand a degree of naval gazing.

Nollywood and Mrs Njoku: Content is King

Mary Njoku

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - Content is King. How I ended up working for Mrs Njoku. Part 1. 

So, ROK on DStv was one a few weeks ago. I thought it important to tell the story of how it came to be. How a new approach to movie making fundamentally returned Nollywood to its roots as a medium to tell our stories.

In 2011, when Mrs Njoku was still Miss Remmy, she told me that she would prefer, by 40, to end up behind the camera rather than in front of it. That was her dream. She always loved storytelling and felt that Alaba-led filmmaking was disconnected from the storytelling core which had popularised Nollywood. She had all these ideas but no-one would really listen. I was her boyfriend so I was obliged to. Everyone who knows me knows I am pretty much wrapped up in myself and I rarely bother about anyone else. So it pretty much went in one ear and out the next. Even though she had been in arguably the biggest hit of 2011, Blackberry Babes, the year was a dry period for movie making for Miss Remmy.

When IROKOtv Celebrated 6 Years

(By Jason 'Igwe' Njoku) - Man. This is a little strange. Very little drama in 2017. We’re IROKO. There is always a little drama lurking somewhere. Alas none this year. To be honest, I ended up spending 5 months of 2017 in London so that pretty much took the wind out of any dramatic things outside of introducing Nnenna, my daughter, into the world. Being a parent is special. When I wasn’t one I used to move around the world fucking fearless. Now, everyday, I’m just scared. Scared that they may fall ill (kids at nursery are always ill), scared that I may let them down (apparently no one told me there is no rule book to raising kids, you just hack it as you go along) and scared that you can’t pay school fees (Holy ghost fire this will never happen in Jesus’ name).

To be honest the most dramatic thing that happened to IROKOtv over the last 12 months has actually been the launch of ROK channels on DStv and SKY. On Tuesday, I was in Johannesburg, and two young Nigerian men blocked me at the fuel station (I drive myself). One of them recognised me and was trying to explain to the other who I was. You know.

You know. The husband of the woman, you know, Nollywood actress, Mrs Mary, who runs ROKTV.

See my life. Post wedding. It was a concerted multi-year campaign to migrate people calling her Mary Remmy, to simply Mrs Njoku. Now I am the husband of the woman who runs ROK. I guess I am just resigned to being the queen in this relationship. In her shadow forever. It’s okay.

(New) Nollywood and Quest for Growth

Millennial Priestess Rejuvenates Orisha Tradition

(By Wana Udobang) - Why you should care 

Because ancient practices should be understood, not left in the shadows.

Omitonade Ifawemimo presents as a modern-day sage, with gleaming eyes, a petite frame — and wisdom to spare. She is in fact a 20-something Orisha priestess, with an easy smile and tightly knotted hair. And she has made it her mission to teach and preserve the Orisha and Ifa spiritual practices, which are indigenous to the Yoruba people of Nigeria and adjoining parts of Togo and Benin.

“When you see her in person, she is this tiny presence,” says journalist and culture historian Molara Wood. “She is not this image of an intimidating traditional-religion adherent that a lot of Nigerians have.” 

Ifawemimo’s journey started at the age of 5 when she was initiated into the Orisha traditions by her parents, and by 15 she found herself dining with elders and mastering the art and science of divination, chanting and rituals. At 20, through a combination of study, practice and heeding the spiritual call, she earned her place as a priestess.

Of ‘Oniyangi’ and ‘Elepo’

(From Segun Adeniyi) - Let me state from the outset that I am not the writer of this story as it is one  of those interesting offerings being circulated on WhatsApp. Since I found the message rather instructive, I am posting it with minor editing because, in a way, it fits into Mark Twain’s warning that we should never argue with “stupid people” who could easily “drag you to their level and then beat you with experience”.

It is a story of two men: One, called ‘Elepo’ because of the nature of his merchandise, which was palm oil; and the other, ‘Oniyangi’ also because of the nature of his own merchandise, which was sharp sand. One day, a long, long time ago which no one living can actually define, Elepo and Oniyangi set out from opposite directions to market their merchandise. After travelling many days by foot, which was the only means of transportation in those days, they met at a narrow intersection. It was such a narrow path that only one person could go through at a time. Elepo insisted on the right of way. Oniyangi would have none of it.

Both argued until other travellers met them at the spot and a large crowd soon gathered. Having failed to pacify both men, some wise travellers suggested a way out – they should slug it out; and that whoever won the contest should have the right of way. Quickly, each man set down his merchandise by the roadside and they squared up one to the other. The battle was ferocious and long; in the end, Elepo had the better of Oniyangi, lifted him off his feet and landed him on the floor. The crowd roared!

The Gospel According to Nwa Otu

Unku SP

The Achievement of Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe at his house in Enugu, Nigeria, 1959

(By Kwame Anthony Appiah) - 

The genius of Chinua Achebe, like all genius, escapes precise analysis. If we could explain it fully, we could reproduce it, and it is of the nature of genius to be irreproducible. Still, there has been no shortage of attempts to explain his literary achievement, an achievement that starts with the fact that Things Fall Apart (1958), the first of the novels in his “African trilogy” defined a starting point for the modern African novel. There are, as critics are quick to point out, earlier examples of extended narrative written in and about Africa by African writers. Some of them—Amos Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952), Cyprian Ekwensi’s People of the City (1954), to name but two also written by Nigerians—remain eminently worth reading. But place them beside the work of Achebe and you will see that in his writing something magnificent and new was going on.

One reason for this, which often passes without notice, is that Achebe solved a problem that these earlier novels did not. He found a way to represent for a global Anglophone audience the diction of his Igbo homeland, allowing readers of English elsewhere to experience a particular relationship to language and the world in a way that made it seem quite natural—transparent, one might almost say. Achebe enables us to hear the voices of Igboland in a new use of our own language. A measure of his achievement is that Achebe found an African voice in English that is so natural its artifice eludes us.

Saving Agu's Wife

(By Chika Unigwe) - So Yaradua goes to Israel on an official trip. He gets sick there and dies. His entourage is told, ‘Well, you’ve got two options. Your president was a Muslim and so must be buried quickly. We can bury him here at no cost to you since he was our guest or you can take his corpse home but that would cost a lot. Thousands and thousands of dollars.’ Yaradua’s men beg for a few hours to think about it. Five hours later they come back to the Israelis. ‘Well?’ The Israeli president asks. The head of the entourage clears his throat and says, ‘Your offer is very generous but we’ll turn it down. Thing is we all know the story of the famous someone, the son of a carpenter, who was buried here and who rose after three days. We don’t want to take that risk!’

The laughter bursts in to the kitchen and Prosperous shakes more salt than she intends to into the simmering pot. It must be John telling jokes again. A raised voice says over the laughter, this is an old joke. Yaradua’s been dead two years already. In any case, you’re not right. Muslims are not buried. They are cremated. For their sins, they are burnt. You’ve not told that story well.

Someone – perhaps the one who told the joke – shouts the voice down: You’re the one who is wrong! Cremation is forbidden in Islam. Another voice shouts something she does not clearly hear. She cannot tell who is speaking. All the men sound alike. That’s what this place has done to them – homogenized their voices. It is almost as if they were clones of each other. Their stories are not that different. They have all escaped something – religious riots, poverty, dead end lives – and are hoping to resurrect here.

This Sex Which Is Not One

"'She' is definitely other in herself. This is why she is said to be whimsical, incomprehensible,
agitated, capricious ... not to mention her language, in which 'she' sets off in all directions leaving 'him' unable to discern the coherence of any meaning. Hers are contradictory words, somewhat mad from the standpoint of reason, inaudible for whoever listens to them with ready-made grids, with a fully elaborated code in hand. ...
        It is useless, then, to trap women in the exact definition of what they mean, to make them repeat (themselves) so that it will be clear; they are already elsewhere in that discursive machinery where you expected to surprise them. They have returned to themselves. Which must not be understood in the same way as within yourself. They do not have the interiority that you have, the one you perhaps suppose they have. Within themselves means within intimacy of that silent, multiple, diffuse touch. And if you ask them insistently what they are thinking about, they can only reply: Nothing. Everything.
        Thus what they desire is precisely nothing, and at the same time everything. Always something more and something else besides that one--sexual organ, for example--that you give them, attribute to them. Their desire is often interpreted, and feared, as a sort of insatiable hunger, a voracity that will swallow you whole. Whereas it really involves a different economy more than anything else, one that upsets the linearity of a project, undermines the goal-object of a desire, diffuses the polarization toward a single pleasure, disconcerts fidelity to a single discourse ..."

Luce Irigaray, 1985: 29-30

This Sex Which Is Not One