Leading African intellectuals drive launch of new journal

A new international journal of sciences, cultures and heritage in Africa has been launched, driven by a group of leading African scholars and intellectuals as founder-contributors.

The 284-page maiden edition of Nouvelle Pensée Africaine (NPA), translated to mean, The New African Thought, in English, drew on the contributions of 12 academics from different corners of the world to work collaboratively to promote African knowledge.

The scholarly journal, published by the International Center for Research and Documentation on African Traditions and Languages (CERDOTOLA), was officially presented at the University of Yaoundé I on 19 February during an event that was also attended by Cameroon’s Minister of Higher Education, Jacques Fame Ndongo.

According to Professor Grégoire Biyogo, the President of the International Committee of African Scientists and Experts, the NPA aims to reorient the continent towards a decolonised strategy in African thinking and studies.

Presenting the journal, Biyogo said the NPA is an anthology of African thought that reflects Africa.

“African thought should be backed by thought from Africa and not elsewhere. The journal presents an opportunity for African academics to share and contribute to contemporary thoughts,” Biyogo said.

An idea is born

Accordingly, the genesis of the publication comes from the International New African Thought Conference organised by CERDOTOLA in October 2022 in Yaoundé where the idea of scholars contributing to the production of an international journal on ‘New African Thought’ was put forward following the geopolitical, economic and socio-cultural upheavals threatening the continent.

Reorientation needed

Academics say African thinking and studies have been deeply entangled with the vestiges of colonialism and there was a need to reorient and shed the colonial past and evolve into centres of learning and thinking that are rooted in African contexts, values and needs.

“African scholars should think African to better address African needs,” Professor Remy Magloire Etoua, the rector of the University of Yaoundé I, told University World News.

The need for a platform such as the NPA has been mooted by various scholars in recent times.

Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, chair of epistemologies of the Global South at Bayreuth University, Germany, has noted in a commentary that division of labour continues to see African scholars more focused on empirical research than theorisation in an international academic system that privileges European thought, theories, languages and publications as the ‘standard’ for international scholarly work.

A growing number of African scholars are currently building on Black Marxist thought, studies of racial capitalism, subaltern studies, African literary criticism, critical social theory and postcolonial theory to deconstruct the historic legacies of colonial knowledge in the Global South and to de-provincialise the critical power of its indigenous epistemologies, Ndlovu-Gatsheni said.

One of the contributors to the newly launched international journal of sciences, cultures and heritage in Africa, Cameroonian born-scholar Professor Achille Mbembe, in a 2024 article in University World News, noted Africa was recentring in the global circuits of knowledge production.

“As the 20th-21st century falls, many are beginning to recognise that our planet’s destiny might be played out in Africa and, therefore, what we are seeing is global recognition of the philosophical and material contributions of the continent,” he said in the article.

Contribution to the first edition

According to Professor Charles Binam Bikoï, the journal problematises African renewal of orientations with regard to the tensions between thought and governments, between knowledge and power, between thinking and political action.

The 12 scholars involved in the publication are Bikoï, the executive secretary of CERDOTOLA; Biyogo (Pan-African University); Etoua (University of Yaoundé I); Mbembe (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa); Théophile Obenga (University of Paris); Professor Molefi K Asante (Temple University, Philadelphia, United States); Professor Njoh Moelle, a philosopher; Professor Dolisane Ebosse (University of Yaoundé I); Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, the assistant director general of culture UNESCO; Dr Jean Eudes Biem, the editorial coordinator; Associate Professor Reynaldo Anderson (Temple University); and Dr Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, president of the Institute for Pan-African Strategies.

Some academics have hailed the contributions of these intellectuals in the production of the NPA and the drive towards decolonising African thoughts.

However, they cautioned that the process should be critically examined and pragmatically reconfigured so that it serves as true academic transformation in Africa.

“While embracing the decolonisation, academics should ensure it is critically re-examined and pragmatically reconfigured so it can better transform Africa,” Professor Mathias Eric Owona Nguini of the University of Yaoundé II, Soa, told University World News.