Skeptical Africa: Understanding the Past, Engaging the Present, and Exploring the Future -By Leo Igwe

Africa is widely acknowledged as the cradle of humanity and the sphere where modern homo sapiens emerged hundreds of thousands of years ago. However, a key element and characteristic of modern humanity, skepticism, is often not associated with Africa or Africans.

Modern or contemporary Africa is often conceptualized in relation to magic, the occult, and other canons of primordial mind, life, and existence. A representation of Africa and the African as a ‘noble savage’, engaged in traditionalizing modernity or modernizing tradition, is a covert and overt staple in anthropological discourses. “Modernity of witchcraft….in Africa”! Does that expression sound familiar?

Western anthropologists and their African acolytes have adamantly been prolific in conceiving skeptical rationality as we know it as alien to the thought and culture of Africans. They have deemed and designated a central mechanism of sapiens, the propeller of human emergence, a Euro-American import and a legacy of colonial incursions. Scholars have largely ignored the fact that the colonial package and baggage included religious absurdities, Christian and Islamic irrationalisms, and Western and Eastern nonsense that have continued to wreak havoc across the region and the globe. African post-coloniality has been codified as essentially a resurgence of the occult, and an unyielding ubiquity of magical efflorescence.

Unreason and barbarism from east and west, from Europe, America, and Asia, reinforced by local formations, have been presented as the mainstay of African ‘civilization’. This racist scholarship must be disrupted. The continent is portrayed as bound and trapped, as caught up in an inexorable and inescapable web of misinterpretation and misrepresentation that finds its latest version in indigenous/alternative knowledge systems. Search and research on indigenous/alternative knowledge is the latest academic fashion. African scholars and students are falling head over heels valorizing the past and glorifying ancient thoughts using exotic epithets that drip more with identity politics like ‘African science’, ‘African logic’, ‘African philosophy’, ‘African medicine’, etc.

Upon closer examination, one realizes a romanticization of primitive ideas, a framing of Western and human antiquity as African modernity, western superstition is African science, western illogic as African logic, western barbarism as African ‘civilization’ and ‘enlightenment’, permanently sealing the African state of underdevelopment.

These misrepresentations abound and darken the region; they encumber progressive, liberative, renaissant, and emancipatory thoughts and scholarship, which Africa urgently needs. This trend of misinformation must constantly be called out, pummeled, and fiercely challenged in furtherance of a skeptical awakening of Africa, Africans, and Africanists.

Skeptics in Africa propose that science is science. Technology is technology. Philosophy is philosophy. Logic is logic. Medicine is medicine. These areas of knowledge, their methods, and principles are universally applicable. There is nothing like African, Nigerian, or Ethiopian science. There is nothing like African, Akan, Igbo, or Igbira logic. There is nothing like African medicine as an alternative to Western medicine. Either it is medicine, or it is not. The alternative to medicine is not-medicine.

In both ancient and modern, colonial and post-colonial dispensations, anthropologists have exoticized and traditionalized Africans. Irrational and superstitious phenomena such as witchcraft have been explained as having enormous social value, utility, inner logic, and rational coherence for Africans. Meanwhile, nothing can be farther from the truth, logic, reason, and fact.

Although not as established or organised as in the West, skepticism, rational and scientific sentiments, demand for evidence, and critical reasoning feature in African cultures and societies. In my village in southeastern Nigeria, as in other communities across the region, there are skeptics, doubters, and disbelievers. Critical examination of religious and paranormal claims is a part of public discussions. People ask for evidence for claims. They seek and demand proof for propositions. Skeptical rationality is embedded in local debates and deliberations, including religious, irreligious, social, cultural, and traditional exchanges.

Skeptical moments have also manifested in the formation and operation of humanist, atheist, and freethought groups in the region, especially in attempts to combat religion/superstition-based abuses and promote critical thinking in schools.

In charting the future in Africa, skeptics are actively combating abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs, dogmatic traditions, and ritual attacks. Witch hunting, which western anthropologists have described as fulfilling socially stabilizing purposes and functions, is wreaking so much havoc in the lives of Africans. Many Africans are fighting back. Many Africans are resisting witch hunters and other superstition based abusers.

For instance, in March, a local mob attacked and beat to death a 46-year-old lady accused of penis theft in Zambia in southern Africa. Some of the perpetrators have been arrested and are being prosecuted. People accused of penis theft have been beaten and killed in Nigeria. Across Africa, many people believe that some humans have the power to magically steal or disappear their private parts, especially the male organ. This belief has no basis in reason, science or reality. In Nigeria, a 70-year-old lady accused of witchcraft has not been seen since November last year. It is believed that her accuser abducted her, tied a stone around her neck, and threw her into the river.

In a related development, a young man murdered his 24-year-old girlfriend allegedly for ritual purposes. Witch hunts and ritual attacks take place with impunity. Every year, thousands of women, children, and elderly persons are accused and abused. The Advocacy for Alleged Witches works and campaigns to ensure justice for alleged witches, victims and survivors of ritual attacks and their families. AfAW organises public education programs, provides legal representation and humanitarian support for victims.

Skeptics promote critical thinking and scientific temper in schools. Critical thinking skills are important in checkmating the ravages of dogmatic and superstitious beliefs. Critical thinking skills are among the top and most sought-after skills in the world. Skeptics campaign to introduce the teaching of critical thinking or philosophy for children as a subject in primary and secondary schools. Skeptics facilitate inquiry-based learning using questionstorm or the technique of thinking in terms of questions. The school system emphasizes memorization, answer driven learning and reproduction of what is taught.

Questionstorm makes interrogation of experiences or challenging claims the test of knowledge and a measure of intelligence. It is predicated on questioning together as a form of thinking/learning together. Through the Critical Thinking Social Empowerment Foundation, skeptics facilitate teacher training, develop learning materials, organize workshops, and implement pilot programs in schools. Skeptics work to realize a more critical-thinking and philosophically oriented society.

Leo Igwe is a skeptic and speaker at the 50th CSICON Anniversary Conference in Buffalo New York in June.