Remembering the Dismembered Continent

1885, European and American globalizers set up colonies that impoverished Africans by exporting raw resources to fuel European and American prosperity. 1960 "Independent" Africa's rulers, far from uniting Africa to create prosperity by processing the continent's fabulous resources, opted to maintain the colonial system in return for loans and grants, while chanting Pan-Africanism at hotel conferences. In this destructive drift, a minority of lucid scholars, spearheaded by Cheikh Anta Diop and Théophile Obenga, argued that instead of following Europe and America, we'd do better to retrieve Africa's own multi-millennial heritage of philosophical and cultural values, the best of which, like Maât, centered on political unity and social justice, would be our surest guide into a regenerative future. These essays show exactly why. They also suggest ways in which we can heed the call of our most creative thinkers, to prepare for the long-postponed rebirth of African society.