Locating Ourselves after Colonialism A Postcolonial and Decolonial Discourse for Twenty-First Century Africa

Colonialism shaped, is shaping and, as it appears, will continue to shape the realities of Africa. As a postcolony, Africa is still searching for identity, rediscovering itself and finding creative ways to speak and be heard void of Western-produced knowledge—but, can Africa escape the neocolonial machine?

On Contemporary geopolitical scholarship identifies Africa as a postcolony, which is to say that much of Africa’s current reality has been shaped by its colonial heritage. Some historians have asserted that in comparison with the rest of the Global South, Africa’s encounters with Western invaders and colonizers came ‘late’ and were relatively ‘short lived’. A typical comparator is Latin America, which fell under Spanish and Portuguese rule in the early 16th century and remained that way for 300 years. Africa, on the other hand ‘...was conquered by European imperial powers only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.’ This fact, however, does not negate the realities of Europe’s exploitative invasion of Africa. Ghanaian historian, A. K. Adu Boahen, in his chapter contribution in UNESCO’s General History of Africa (Vol. VII) emphasizes the scale of damage that imperial powers wreaked on Africa within this comparatively short period...