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So go and get some books. Welcome to the new Books Network. Hello and welcome to the new Books Network. I am Anis Abakuri, one of your hosts.
Today, I am pleased to talk to Dr. Stavan Oyangu Uma to discuss his new book, Africa on Bound, the colonial pathways to sovereignty and liberation published by Braille in 2026. And this talk's provoking book, Dr. Stavan Oyangu Uma, invites readers to reconsider the meanings of freedom, sovereignty and liberation in contemporary Africa.
Stavan, welcome today. New Books Network. I am so delighted to have you here. Thank you so much.
My name is Stavan Oyangu. I am happy to be with you here. Thank you. Thank you so much.
So before we dive into the book itself, I would like to begin with you. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners, your background, the work you do and how you came to be interested in questions of decolonization, time-affectanism and African futures? I mean, there are so much more teams, but let's decorate this for now. Thank you very much indeed.
They are very interesting teams. As I said, my name is Stephen. I am a scholar and a writer and most of my work are writing focus on the intersection of African philosophy, political philosophy and the decolonial thoughts. This is where I sent most of my research and my work is also driven by the central question which is actually troubling us as African.
And I try to battle with this question thinking about what would it be actually meant for Africa to be truly, truly free, not just politically, independent, like most of the people of them are politically independent, but economically, in terms of freedom, economically, the sovereignty is not there. Intellectually, we are not free and culturally. We are still being self-determined, I mean, self-defined for that matter. These questions actually are the ones that are battling me because when you observe a course of Africa, there is a persistent contradiction across the continent.
Many African states possess the so-called form of the sovereignty which they are given with flags. They have constitution, they have elections, really, I mean, yeah, in our of the five years, um, you know, oh yeah, but we remain deeply constrained in the economic and policy choices that have been determined from outside. For example, if you allow me, when you, when government, for example, look at African government, there have been attempts to implement independent economic policies, but they are controlled from outside. They are often chapped, you know, added through debt, obligation, or external financial pressures like IMF, part-bound.
So this reveals that so that's of many things, in many African cases, is still a lot of negotiated, either in the Washington or in Paris. We are not, you know, when you're negotiating about you are independent somewhere else, then it means we've no stock yet exercising that independence of us, Africa. So we see this clearly in even in our budget priority in some African country. They are shaped by debt-savvyism, pandemicic development needs.
So for example, there are so many instances, look at countries like Zambia, a large portion of their national revenue go towards debt repayment rather than infrastructure, health care, or education. So this reaches a deeper philosophical issue, and instead we consider fully sovereign, it cannot freely determine how its resources are being allocated. I don't want to talk about the other countries, because there are very painful situations. So generally, just to sum it up, my work is really about interrogating that gap between symbolic independence and sub-step, able to talk about substantive freedom.
And how do we explore pathways through which African countries, you know, reclaim that control, not just politically, but structurally and also intellectually. We need to carry out this discourse of equalization as well. I think they're not speaking that well today. Thank you so much.
I think you feel a bit frustrated about the intellectual gap, the economic issues and all that and also like how you point out some examples and what is really happening on the ground showing that indeed, I think in your work, I might not mention it very well. So I'm paraphrasing it. You talk about how political independence has much really dissolved the structures of domination. So I really guess what you are doing in the book and it speaks of a lot of things and a lot of teams and it's more like equalization should be holistic like you talk about.
Also, I was wondering, so what's part of the idea for Africa on bound? Is it this frustration or is it the historical or is it the intellectual gap that pushed you to see? I have to write this book. Of course, as I said, looking about the contradiction that are there, we purport to be independent, but ideally we are not independent.
Our minds, so there's a book written by one of the great scholars in Africa philosophy called a VY Mugimbe in his book, The Invention of Africa. Mugimbe talks about we being spiritually or intellectually colonized. Frank Fanon was frustrated with this in his work, Black Skin, White Mask. Ideally, we are Africans, but our thinking configurations are actually Western because the Western people are very Black.
They knew when we captured them, intellectual, then we dominated them. So we are dominated in all angles. Economically, we are dominated. Politically, we are dominated.
Our elections sometimes are beside the samurai. Our economic policies are dictated from the samurai. Our religion, Africans are probably the subscribe to Western religion. We are divided.
A case study is in Nigeria between the Muslims and the Africans, and their Christians. And it is very clear, telling me in any European country, the religion is issued in one. You go to Italy, Italy, for example, it is terminated by. When you are a religious leader, in the life, one of our great scholars is called in the work of African philosophy and religion.
That is the Don Bitti. We had our religion systems in Wahlvi, but when they came here, they said, these are superstitious, they are backward, and therefore, in the name of civilization, we are bringing new religion, and we need to accept it, and we are supposed to do that. But to see, we are what I call religiously colonized as well. And so these are the things that actually are surprising me because I need my people to deliberate it.
And the best way to foster this is to bring to their attention on the fact that something has to be done literally examining some of these issues. So it arises, this book actually arises from that deep discomfort that I will have with the idea that Africa liberation is already complete, but ideally, there is nothing absolutely. When you look at history from a classic trade, a slave trade, I mean, that was happening on Africa's way and slave, you come to the second bit of it on the Berlin conference where the European in their hedonic system sat down, divided Africa with a stroke of a pen. Africa was uncut at that point, and it is quite frustrating because we were organized structurally all the way before.
Economies were designed for excreption, our identities were reshaped, and our knowledge system displaced. So the moment institutionalized fragmentation, like that happens, borders drawn, language. I am now holding this interview with you, a locally talking English, I wish we could have one African language. Africa is divided, funkophone, you know, talk about funkophone, talk about the anglophone, you move to one country of the speak another language, another country requires another passport, traveling in Africa, you can talk to your brother in the next, it is quite frustrating because borders were rolled without regard for cultural or linguistic consideration or political realities, to make attention that passes to be.
For example, continent regions like Sahel or part of Central Africa are often rooted in colonial boundaries. That was a group of people, you know, like in Kenya, from Kenya, we have the Messiah of Tanzania and the Messiah of Kenya, and they want to go and greet their brothers on the other side, they have to look for a passport at this being green, because those political fragmentation, those boundaries fragmentation, of people, one people who are in one unit, suddenly has no connection. So, for example, the case of funk, the second, brutally, you know, actually, the group of ethnic, it was its own state, the brutally ill minions of funkolis were lost, we lost lives, nobody is talking about that, million lost, just because you wanted to extract to it, Raba was not just that strategy, I mean, a tragedy, it was. So, when you look at all these things, really, we are talking about independent, but we are not, independent.
We are not, Africa is still within the grip of the chains that were put way back from Berlin conference up to date, that cause is still, is still honking us. So, we need to break those chains. So, this is why I'm a little bit focused on how can we liberate ourselves. So, if, because I believe if a system of exploitation continues in the new form, whether it is in your colonization, can really call that a freedom, no?
This question becomes, you know, the foundation of most of my writing, what is really, really pressing me to leave it at my people. Thank you, Amsa. Thank you so much, Divin. The title itself speaks to what you are saying, because the title says Africa on Mount, which is so powerful.
And I want you to take a moment to like, touch on the on-bound. I know you've talked about the Berlin conference, the Transatlantic slave trade. Is that so, is that Africa on-bound in this title? Is that freedom from domination or freedom to imagine new, new futures?
Or is it both? When it is both, it is both. We need to do a way with the freedom of domination in any form, like it can. But as we talk about freedom from domination, whether linguistically, Africa is, you know, language that very important, when you are linguistically dominate, there are things that you cannot think outside your language or you distort them when you imagine them in another language.
And this is a problem we are also having on translation, where most of our works have been distorted. One classical African philosopher that I would like to recommend to us, talk on this very comprehensively, on the distortion of African languages, Guvivat Young, talking about recognizing the mind, or what to protect of Uganda, a conceptual analysis in his work. The region of the Central Lou talks about how the European anthropologists were systematically sent to come and distort our conceptions and our worldviews about God among the Lou people. And so, as we talk about this domination, whether it is linguistic domination, whether it is a political domination, whether it is a, which have an economic domination, we need to imagine the future and the possibility of how Africa can get out of that age.
Thank you so much. So, based on Google, Watsyong, and your own debates on language and language politics, I was wondering that what might African languages do when it comes to intellectual liberation? And how is this connected deeply to language? I know you've talked about it, but I wanted to like you to build upon it for us, especially in education and publishing.
And they can tell me now I'm speaking to you in English, but I was like, I was spoken to you in Swahili or Akan or another language from Africa. But I just wanted to take a moment at this point to like this class, what epistemic concase as you use in your really, really means, especially looking at language. Yes, thank you so much. I use that Watsyong's epistemic conquest to show that we are, like I said, we are conquered, I mean, the last time, right, I'm curious that we have been conquered in all forms.
Now, let me just go back to that, the issue of language and the epistemic conquest language according to Google, it is a very crucial tool. Language can be used for domination and language can also be used for liberation. And like I told you, when you look at Africa, you know, when you're speaking, it is a very worrying brand. Here in Kenya, we speak English.
Sometimes when I teach my students, I tell them I'm a little bit I express my discomfort with deliberating my classes in a foreign language. I was thinking that, what if I was to make this lecture in my don't know language or in any African language, I would feel very proud. So epistemic freedom, I use it to show that we need to reclaim Africa, master claim, how authority to define knowledge and reality, because when we lose that focus, then we will be well, we'll still remain in that domination aspect. As I told you, Google, I use colonialism, denote and we'll politically independent.
It passes in how people think, learn and interpret the work. That's very key. In practice, epistemic freedom would mean education system that integrate African philosophies, history. In Kenya, here, we are now forcing our students to focus more on STEM, that means on sciences and forget about history.
History is a very powerful tool, which most of our universities does not encourage, because it is true history. When you know your history, you become a revolutionary. In Africa, we say, huge ignorance of this history is a slave. So, why are we not exposing our children to learn about their history?
They can be good experts or good doctors, but if you're equivalent of your history, then you will just perpetuate the domination sentence. So that epistemic aspect of the history must be there, and knowledge systems, our traditional knowledge system, must also be in the global front line. So, it would also actually mean we need to value our indigenous knowledge in areas like medicine, agriculture, and in conflict resolution. So, if I give you another example, in some African community, traditional ecological knowledge was very important and actually has been proven to be more sustainable than this externally exposed agricultural models.
Yet, such knowledge is often dismissed because it does not fit within the dominant Western scientific framework. So, epistemic freedom is very key. If Africa wants to realize our potential, it is therefore about restoring the balance, recognizing that African knowledge is as is equal to the Western knowledge, and they are not inferior, like they show it outside there, but they are equal and also valid and necessary for Africa. So, unless we dive into that epistemic freedom to reclaim our authority to define our knowledge and our reality, then I also think that the colonization and liberation can be in neutral life.
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Free of charge. BetMDM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGamingOntario. Thank you so much. That is so fascinating because in your book, you really talk about the epistemic conquest where colonialism did not just see land and resources, but it shaped the knowledge and why there is the need for epistemic freedom in our everyday life, in everyday African life.
So, and you make this very, very clear, epistemic justice, indigenous knowledge, systems, language and politics are all very important to African sovereignty. I want to take a moment to also talk about Han Anand. Okay, please go ahead. I want to talk about something a little bit about that because that also is actually the core of actually my book because if we don't focus on that, then I think whatever we'll be discussing about here would be rendered useless.
True liberation in the heart of this book, what I try to point out is that political independence without structural transformation is, if I may say, illusion. True liberation must happen, of course, what I call four levels, economic, political, cultural and epistemic. All those has to be in an interplay. So, this builds from thinkers like Frank Fanon, I told you in his work, Black Skin, White Mask and even another work that he wrote on the wretched of the ark, two people like Walter Rodney, a Europe and a developed Africa, who showed that domination operates beyond, is a called political control.
Our residents, broadly, think that political freedom is about, is all about freedom. No, but they have been controlled from outside. The policies are dictated from outside. So, with on countries, African countries, they hold elections regularly yet in the lack of control over its currency, our currency, you are too paying out the seeming Nigeria, the United States, and Naira.
We don't have one of those currencies, they have been controlled from outside. When the donut goes out, our currencies are sometimes rendered useless. Again, the other thing is trade policy. This is a way of organizations like WHO called the one which stands for trade, WHO.
They defend multiple trade policies, industrial directions, they direct how we operate. So, in such cases, democracy exists procedurally, but not substantively. This is evident in several African economies, where policies, visions are constrained by external lending conditions for global, financial institutions. Again, when you talk about culture, because the systemic freedom also encompasses culture of freedom.
So, cultural, the situation is equally complex. Many African societies continue to measure progress using, they call them, external benchmarking, that might not actually align with the local realities. Again, systemic freedom also encompasses educational systems that prioritize foreign epistemologies, while I call this line, our indigenous knowledge vary from advertising. These grids are disconnected, begin the formal knowledge, and then leave the experience.
You cannot impose a system on a people. So, I don't want to say, but liberation must be holistic like I told you. Without transforming, then the line structure has got shaped economic production, knowledge and governance. Then, when we show only, we cannot talk about independence, each of the matter remains incomplete.
Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. I like to talk about the IMF and the World Bank and international financial corporations and all their rules, they play, and now its impacts.
Unfortunately, it's unbalanced when it comes to African countries or what they call global south. I also wanted to talk about pan-Africanism, especially in the 21st century, because it's a major trade running throughout your book, and it's actually associated with Parmen Koma, Julius and Yereren and Patrice Lumumba. Then, I was wondering what does pan-Africanism mean in the 21st century today? I'm more curious about this because the world is increasingly shaped by geopolitical competitions, global mode, global south, United States, China, Russia, Europe.
Do you think pan-African solidarity is becoming more ancient or even more questioned? Thank you very much. Another Canadian should kind of play at this point, because like you mentioned, from a local man, among others who are associated with the Africanism, we have Parmen Koma, and even those from the US, like WA, Du Bois, and so on and so forth. They created for us an ideology that I think when we use or when put to use prokaline, can actually contribute to the African liberation.
I use it in my work as a tool for liberation. Pan-Africanism seems to be viewed in contemporary Africa today, must move from being historical ideal into practical framework for collective transformation. Let us stop viewing pan-Africanism as an ideology, but transform it to practical framework that can help us in the transformation of Africa. So leaders like Kwame and Koma understood that for Africa to be liberated, then the fragmentation that was brought as a result of the Berlin Conference was a greatest threat to African liberation.
So that fragmentation was the greatest vulnerability because tell me a country like Ken cannot do a serious economic business with USA. They are not on the same side, economic, but imagine I in the United Africa having trade negotiations with America. Then that makes sense. Countries like Gebuji, countries like Lesotho in their small size, want to have a trade agreement with China.
Where else cannot happen? You cannot put the two in the ring. So we need to use the Pan-Africanism today. When vision on Africa that can define its own term.
In today's global system, where power, like you say, is organized in China and all that, like the European Union or other emerging alliances that are coming together, individual African states often lack the scales to compete with them effectively. That one cannot happen. Otherwise, they will dictate the terms and conditions. We are beginning to see a graphical effect in the Pan-Africanism towards envisioning Pan-Africanism idea or rather transforming that into a practical situation with emerging trade organizations like what the African countries ask sometimes back on continental African free trade area.
African continent, I don't know, is called African continental free trade area. Yes, which aims to actually increase the intra African trade and reduce dependency on external markets. Very important. I see that as an aspect of in the spirit of Pan-Africanism.
If fully realized, it would fundamentally accept the production patterns, I call the continent because one thing we have to put clear, Africa must stop being one of our greatest followers say is called the PLN movement. That African produces what it does in consume and consume what it does in produces. We have to make sure that Africa become an industrialization powerhouse because how long are we going to be dependent? We cannot just be producers.
Let us also let up factories. Let us have industries. Let's our goods. Let's just be extracted and taken outside and then they brought to us finished goods.
Look at oil in Nigeria. Nigerians produce oil, but they import the finished oil. I mean, petrol for their cars. It's a contradictory.
A state that produces oil imports petrol and other energies to support itself. It's a total contradiction. So we have to, for example, encourage that spirit of African continental free trade area, which actually I see it in the spirit of Pan-Africanism. Also, for example, it's a net of exporting low cotton to Europe and re-importing the finished textiles.
In the second hand, clothes are doing better than the one we made locally. Actually, African countries must build their industries. African countries will build integrated value chains within the continent if they are supposed to be free. This would not only retain the wealth, but also generate employment and also industrial capacity.
So, Pan-Africanism can be shown today. Therefore, it's not just about unity in principle. It's about economic coordination, shared infrastructure, and also strategic collaboration. That's what we need in the spirit of Pan-Africanism.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Stuman. I think at this point, and with all you've said about Pan-Africanism, we can now talk about the futures, because it's really point to African futures at this point. So I would like to ask you, you devote a lot of significant attention to the African youth and Riley Su.
But I have a question about this. We've seen movements such as end-starsing, Nigeria, we've led tax-portsizing, Kenya, students' movements across the continent. What do you think African youth are doing? Are they beginning to redefine what political participation looks like?
Or does this speak to the African futures that you are thinking of? Or is you are thinking of something very different? Thank you so much. The youth movement in Africa is also just built on what I've said before, on Pan-Africanism.
I also see it in the spirit of Pan-Africanism. Yeah, I think the generation, the youth generation for that matter, have become game changers in the African political scene, because what excites me is that this generation is refusing in hurricanes, limitations. They are not bowing. They have been cheated enough and enough with enough.
They want to reclaim their sovereignty and activities in the activities who are not bowing to the inherited limitations that came as a result of colonialism. Of course, the continent really looks at what is interesting about this movement. Of course, the continent, the young people are challenging the authorities, organizing movements and using digital platforms to demand accountability from their leaders. We saw it in Kenya with the finance bill 2025, which actually forced the president to drop it, because it was disastrous.
And the youth say, no, we are not going to pass. We saw youth protest like in Kenya, like you said, in Nigeria, in SARS. And the civic activism in countries like Senegal and also in Rio Grande, we saw it. So these movements are not isolated.
You should not think about them in isolation. They are interconnected. You see these guys are coming through digital platforms, they're sharing ideas, they're organizing strategies on what move like in Kenya. So they were organizing protests over the country and you want to know the internet has also become a blessing in these guys, in this revolution.
So, through the digital platform, they allow ideas, strategies and solidities to move across all the more rapidly than the government intelligence could foresee, reaching a new form of a new pan-Africanism. So this direction is also redefining our identity. They are less bound by colonial categories and more open to hybridization, what I can call hybridization. That means the dynamic form of being African in a globalized world.
I think this is one of the medicine to these puppet leaders, African leaders who are being put to power through an external, I mean, external interference. We are having elections, they are not very unfair. The youth comes out to demand for accountability, which actually our fathers, the last generation, were not able to do that. So Africa is rising and the youth are on the center stage demanding for accountability, sending a serious signal to our leaders that if you're not doing the right thing, then you must be in for it.
And I think this is something that we need to embrace as Africans. We are now going beyond intimidation. Thank you so much, Devin. And since we are talking about digital systems, you mentioned about the guitar imperialism in your book and that's the growing control of African digital infrastructures.
And it's made me wonder if beyond the dangers of the guitar imperialism are the opportunities with the guitar technologies to create the sovereign genuine sovereign Africa that you look forward to. Yes, thank you so much. As I say, in my last response that technology is a blessing, but also it's a blessing in disguise for Africans because technology offers both risk and opportunities. But the opportunities are more transformative, like we see in the case of the youth protest across Africa.
If properly honest, there is more to see in the transformative sense or other in the work we call the opportunity side. But also we have to be very careful. The platforms are not ours. And therefore, you know, the issue of data who controls that data.
So economically digital platforms have enabled innovations like you when you come to Canada, we have empessa, which is as transformed in the lives of many people across Africa now. And it has also expanded our financial implications for millions of people across Africa. Similarly, you go to Nigeria. We have an ecosystem like in India.
In Nigeria, there are creating new forms of economic participation outside, you know, the traditional banking systems. And this is product of technology. When viewed socially, technology are now African to control their narratives. You go to TikTok.
I see when sometimes I browse through, you know, I go through TikTok, like I was through, I see Africans trying to share about their cultures, what they are doing, in the cultural, you know, when you get to internet space, again, you get to another class of land. Someone is creating a concept, which is culturally based, trying to get people on contracts. That's a positive sense. And so, instead of being represented by external media, which I've actually talked about in other chapters, which have actually distorted our identity, this platform have come to represent our identities.
So African can tell their own stories through film, music, and through digital content creation, they call it content creation. And however, on the other side, this opportunity comes with challenges that are ownership. Like I told you, platform dependency, Africans do not own the platform, none of them. TikTok, not own by an African, Facebook, none, Instagram, none, any of them.
We are just customers. We are just customers. And so, that dependency is problematic. And that's what we call digital inequality, is problematic.
So, the question is whether African can move from being users of technology to a producers and regulators of it, because in the modern one, as we speak right now, one of the gold resources that people are now looking for is data. Because once they get the data, they can even start thinking about controlling the population. They can also use it on the negative cells. I mean, post-picksense, they are making money through, you know, by African being subscribers, they are channeling, they are growing.
And so, the question I don't call is, how can we also develop our own system that we can take control over, other than, you know, you know, working on people's platforms. Africans are ideally just customers, but not owners of those platforms. If Zukkibag now today, say, is closing, Facebook, what will Africans do? Who are members?
Nothing. They will lose their followers, they will lose their economic, whichever, what they are getting there. You know, we have to be careful. But on the other side, technology has helped us in many ways, like our tourism, preservation, and so on, and so forth.
And even in medical field and so on. But we have to be very careful. These are people's platforms. Yeah, they have control of that.
You know, data, like, told me, data book written by an ad area called targeted Africa, we would like to comment before to read. And, you know, it talks about how data is also very, very important, because when someone has your data, he has control over you. He has, how do they always determine that, of course, we need to send more contraceptives to Africa, particularly this area. And why is it that this we have been so obsessed about controlling our population?
Why India is about created? And I think that is about populated. There is a synergy when there is population, because I think if we go by this direction of controlling the population of Africa, then very soon, our land will be owned by Chinese, will be owned by foreigners who will come and own our land, because there are no people. You remember, at some point in China, I had to control their population.
But when they saw the population of address the climate, and most likely they are going to fade away, they have to abandon the rule. But why is it that it's a concern to control the population of Africa? And so we keep on reducing, reducing, reducing, and then foreigners will come and buy our lands, settle here, create their families. Don't we see that they will be cool?
We will be foreigners. I mean, in our own land, I think Africa has to think about the issue, about how the guys are expecting their data and coming to use it against them. Thank you, Stephen. It gives me a moment to pause.
Yeah, it's really pause. One compelling aspect of your book is your insistence that African women are not simply participants in liberation struggles, but they are architects of them. Why was it so important for you to foreground us in your book? How do you also think that African feminist thoughts and spans or challenges are ideas of liberation?
Thank you very much. Any discussion, any discourse in the liberation of Africa that commits women is an amount to, what can I say, not complete. Women were very integral when we were fighting for liberation, and therefore, we shouldn't forget about the role that women played. Now, in that, in the book, I put more emphasis on women, and it is very central for me because African women have always been central to social, economic, and our political life.
They are game changers, even when they have been historically marginalized in the formal narrative, they're all they played and out. Even when our ancestors were fighting in the bush during guerrilla wars, who was applying them with food, with stone, because when the forest was applying, who were giving them the intelligence, they were women. We forget that then we are heading for our own direction because they played a fundamental role. For example, think about figures like Van Garimadai of Kenya demonstrated how environmental sustainability is important, even when the government was intimidated.
And don't you tell me you don't want to celebrate such figures? No? Van Garimadai also demonstrated that democracy and social justice are connected. You know, figures like we call her Ransom, Van Milleio.
Also, she mobilized women against the colonial and patriarchal changes. Look at her, it's called Helenshali. Yes, look at Gragamashal. Yes, we need Mandela.
Yes, they have been an art and passion of this liberation. So today, you know, women continue to play a very critical role in grassroots organization. Women are very central in interpreting U.S. in the business field.
Women now do even doing better. And even in governance, across Africa, we have enough to come even have women who are well-desk, something that I think even the Western world have not really accepted, but they can rule by a woman. And so we need to accept that all that women have played. But again, women are facing some structural barriers in terms of rising to this leadership position.
They have limited access to resources. Sometimes they are political exclusion. They have been politically excluded. And also we need to be realistic, talking about some cultural constraints that are actually not making women to rise to the global problem, I mean, to the leadership fraud, which can restrict their full participation.
So in that book, I could more emphasize that true liberation requires addressing barriers not just by excluding women in the existing system, but as forming the system to reflect more influencing and equitable values. Because women, we cannot have men without women. They are our mothers. And so we need to accept the role that they are playing.
I was raised up by my mother, imagine nine months, if she had another different idea about we have not been existing. And so women are very integral. If Africa has to realize its liberation trajectory, then they have to take into account the role that women are playing. So in Kenya, for example, we talked about two-card gender representation of women.
It's a discussion that's ongoing, ongoing, ongoing, ongoing. But to realize that, I think what we need to do is to create a system that allows, unless we change the system that allows for that participation, then we will still have this discussion going in a declaratory way. So women have played a very critical role to our liberation in whichever form of our social life as African and we need to go like that and promote women. Thank you.
Many thanks for that. In your book, you really detail out women's political participation, education, labor safety and cultural transformation. And indeed, you do mention that there should be opportunities for more because women play a big role when it comes to liberation. Now, let's go to moving ahead or looking ahead because your book, actually, I really like how you write it.
You blend such analysis and then sometimes become imaginative and point-deconam like, does this really nice to read and very interesting? I really like your style. And in the end, you kind of move towards imagining the future, African future. So let me take those moments to ask you, ask you look towards Africa's future.
What gives you hope? Thank you very much. I employed that as a holistic style of writing because I believe that decolonization is not just a technical process, but it also deeply human and imaginative work because we have to write, but also imagine not just talking, but a lot of innovations happen because of imagination. Unless you put your readers also to imagine the future, I use that in my work also to see how do we imagine the next stage from where we are.
We need a regularization analysis to understand systems of our, but also we need imagination to envision the alternatives because through imagination, we can see the alternatives without imagination, critique that we put across and live to despair rather than transformation. So we get up in a conundrum of discussion, discussion of the discussion, but there is no imagination. So the book actually intentionally moved from diagnosing the problem, exploring the possibilities through imagination. It invites readers not to only understand the present, but also imagine a different future for Africa because through that imagination, we can see alternatives for this in my view balance between critique and hope is very essential.
It reflects the reality that while Africa faces serious challenges, like we have seen, it also processes immense creative and intellectual potentials which need to be imagined and reimagined for that matter. So, let's not just talk, but we need to act. We say action speaks a lot more than once. We need to imagine the future.
Well said, it's better than, they say, well said, it's better than well done. Well done, it's better than well said. Well done, it's better than well said. Yeah.
So I employed that stylistic way also to make my readers transcend to seeing the possibility, the future on what we can do. Again, this actually is one of the ways that if you want to take Africa to the next level that we have to think about the alternative ways on how we are going to transform the country. Your final voice, if lessness take away just one message from this conversation, what would it be? And also I'm curious, are you working on another project?
So this is doing one. Yes, in a working on another project, there is one which is almost on completion, which is now now narrowed down to Kwame Nukroma, this political ideologies and how we can use political ideologies to transform Africa. I want now to be sent to basic African scholars, their diagnoses, their ideas, and how we can use their ideas to transform Africa. Because Africa, in my honest opinion, does not like resources or intelligence or creativity.
What is what it has lacked is structure on freedom like we talked about. And that is the message in that book, Africa and about Africa future will not be determined by how well it adapts the world, but how bodily it redefines its, how bodily it redefines it. So our we are the people, the future of Africa is on the hands of Africa. Let us not have external influences.
Can we have homegrown solutions for African problems, other than going out to Bentmark, then you you find out that there is these are two different realities. Education, most of the African curricula are borrowed. If it is not from Britain, America, don't we have African, uh, uh, informal education, which has a whole litany of knowledge from the time you are born to the time you die. There was a whole education, which was holistic.
When we embraced our wild leaves, other than operating on colonized greed, this is very crucial that African must have to be imagining their own future and start relying on border system. Let us create our economic systems and take into account those regional economic blocks, whether it is a guard, a bit whether it is static or echo or African free intercontinental plate. Let us enhance those aspects. I feel very bad because when Africans wants to rise to claim their right position, then the West are always there to make sure that they kill that spirit.
We've seen this with the death of Gaddafi. Gaddafi was agitated other than other things that he did. He had an African spirit on his heart. They are assassinated hit because the data wrote a very good book that was actually later on getting it in the internet because I think it was, uh, you know, removed the green book by Gaddafi, which I think Africans would read, actually, but that was agitated in for one Africa, one president, one parliament, one constitution, one army, one economic system, one currency, and the West one was sitting well with this.
He had proposed a gold dinner, which is equivalent to the dollar. It was going to bring a fridge to the dollar. And since it is Africa, where the dollar is doing best, they have to employ their machinery like NATO in the name of going for humanitarian assistance of the people in that country. And in the long run, Libya has never seen peace.
They did that to Khonenukuma. They did that to Thou Man's as never. They don't want to allow Africa to realize their potential. And that's why we see new generation, the new generation coming into the mud of that space look at Bukinafus.
I like that gentleman because he has a spirit of Africa in him. But the moment one of us has a spirit, our spirit, then the West seat has a crash. So my, my call is that the Africans we must unite because there is strength in unity and avoid this, uh, disintegration of operating as independent. Kenya think that is equal to the United States just because it has some boundaries and some, you know, instruments or power.
But ideally, there's nothing they can comparable between Kenya and the U.S. So African rise to liberate ourselves. We need to take into account those ideas that are discussed in my book, The Africa and Baut, The Colonial Pathways, Sovereignty and Liberation. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Stavan, for this insightful and engaging conversation. Your book, Africa Unbound, The Colonial Pathways to Sovereignty, Elevation reminds us that liberation is indeed not as single events of the past, but an ongoing struggle that involves knowledge, cultures, economics, governance, language and imagination. And more. Thank you so much.
So this has been, I'm Sabakui, your host on the new books, Network. And I've been speaking with Dr. Stavan Ojango, Uma, about his new book, African Unbound, The Colonial Pathways to Sovereignty, Elevation published by Braille in 2020. So I encourage you to read Africa Unbound and reflect on his ideas.
Thank you so much, Stavan. Thank you so much, Anza, for also your time. I'm also for organizing this and reaching this passion. Indeed, it was a privilege.
I thank you so much for creating time for me. And I hope also to have more discussion with you in the future. I have other books that I've also published. There is also one titled What is Ailing Africa?
If we got time, we can also talk about what is Ailing Africa, which was also published by Braille. Then, of course, there are others where I also talk about our indigenous systems of knowledge, which was published by Margaret Macmillan, plus others. The one which is also under consideration of Springer on Africa, Utah, which is now as, you know, the way I write this book. And one of the way I write this book is the books because they form like a series.
I started with What is Ailing Africa? There's so many issues I raised there. I realized there was more to be discussed in order to solve what is Ailing Africa. And that's why I came up with Africa Unbound.
But out of Africa Unbound, I realized there was another emerging issue that we need, that part of imagination. Now, I have taken it and actually created a book on it on how we can imagine the future, reclaiming the African future. So I'm moving to a moving upward. So I hope you have another discussion with you on another book.
Let me say thank you so much for your professionalism as well. And thanks very much for engaging this course very likely. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. We look forward to having you back on the new books next week. Kevin, thank you so much for your time, scholarship and vision.