Answer to Question #190049 in Management for Lerato Mathekga

Question

Psychology in Africa, like other knowledge forms, is often treated as though its origins are distinctly Western. The African knowledge that sustained societies for centuries was disrupted by the imposition of European knowledges and cultures and spheres were left without a trace of indigenous wisdom. This was made possible by the exclusion of indigenous language in the professional world. This exclusion of indigenous language made it possible to exclude any indigenous knowledge and wisdom in the professional world. It is in this point that African Psychology made it entry in tertiary institutions.  After reading the above abstract discuss some of the critics that psychology has experienced with it application in indigenous countries. In your discussion explain how African psychology was developed as a tool to close the gap between the western and indigenous knowledge.   

Answer 1

African psychology is a systemic and informed study of the complexities of human mental life, culture, and experience in the African colonial world. For over 50 years ago, the professional study of psychological concepts in Africa has been dominated by indigenous countries such as Europe and America. Therefore modern scientific psychology, drawing entirely upon the empirical, mechanistic, positivistic, and materialistic traditions of western nations, gained absolute ascendancy in the African academies as part of the general effects of African colonial contact with the west. Consequently, the study of psychology in African colleges becomes limited to the perspective of indigenous psychology. Therefore this condition severely blocked and encumbered any early attempts to introduce African concepts in psychology in African learning institutions. Fortunately, the inspiration articles of some African scholars like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo, and chili among others, help to change this awkward situation