JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

Based on data collected recently from African youth aged 18 to 25 years, the paper decries their superficial knowledge, understanding and appreciation of African spirituality and culture. Devoid of a systematic grip on the values, grounded in relationships, that are at the basis of African meaningful living, African youth, families and communities in general suffer severe cultural deracination and its consequent psycho-spiritual fragmentation--the makings of a crisis of identity. Their ongoing search for depth and meaning is compromised by this identity crisis. How can the situation be redressed? The paper highlights some emergent trends of pathways for restoration that Africans have undertaken, including some facilitated through social media. These increasingly crossborder initiatives have potential for growth and for networking into mainstreamed African consciousness. Their particular novelty is that they demonstrate the value and urgency of Afrocentricity as an approach to take Africanity to depth. In line with these trends, the paper proposes that educational interventions in the formal and non-formal spheres need to embrace Afrocentricity as a cardinal pillar. According to its proponent, Molefi Kete Asante (2020, 2017, 2003) the Afrocentricity theory demands that Africans appropriate their realities, their history and ultimately their destiny from an Afrocentric perspective. This builds up a rooted Africanity, the only authentic foundation for the restoration to full-stature agency of African peoples in diverse fields of their own and world affairs. Afrocentricity is indisputably the ground zero for authentic education in Africa. It is a condition sine-qua-non for sustainable personal, communal and societal integration and growth. In order to embrace the centrality of relationships and their spiritual significance, African individuals, families, communities and even ventures need to cultivate the authority born of an Afrocentric consciousness.