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African Studies and the Afrocentric Paradigm: A Critique

The study of African peoples from an Africa-centered prism has been referred to as Afrocentricity. This paradigm of studying Africa which has its theoretical foundation in the works of contemporary scholars in the United States is, to be sure, not an entirely new perspective in African intellectual thought. Africa-centered historiography, in fact, dates back to the closing years of colonial rule in Africa. In the early 1960s this approach found increased expression in the works of African scholars, who consciously grounded their researcher in African methodology.' However, the development of the Africa-centered approach as a theory and philosophy is a product of the 1980s and of diasporian African writings. The theoretical conceptualization of an Africa-centered approach is the handiwork of Afrocentric scholars such as Molefi Kete Asante, Tsheloane Keto, Mualana Karenga, and a host of others based in the United States. The aim of this article is to attempt a critique of Afrocentric thought as seen in the works of Asante and Keto, two of its leading exponents.2