Humanism in Africa

Despite the presence of many indigenous ethnic groups in Africa, there is much similarity in the cosmologies that ground their religious practices, especially those of people south of the Sahara. A major reason for this commonality is that many of them are descended from a set of communities along the ancient lakes and plains of the Sahara-Sahelian region of northern Africa that subsequently dried up, becoming desert. The cosmologies of these groups tend to have a concomitant ontology, or conception of being, and a system of values, in which greater reality and value are afforded to things of the past. Thus, the Creator, being first, has the greatest ontological weight, and whoever is brought into being closer in time to the moment of the origin of the world is afforded greater weight. This view gives one's ancestors greater ontological weight and value than their descendants. Also, one's past actions are of greater ontological weight than one's present actions. (One's future actions are of no ontological weight since they have not yet occurred.) Indigenous African systems affirm that human beings negotiate their affairs with the understanding that they cannot change the past (although they can be informed by it, especially through ancestors), are entirely responsible for the present, and must take responsibility for their future. This form of humanism does not require the rejection of religion, but may exist alongside it. As Kwame Gyekye observed in his classic study of Akan humanism among the Asante of Ghana, for example:

In Akan religious thought the Supreme Being is not conceived as a terrible being who ought to be feared because he can cast one into eternal hellfire. (The Supreme Being is believed to punish evildoers only in this world.) Again, in spite of Akan belief in immortality, their conception of the hereafter does not include hopes of a happier, more blessed life beyond the grave. Western humanism sees religion as impeding the concentration of human energies on building the good society. In Akan thought this tension between supernaturalism and humanism does not appear; for the Akan, religion is not seen as hindering the pursuit of one's interests in this world … Akan humanism is the consequence not only of a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being and other supernatural entities, but, more importantly I think, of a desire to utilize the munificence and powers of such entities for the promotion of human welfare and happiness. (pp. 144–145)