The Philosophy of African Economic Humanism: Ubuntu and Afri-Capitalism as Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter further unravels the rich case history that supports the book’s thesis that Afri-capitalism and Ubuntology are narratives of an African difference understood through the philosophy of African Economic Humanism. In doing so, the chapter reveals how these African economic social constructions straddle between principles and contexts that are drawn from both Africa Rising and Pan Africanist narratives and processes. To this end, we will see how these narratives embody while also representing the contradictions and dialectics involved in Africans’ nationalistic and regional worldviews that are being negotiated in the contemporary global economy. Responding to four questions—What are the value and philosophical precepts of Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu economics? How have they been socially constructed as economic ideologies? How do they operationalize as new Pan African economic philosophies? How are they cultivating new Afri-conscious international political economies and practices?—the chapter examines how each narrative reflects the Pan Africanist principles of self-determination, resistance to Western appropriation, autonomous agency, and African-derived knowledge. Further, the chapter exposits the converged African humanist values that undergird Africapitalism and Ubuntu business models and reveals their philosophical agenda to Africanize and Pan Africanize an African global economy that is too inclined to foreign extraversion.