Ideas worth spreading

Why Africa must become a center of knowledge again

1,192,562 views |

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò |

TEDGlobal 2017

• August 2017

How can Africa, the home to some of the largest bodies of water in the world, be said to have a water crisis? It doesn't, says Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò -- it has a knowledge crisis. Táíwò suggests that lack of knowledge on important topics like water and food is what stands between Africa's current state and a future of prosperity. In a powerful talk, he calls for Africa to make the production of knowledge within the continent rewarding and reclaim its position as a locus of learning on behalf of humanity.

How can Africa, the home to some of the largest bodies of water in the world, be said to have a water crisis? It doesn't, says Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò -- it has a knowledge crisis. Táíwò suggests that lack of knowledge on important topics like water and food is what stands between Africa's current state and a future of prosperity. In a powerful talk, he calls for Africa to make the production of knowledge within the continent rewarding and reclaim its position as a locus of learning on behalf of humanity.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Historian, philosopher

See speaker profile

Drawing on a rich cultural and personal history, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò studies philosophy of law, social and political philosophy, Marxism, and African and Africana philosophy.

Shamil Jeppie, Souleymane Bachir Diagne | CODESRIA, 2009 | Book

The Meanings of Timbuktu

This volume documents the role of Timbuktu as a center of knowledge production in Africa, beyond Egypt, from the medieval period through the eighteenth century.

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò | Callaloo 1993 | Article

"Colonialism and Its Aftermath: The Crisis of Knowledge Production"

This is the piece in which I first articulated the idea that the most lasting impact of colonialism in Africa could be found in what I there called the crisis of knowledge production.

Walter Rodney | Howard University Press, 1974 | Book

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

This is the classic account of Africa’s development up to the coming of European conquest and what the consequences of that conquest have been.

| Explore

Sources on African contributions to knowledge production in the past

Theophile Obenga, A Lost Tradition: African Philosophy in World History (The Source Editions, 1995)

Civilization or Barbarism: an Authentic Anthropology (Lawrence Hill Books, 1991)

The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (Lawrence Hill Books, 1974)

Claudia Zaslavsky, Africa Counts: Number and Patter in African Cultures, 3rd edition (Lawrence Hill Books, 1999)

Innocent C. Onyewuenyi, The African Origin of Greek Philosophy (University of Nigeria Press, 2005)

| Explore

| Explore

Africa Knowledge Project

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.