AFRICAN TRADITIONAL THOUGHT IN THE AGE OF MODERNITY: A DISCOURSE ON CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Abstract

African traditional thought, with its relational cosmology, communal moral structure, and holistic conception of personhood, faces increasing pressure in an era shaped by globalisation, technological acceleration, urban transformation, and shifting belief systems. The central problem this article addresses is the widespread assumption present in both academic and public discourse that modernity inevitably erodes or invalidates indigenous African intellectual traditions. Such a view obscures the ways African communities creatively negotiate the tensions between inherited worldviews and contemporary socio-cultural change. To investigate this problem, the study employs a qualitative analytic methodology combining philosophical analysis, historical interpretation, and anthropological evidence. Through a critical reading of African philosophical literature, ethnographic accounts, and oral traditions, the article examines how concepts such as communal personhood, moral responsibility, cosmological balance, and ancestral mediation are reinterpreted within modern contexts. Attention is given to processes of adaptation, hybrid, contestation, and resilience across different regions and intellectual traditions. The findings reveal that African traditional thought neither disappears under modern pressures nor survives unchanged. Rather, it undergoes a dynamic process of selective continuity and strategic transformation. Key moral and metaphysical principles persist, even as their expressions evolve in urbanity, formal education, religious pluralism, and digital cultures. The study concludes that African traditional thought remains a living, generative resource with significant potential for addressing contemporary challenges including social fragmentation, ecological crisis, and global ethical uncertainty thereby offering critical insights into how tradition and modernity can coexist without mutual negation.