African socialism’s failures discredited ethnophilosophy by the late 1980s

Evidence

By the end of the 1980s, the lure of African socialism had waned. Africa continued to be poor, and the socio-political and economic freedom that was promised by the proponents of African socialism and actually desired by Africans was nowhere to be seen or experienced. Most of the socialist states became autocratic, banned opposition parties, and curtailed or eliminated the different freedoms of citizens. This state of affairs gave birth to renewed criticisms of Tempels’s ethnophilosophy and Africanity. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 120

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to similar post-independence disillusionment patterns in other postcolonial contexts; echoes the autocratization of newly independent states across the Global South.