Postcolonial Africa needed Africanity literature for self-affirmation and liberation.

Evidence

In Africa, this was closely linked to the end of colonialism and the beginning of Africans’ struggle for self-affirmation and legitimation. To that end, post-colonial Africa needed generations of scholars who were Africans in the real sense of the word. It needed young people who would be proud of being black and who could take pride in their own culture. Africa needed African scholars, who would assume positions of leadership in order to liberate the African person from sociopolitical and economic oppression and not to take them back to colonialism. To do that successfully, it was crucial to introduce students to the literature that captured those aspirations – the books that emphasized Africanity. Some of the most notable works in that category of Africanity included Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy, Senghor’s writings on negritude, Okot p’Bitek’s poems, and all novels and plays in the African literature series. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 104