On the Distortion of Being in African Ontology

When the first attempts at conceptualizing African ontology emerged in the last century, they were riddled with confusions and distortions. When one is reminded that some of these confusions and distortions were not even meant for the African audience in the first place, it becomes worrisome, the extent to which African ontology has been misrepresented and then misunderstood. This misrepresentation is connected to the failure to properly capture the true nature of Being among Africans, as noticeable in the works of Placide Tempels and Emmanuel Edeh. Where Tempels is imposing his Thomistic substance-based outlook on the Bantou, Edeh is using an “unfamiliar” linguistic framework for the Igbo. This chapter reflects that the distortion noticeable in the works of these scholars is connected to their inability to capture the process-relational underpinning of the African reality. Through the method of critical analysis, we establish that African ontology has a process-relational foundation. As a way of demonstrating this finding, the theorizations on African ontology by Ada Agada and Mogobe Ramose are employed as process versions of African ontology even as both of them have not made such open avowal to this metaphysical orientation.