African & Africana

African and Africana philosophy is the philosophy of African peoples and the African diaspora, from early written texts to debates on personhood.

Its earlier figures include Zera Yacob in seventeenth-century Ethiopia, to whom a defence of testing every claim by reason is attributed, and Anton Wilhelm Amo, born in present-day Ghana, who taught philosophy in eighteenth-century Germany. In the twentieth century Frantz Fanon analysed colonialism, Kwasi Wiredu called for conceptual decolonisation, Paulin Hountondji criticised ethnophilosophy, H. Odera Oruka studied sage philosophy, and Ifeanyi Menkiti and Kwame Gyekye debated personhood and community. Lucius Outlaw defined Africana philosophy to include the diaspora. It answers questions on personhood, community, race, colonialism and justice.