History and Cultural Changes: The Roots, the Present Situation and the Way Forward

Africa is currently engulfed by a series of problems ranging from poverty to disease. insecurity, instability and political and economic marginalisation. The paper seeks to uncover how this situation came into being through an excursion into the African past to mirror the movements of events that eventually produced the present situation of things in the continent. This knowledge could provide us with hindsight and a guide for an appropriate future action to salvage the continent. It was to address this sorry situation in which the continent found itself that some concerned intellectuals and leaders started calling for an African renaissance, that Africa should put its house in order. The data for this research is to be sourced through an intensive literature review. It is the argument of this paper that, to confront the problems of today, we need to reflect on our past for guidance so that our efforts should be towards building and improving on our age-long traditions and values that held our societies, rather than the present state of confusion, where individualism, self-centeredness and greed are the bane of our societies.