There is nothing called an African culture.

I used to hear people in Sweden saying “I am going to Africa” or “I am attending a course in an African dance”, etc. A continent of 55 countries easily clustered together to a single entity.


The variety of this continent is remarkable. Africa is a continent of great contrast and diversity. Its vast size is more than three times the land area of the continental United States. The democratic republic of Congo alone is as big as the entire Western Europe.

The languages spoken on the continent are perhaps as many as a thousand, which are as distinct as English is from German (Martin and O´Meara:1995:13).

I wonder why grove generalizations are always made concerning the African continent despite the amazing diversity. The impact of colonialism and slavery in perpetuating racially based bizarre ideologies towards black people is enormous and is still felt in every corner of the planet.

“The invention and reinvention of Africa and Africans” by Europe and “The scramble for Africa” are still continuing unabated though in a different form now compare to the colonial era.

The very origin of calling the cradle of humanity - the African continent: “The darkest and most exotic continent” by Europeans, has to do with their inferiority complex and need to justify their “civilizing missions”in the 18th century. Everything was allowed in the rampancy of ignorance and arrogance.

Even now when we are supposed to be “enlightened” and “inter-connected” with all sorts of social media, people continue to have the same prejudice as before. Using zoological and derogatory terminologies regarding black folks is a quite “normal” phenomenon. These negative connotations do not even engender any reaction from the public anymore.

The term “ethnic” is a creation of colonialism along with “tribes”. One can ask why the same terminologies are not applied on people of European origins. This is the question Antoine Lema raises in his book Africa Divided – The creation of “Ethnic Groups” (1993).

It is beyond any doubt that ethnic groups, as a form of static and dogmatic markers of identity, have not always existed in sub-Saharan Africa. Lema (Ibid) questions why sixteen million Igbo in Biafra, Nigeria and sixty million Hausa in Northern Nigeria are called tribes and ethnic groups and not nations in terms of peoples or socio-cultural groups.

While the Austrian people, the Swedish people and the Danish people under the same period and with populations that are less than ten million are called nations. For Lema, it is obvious that some process of ethnic marking and ethnic management has taken place when it comes to the African population.

He further questions what an ethnic group is and how old ethnic groups are in Africa. Why European immigrants in Africa are never called ethnic groups, whereas Africans in their own continent are.

Colonialism has historically contributed immensely in the creation of ethnic identities through the policies of assimilation, division and sub-division, and on the bases of belonging to certain physical and socio-cultural features.

Aiden Campbell´s book ‘Western primitivism: African Ethnicity: A Study in Cultural Relations’ (1997) is a path breaking work in demystifying so-called “African tribalism” and “savagery primitivism”.

He argues that tribal barbarism from Africa tend to be employed by Western commentators with the intention of emphasizing humanity´s potential for evil, rather than solely laying stress upon African atavism.

The only logical conclusion that one can draw here for the sake of humanity is: There is nothing called an African culture or dance. There are distinct cultures and cosmologies within the continent but not a single entity that is the embodiment of Africa and Africans.