African Potentials

Itaru Ohta presents the outcome of a research initiative, African Potentials, carried out over a decade. The project set out to challenge the familiar images that outsiders have attached to Africa, especially those of poverty, hunger and conflict. The project's premise is that dismantling these images could help the world free itself from colonial and Western habits of thought and open the way to a different future.

Rather than dwelling on Africa's problems, the book turns to the wealth of knowledge and social institutions that African peoples have built and practised throughout their history. Drawing on these indigenous systems, it questions the long-standing assumption that Western values apply everywhere by default.

The book seeks to establish a new ideology capable of reshaping the prevailing structure of knowledge, so that the dominant centre becomes one perspective among many rather than the sole standard.