Afrilition: Mental models, By Adéwálé Àjàdí

The foundation of all systems is the mental model, and the work ahead of Africa that Afrilition raises will transform our future. Unfortunately, we in the African world function within the current global system in reaction to it and with wider acceptance of its current mental model. Based on history and cemented into our formal socialisation that we call education, we are indoctrinated into different forms of inferiority. We accept a lot without critical review, but it is not just us; the wider world mostly also accepts that Westernisation is the surest and only route to modernisation. The depth of this mental model hides the Janus face of the system, which is White supremacist and based on the pseudoscience of race. It does not stand up to basic scrutiny by its own logical or empirical standards.

I have not practised law for a while, but yesterday I had reason to go to the Supreme Court of Nigeria to honour a friend and son who was being elevated to a senior role. I sat in the Foyer for hours, enduring the ceremony and the pomposity of performance. Intelligent people prancing as caricatures in European wigs and dressed for pageantry in 19th-century faux fashion. There were horsehair wigs; the only missing thing was powdered faces. It exemplified the levels our elites are reduced to. On the other side, as speeches droned on for hours in their monotone, I fell asleep many times, hoping I did not snore. My eyes fixed on the Statue of Lady Justice on the wall. She brought a smile to my face, telling me hope is not lost. She stood black and dignified, resting on the wall, with what were Northern Nigerian features; she had her head wrap solid, holding the sword and scale with an elegant buba that just barely touched the scale.

The sword on the other side expressed the glamour of the abundance of her outfit. She seemed aware of the work that needed to be done to move even herself from an Africanised European symbol as she stood on the Latin words beneath her feet with disdain. At least Lady Justice no longer borrows her robe. There was the crowd of well-wishers, many in the unique cultural refinement of their various people. A wonderful sight: the variety and diversity of ethnic excellence expressed in headgear and outfits from across the variety of people who are Nigerians. If there is a country in which people carry culture with dignity, it is in Nigeria, along with the contradiction of colonial mentality.

Afrilition is a pathway to the place of confidence in our creativity, and to get here we must be honest enough to confront ourselves on the depth of our indoctrination into the current system so that we can engage across the African world honestly and share understanding. Africa and its Diaspora are the most diverse breadth of humanity in the world. The persistent calls for unity betray a lack of acceptance of our complexity and expose our failings. We need a maturing to understand that our disagreements are the engine of our growth. In our many perspectives, it is critical to recognise the diverse pathologies we must address. From colonial mentality, white supremacy, colourism, and exploitative capitalism which are all diseases that are inevitable as a result of the systems we are all socialised into.

They are not the problems of or for the ignorant, malevolent, or poorly educated people but the sea of mental architecture in which we were raised and continue to live. Despite resistance and reactions, especially when we are woke, the system remains pernicious and prevalent; it is not overcome by our individual victories but adapts in ways to suck us back into other forms of reaction. Individually, we get sucked in especially because we are embedded in the system that has become our lifeblood. From our schooling, where languages are those of the coloniser and meanings are reduced to the dominant perspective. Our success is defined by material acquisition using borrowed language of class and its performance as hierarchy for marriage, residence, or even basic social interaction. We champion being black as a global identity, ignoring that it is a faux pigmentation reduction away from a beautiful and complex humanity that we are. We are dragged into false Diaspora wars where ethnicity and nationality are conflated for clicks, and identity is hastily constructed rather than differences being engaged with curiosity.

Afrilition is about how we can admit these challenges with vulnerability and honesty. For us to move beyond indictment and judgement towards a holding space for many perspectives. Understanding that building a Black identity and imbuing it with power is survival in the US, but it is not exactly the same in Ghana or Kenya. Accepting that Xhosa, Zulu, Kikuyu, Hausa, Igbo, and Ndebele are not tribes but ethnic nationalities with systems based on mental models that still enforce withdrawals from emotional bank balances. Our world is a platform for our differences so we can disagree effectively and grow from it. Afrilition is the holding space for our differences to be the fertiliser for creating a sophisticated mental model for African civilisation predicated on abundance, not scarcity.

Adéwálé Àjàdí, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of the newly released Afrilition: 21st Century African Manifesto, and Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.